Second Facsimile of the Collector's Edition of Being or Nothingness by Joe K (Giacomo Oreglia)

ISBN: 9789175272863

Utgiven: 2021-12-21

Format: Inbunden

Språk: Engelska

Genre: Utländska berättare

 
Not what anyone expected, I presume.

Thirty-two years have passed since the BorN-manuscript was first discovered and questions have mounted. Who are the main characters and how are they related to each other – who is the Master and who is the Emissary? What about the butterflies and the obsession with Douglas Hofstadter, and why a Swedish edition? Most important, where do we stand on the pivotal issue: do we accept what the story implies, that the manuscript with its axiom vindicates the Judeo-Christian narrative? Well, we have finally arrived and the last clues, as well as the concealed sentence, are presented.

"Although no coherent story can be pieced together, two main motifs or themes run through the textual fragments. One centers, self-reflexively, on a book, or, rather the book, the one the reader is reading. The book is varyingly said to have been found by the first-person character-narrator or by his friend B, having been written by the I narrator or by Arthur Conan Doyle or by Joe K, having been left unfinished, the text having disappeared in the word processor of the first-person narrator. I and B are thus either the authors of the book, its readers, or characters in it; or perhaps they have authored a narrative in which they themselves are characters. Or, if one is to believe the claims that the narrative is a reconstruction of a long-lost tale written by Conan Doyle, they are his creations, aware of their status as characters. Or perhaps all of the above. In Being or Nothingness ontological levels loop, mesh, and nest within each other in ways that make it impossible to determine who has authored whom and in which narrative the reader resides. The second theme focuses on the timeless question of the meaning of life …"
Danuta Fjellestad