Proofs and Three Parables

by George Steiner

This collection of short stories includes "Proofs", a literary thriller which explores the conflict between fact and fiction in life and literature. Also included are "Noel, Noel", "Desert Island Disks" and "Conversation Piece".

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Short Stories

114 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

George Steiner was a French and American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator whose work explored the relationship between language, literature, and society, with a particular focus on the moral and cultural consequences of the Holocaust. Multilingual from an early age, Steiner grew up speaking German, English, and French, and studied the classics under his father, while overcoming a physical handicap with his mother’s encouragement. His family relocated to the United States during World War II, an experience that shaped his lifelong reflections on survival, morality, and human cruelty. He studied literature, mathematics, and physics at the University of Chicago, earned an MA at Harvard, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Steiner held academic posts across Europe and the United States, including Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva, Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, the first Lord Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative European Literature at Oxford, and Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard, teaching in multiple languages. A prolific writer, he produced influential works in criticism, translation studies, and fiction, including Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, The Death of Tragedy, After Babel, and The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., blending historical insight with philosophical reflection. His essays and books explored the power and ambivalence of human language, the ethical responsibilities of literature, and the persistence of anti-Semitism, while his fiction offered imaginative examinations of moral and historical dilemmas. Steiner was celebrated for his intellectual breadth and lecturing style, described as prophetic, charismatic, and sometimes doom-laden, and he contributed extensively to journals such as The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The New Yorker. He was married to Zara Steiner, with whom he had two children, David and Deborah, both of whom pursued academic and public service careers. Steiner’s work remains widely respected for its integration of rigorous scholarship, ethical inquiry, and literary sensitivity, marking him as one of the foremost thinkers in twentieth-century literature and comparative studies.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A self-denier with amused eyes and a touch of courtliness in his spare gestures.

From the Grand Inquisitor template and following the example of Fuentes and Greene, the titular novella is interesting (4 stars) as a Marxist copy editor is losing his eyesight as State Communism collapses in Eastern Europe.

The other pieces were so much histrionics although the last was an intriguing riff on Abraham and Isaac. This is another example of when critics pen fiction, which is a mixed field. The cover features Stalin so my peers could feel at ease.

[Marina · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sono un socialista. Sono e rimango un marxista. Perché altrimenti non potrei essere un correttore di bozze! "

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not your typical book, picked up based on recommendation awhile ago from a colleague -- not many novels have a proofreader as the main character. Brief portrait of life in Fascist Italy -- work, socializing, party meetings. Protagonist (we never learn his name) has bad eyestrain, goes to doctor too late, and has to take time off from work. Two statements jumped out at me:
"If California triumphs, there will be no need of proofreaders. Machines will do it better. Or all texts will be audiovisual, with self-correctors built in. Night after night after night, Carlo, I work till my brain aches. So as to get it absolutely right. So as to correct the minutest misprint in a text which no one may ever read or which will be shredded the next day. Getting it right. The holiness of it. The self-respect. ... Utopia simply means getting it right! Communism means taking the errata out of history. Out of man. Reading proofs."
And when he is watching the person temporarily filling in for him and spots typos and the substitute protests that it's just a hand-bill for an auction of farm tools so who cares:
"Do you know what the Kabbala teaches? That the sum total of the evil and miseries of humankind arose when a lazy or incompetent scribe misheard, took down erroneously, a single letter, one single solitary letter, in Holy Writ. Every horror since has come on us through
P and because of that one erratum. You didn't know that, did you?"
Powerful stuff!

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Sa cosa insegna la Cabala? Che tutto il male, tutte le sofferenze dell'umanità provengono dallo sbaglio di uno scrivano pigro o incompetente che sentì male, o trascrisse erroneamente, un'unica lettera, un'unica e sola lettera nel Testo Sacro. Ogni orrore successivo ci è pervenuto tramite e a causa di quell'unico erratum. Non lo sapeva, vero?" (pp. 76, 77)

[Federico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fulminante, molto acuto (straordinarie le connessioni con “Nessuna passione spenta”). Questo correttore di bozze è il mio ideale di vita.
«L'Utopia significa semplicemente l'esattezza! Il comunismo significa togliere gli errata dalla storia. Dall'uomo. Correggere bozze.» Altre citazioni qui: http://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_S...

[Will Huntsberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A grey, outside time accounting of Italian Communists around the time the Berlin Wall came down. Read it for the exchange between the Profesore and the Priest as they walk around town at night. Incredible monologues.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Steiner, an eminent critic whose fictions include "Anno Domini" and The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H., has called his fiction "allegories for argument" or "scripts for thought." In "Proofs" he centers his story on an Italian proofreader so devoted to his craft that "if the winds blew a piece" of wastepaper "towards his feet, he would pick it up, smooth it, read closely and make any correction needed." Then: "He would deposit it in the garbage receptacle, feeling obscurely rewarded and saddened. Any witness to this rite would have thought him deranged." But there are signs of problems with his eyes, pains, and he goes to an opthamologist: "Had you come to me in good time, it would have been worth operating on the left eye. To remove those cataracts. To implant a lens. As matters stand now . . ."

The proofreader is in a Marxist study group, but each evening he sees the news of the crumbling of the Communist edifice throughout Eastern Europe and Russia - the doubts begin. Into the story is added an eloquent debate that the proofreader carries on with Carlo, a priest and friend from his study group, over the relative merits of Communism, capitalism and Christianity. In this discussion neither side seems to fare well but the proofreader, in spite of the news and debate, will not give up his belief in Marxism. This suggests that the blindness is two-fold -- a Dante-esque prescription for a man who devoted his life to getting texts right. In a fiction written with as meticulous and spare a style as the protagonist proofreader himself exhibits we have a thoroughly Steineresque commentary on the twentieth century, the power of belief and the nature of the humane.

[Correzionebozze Punto it · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un momento di disimpegno per mettervi a parte di una nota citazione da Il correttore di George Steiner, uno di quei libri che il correttore di bozze ha acquistato per curiosità, letto per gusto e conservato sulla propria mensola per vezzo.
«È un volantino. Per una vendita all’incanto di attrezzi agricoli usati e sacchi di concime! Avrà luogo al consorzio di San Maurizio – Dio sa dov’è quel buco – martedì prossimo. Cento copie. Che verranno affisse sulla porta del cesso esterno di qualche fattoria o buttate nel fosso più vicino. E lei si preoccupa per un accento!»
«Disperatamente. Sa cosa insegna la Cabala? Che tutto il male, tutte le sofferenze dell’umanità provengono dallo sbaglio di uno scrivano pigro o incompetente che sentì male, o trascrisse erroneamente, un’unica lettera, un’unica e sola lettera nel Testo Sacro. Ogni orrore successivo ci è pervenuto tramite e a causa di quell’unico erratum. Non lo sapeva, vero? [...] È proprio qui che conta, più che mai in passato. Agire diversamente è segno del più profondo disprezzo. Disprezzo per quelli che non si possono permettere di sfogliare un’edizione di lusso, che non vedranno mai un foglio di carta di qualità o dei caratteri artigianali. Disprezzo per quelli cui Dio, sì, Dio!, ha concesso il diritto di avere un volantino senza pecche, anche per una svendita di concime! È proprio per quelli che vivono in qualche sperduto buco di campagna, nei bassifondi, che dovremmo produrre il lavoro migliore. Perché qualche scintilla di perfezione penetri nelle loro vite sconsolate. Non capisce quanto disprezzo ci sia in un accento sbagliato o in un trattino fuori posto? Come se lei sputasse su un altro essere umano.»

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[Paolo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leggi la recensione qui: https://sfoglialibri.wordpress.com/20...