The Street of Crocodiles
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
This a magical book of short stories set in a small town in Poland during the period between the two World Wars. The writer, Bruno Schulz, wrote only two books in his lifetime but the two are so rich in vision that they contain a whole world. There are wonderful stories of childhood and how a child's imagination transforms the world; and there are more sombre tales with a sort of Kafkaesque feel to them. The author was also a graphic artist and illustrated his books with very high-quality etchings and lithographs that depict life in his town. As a curious aside, his books began as stories he told in the margins of letters he wrote to a friend. She encouraged him to expand on these little tales and the results were truly beautiful. In short, Bruno Schulz is one of the best little-known writers (little known in North America, that is, because I think he is more acknowledged in Europe)
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Do Furniture and wallpaper have life? Are they in permanent chaos? Are they subject to the workings of systems and so with that are as entropic as all other systems? Do Demiurges treat tailors dummies no different than empty rooms? Can a man turn into the rubber tube of an enema?
In dementia can wise questions come. Tailors Dummy is a work of genius.
So is Birds. Cinnamon Shops and The Comet come so close.
But I don't feel much different than I did about Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. I wrote that that was “ ....a heady mix of the metaphor with childlike fantasy and delirious dreaming that seemingly mixes the authors life memories/observations that cover his childhood through to the fear of old age and all the trials and tribulations in between.” And for me so is this, the more famous of the authors only two surviving books. All very weird and metaphorical that reaches amazing heights and then has me going Huh? What happened there?
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