Reviews

The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, Simon McBurney

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bookishblond's review

3.0

Bruno Schulz obviously read a lot of Kafka.

Why does everyone love this guy so much? Sure, he writes beautifully and poetically, but he's not saying anything that hasn't been said before (even in 1934). I could be hideously wrong, but it seems to me that the bulk of Schulz's literary fame stems from his death. What a grotesque and lovely picture, that of a gifted writer shot dead by a Nazi bullet.

paromita_m's review against another edition

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challenging inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.25

rbreade's review against another edition

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Is it a short story collection or a novel? I now tend to think of it as a novel, though that's a tenuous decision, at best. With Schulz, forget pigeon-holing. He thought of the book as an autobiographical narrative, the unnamed narrator a Schulz stand-in mythologizing the small town of Drogobych--then in southeastern Poland, now in Ukraine by the magic of partition--via the most marvelous language ever caught between the pages of a book. With this complex, Latinate, super-heated language--yes, he locates his narrator-self in the rare-almost-to-unique-viewpoint that combines first person and omniscience--Schulz remakes Drogobych, utterly erasing the boundary between the real and the imagined: the two so interpenetrate that eventually one gives up trying to keep them separate. It's not the plot, it's not the characters--though the mock-heroic, wildly eccentric father commands center stage--it's the language. Schulz is the Prospero of fiction, creating worlds from words.