By Giorgio Manganelli. Foreword by Italo Calvino. Translation and introduction by John Walker.
This combination of two key works by the Italian avant-garde writer Giorgio Manganelli (1922–90) is a major addition to the small number of his works available in English. In the 1960s Manganelli was a member, along with Umberto Eco and Eduardo Sanguinetti, of the Gruppo 63 movement, and a close friend of Italo Calvino, who provides an enthusiastic foreword that describes “To Those Gods Beyond” (1972) as a “heraldic bestiary” that “launches into a crescendo of variations on its main theme, the self-aggrandisement of a lucid megalomaniac.” Perhaps the best known of his works included here, “An Impossible Love,” comprises an epistolary exchange between Hamlet and the Princess of Cleves conducted with a “verbal catapult” as the universes about them descend into oblivion. All is overseen by gods beyond whom an endless array of other gods lie in wait, intent on torment. Everything seemingly finite or known in our world becomes infinite and unknown. The book is prefaced by Manganelli’s notorious manifesto “Literature as Deception” (1967), in which he describes the “literary object” as something cynical, corrupt and devoted only to turning human suffering into exquisite figures of speech. This is a major new offering of work by this important writer, heralded by Calvino as an “erudite acrobat who twirls around the trapeze of rhetoric above the timeless void of meaning.”
STATUS: Forthcoming | 10/22/2019
This title is not yet published in the U.S. To pre-order or receive notice when the book is available, please email orders @ artbook.com
NEW YORK Showroom by Appointment Only 75 Broad Street, Suite 630 New York NY 10004 Tel 212 627 1999
LOS ANGELES Showroom by Appointment Only
818 S. Broadway, Suite 700 Los Angeles, CA 90014 Tel. 323 969 8985
ARTBOOK LLC D.A.P. | Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
All site content Copyright C 2000-2017 by Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. and the respective publishers, authors, artists. For reproduction permissions, contact the copyright holders.
The D.A.P. Catalog www.artbook.com
Distributed by D.A.P.
FORMAT: Hbk, 7 x 7.75 in. / 192 pgs. LIST PRICE: U.S. $23.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $31 ISBN: 9781900565813 PUBLISHER: Atlas Press AVAILABLE: 10/22/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Forthcoming AVAILABILITY: Awaiting stock TERRITORY: NA LA ME
Published by Atlas Press. By Giorgio Manganelli. Foreword by Italo Calvino. Translation and introduction by John Walker.
This combination of two key works by the Italian avant-garde writer Giorgio Manganelli (1922–90) is a major addition to the small number of his works available in English. In the 1960s Manganelli was a member, along with Umberto Eco and Eduardo Sanguinetti, of the Gruppo 63 movement, and a close friend of Italo Calvino, who provides an enthusiastic foreword that describes “To Those Gods Beyond” (1972) as a “heraldic bestiary” that “launches into a crescendo of variations on its main theme, the self-aggrandisement of a lucid megalomaniac.” Perhaps the best known of his works included here, “An Impossible Love,” comprises an epistolary exchange between Hamlet and the Princess of Cleves conducted with a “verbal catapult” as the universes about them descend into oblivion. All is overseen by gods beyond whom an endless array of other gods lie in wait, intent on torment. Everything seemingly finite or known in our world becomes infinite and unknown.
The book is prefaced by Manganelli’s notorious manifesto “Literature as Deception” (1967), in which he describes the “literary object” as something cynical, corrupt and devoted only to turning human suffering into exquisite figures of speech. This is a major new offering of work by this important writer, heralded by Calvino as an “erudite acrobat who twirls around the trapeze of rhetoric above the timeless void of meaning.”
