Homage to Czerny

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I'm planning to review Roberto Bolano's 2666 for the Seminary Co-op Bookstore's new blog. Well, my first review for them is posted there now. It's of a new novel published by the good people at Dalkey Archive, Gert Jonke's strange and wonderful Homage to Czerny (1977, translated in 2008 by Jean M. Snook), which at times reads like the work of a Thomas Bernhard who has become addicted to whimsy.

One passage I particularly liked, but didn't find an appropriate place for in my review, is this one:

Now everything started to happen very quickly, moving to its confusing end, the memory of it in my head is only fleeting and hazy, as though my stacks of orderly thoughts were somehow scattered violently, thrown up in the air, I was carried away, I don't remember exactly how.

Now that I think about it, that's a pretty good description of how I felt at the end of several hours of reading 2666 last night.