The Threshold and the Ledger

Zusatztext

Since her untimely death in 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann has come to be regarded as one of the twentieth century's most important writers. Unpacking a single Bachmann poem, novelist Tom McCarthy latches onto two of its central terms ¿ the eponymous threshold and ledger ¿ and takes off on a line of flight: through the work of Franz Kafka, David Lynch, Anne Carson, Sappho and Shakespeare.Can writing be understood as an experience of the threshold, a limit- or boundary-state? A condition of ecstasy or ec-stasis, standing outside of oneself? With identity ruptured and surpassed, how ¿ and by whom ¿ might such experience be recorded? Appearing on the eve of Bachmann's centenary, McCarthy's book argues for the centrality of her vision to the very act of literature itself.

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