Reviews

Writers, in essence, are professional word tamers; if the words walking down the lines were living creatures, they would surely fear and hate the pen's nib as tamed animals do the raised whip. Or a better analogy: do you know about the production of astrakhan fur? Suppliers have their own terminology: they track the patterns of the unborn lamb's wool, wait for the necessary combination of curls, then kill the lamb—before birth: they call that "clinching the pattern." That's exactly what we—trappers and killers—do with our conceptions. [9]

juperez's review

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4.0

‘The Letter Killers Club’ was my heady and fantastical introduction to the work of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (try saying that one fast three times). It centers around a group of storytellers who refuse to put their words on to paper (for they fear that the world of literature and words cramps people’s heads with every idea but their own) and elect to have weekly meetings where they allow their own original ‘themes’ to flourish. The stories that follow are outrageous fables that range from a rehashing of Hamlet to an imagined dystopia run by machines. This slim book was full of ideas (some flew over my head, I’m sure), darkly comic and morbid, too.

Krzhizhanovsky reads like the Bolaño of Stalinist Russia and I’m all about it.

pearloz's review

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4.0

Great book! More than anything, I found it inspiring--it has a vibrant alive-ness to it that fills the creative well with possibilities. A writer's novel for sure. And the voice is surprisingly modern for something written in the 1920s

anti_formalist12's review

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2.0

I wish I enjoyed this more than I did. There were certainly some moments of humor, but it was mostly a dull slog. There might be something lost in translation here.

mendelbot's review

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3.0

An intriguing little thought experiment that, thankfully, is not the only aspect of the book. The framing device - the philosophical idea of the weight of words, the importance, or unimportance of written ideas - is insubstantial and lacking any real momentum to make it at all interesting. The stories that are told by the characters, however, are quite enjoyable. The book has a "just dashed off" quality, and probably could have been a superior work if rewritten as something more than what it feels - a lark.

lmrising's review

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funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

iris24's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

4.0

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