Reading the stories in this book make me feel that Laszlo Krasznahorkai is some sort of blood brother of mine, that his thoughts are my thoughts, that the vantage point from which he sees the world is very near mine. These are stories about nothing much at all, stories overflowing with thoughts, with desperation, but also alas with joy, unbridled joy, that ineffable thing whose referent is not of this world but encompasses it, subsumes it. (He doesn’t call it God, but it’s close enough.) It’s rare for me to feel identification at something that I’ve read, but felt it quite a bit here.
To call his style overwhelming would be just the tip of it. But that’s the thing: his style reflects what his characters feel, an overwhelming sense of confusion, or desperation, whatever. The world cannot be encompassed in stacatto sentences, it flows on and on and on, doesn’t end neatly, as if with a complete S T O P, but rather it meanders, never rests, pirouettes over and over. That is the true way of experiencing the world, not the artificial structure that regular fiction imposes on it.