My daughter recently introduced me to Elfriede Jelinek . It was not so much a recommendation as a complaint. Having run out of subjects that interested her she was forced to study postmodern literature to complete her major. Jelinek's Women as Lovers was on the reading list. I said it sounded interesting. She handed it to me and said "it's all yours". It was interesting, too. Jelinek is a Viennese novelist and plawright, largely unknown outside the German-speaking world until the 2004 Nobel Literature Prize thrust her reluctantly into the global spotlight. The Nobel judges cited her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power." I suppose that's one way of putting it. Women as Lovers, written in 1974 but not translated into English until 20 years later, is a parody of the romance novel. It traces the courtshi
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson