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A review by samwreads
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz
4.0
I read the Street of the Crocodiles section a couple years back - reread it this year along with all the rest of the stories from Sanitorium and assorted other stories.
Overall reading Schulz was exhausting for me - beautiful writing no doubt, and a ridiculous imagination that stretches the surface of reality into multiplicities, duplicitous pleonasms. But the density makes it difficult to really get sucked into the longer pieces (and sometimes even the shorter ones).
Also, coming from the early 20th century the depiction of women and black people is simplistic and objective. Most of all women occupy strangely dualist roles - either as objects of desire or as Maenadic forces, but ones driven not to ravage and tear apart men but to sweep cleansing order into early Edenic bubbles of untamed reality. I definitely see a bit of the Sacher-Masoch influence mentioned in the introduction - I think it's a very apt connection. It's almost like those tropes were passed through the imagination of a dreamy young child.
Really all stories seemed strangely innocent and oneiric. The dream-like world is described beautifully and certainly has a lot of appeal for anyone who enjoys the power of words and more modern magical-realist flights of fancy. The longer standout pieces for me were easily the one about spring/the stamp album, and the sanitorium story itself. Both wove longer narratives that made them easier to follow and engage with. For shorter stories, I think those in the Street of the Crocodiles section proper were strongest - Cinnamon shops being an obvious standout for me.
Overall reading Schulz was exhausting for me - beautiful writing no doubt, and a ridiculous imagination that stretches the surface of reality into multiplicities, duplicitous pleonasms. But the density makes it difficult to really get sucked into the longer pieces (and sometimes even the shorter ones).
Also, coming from the early 20th century the depiction of women and black people is simplistic and objective. Most of all women occupy strangely dualist roles - either as objects of desire or as Maenadic forces, but ones driven not to ravage and tear apart men but to sweep cleansing order into early Edenic bubbles of untamed reality. I definitely see a bit of the Sacher-Masoch influence mentioned in the introduction - I think it's a very apt connection. It's almost like those tropes were passed through the imagination of a dreamy young child.
Really all stories seemed strangely innocent and oneiric. The dream-like world is described beautifully and certainly has a lot of appeal for anyone who enjoys the power of words and more modern magical-realist flights of fancy. The longer standout pieces for me were easily the one about spring/the stamp album, and the sanitorium story itself. Both wove longer narratives that made them easier to follow and engage with. For shorter stories, I think those in the Street of the Crocodiles section proper were strongest - Cinnamon shops being an obvious standout for me.