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Private Novelist: Two Wildly Funny Novellas – A Fake Translation Homage to Israeli Literary Absurdism
From the brilliant and incisive author of Mislaid—“a writer of extraordinary talent and range” (Jonathan Franzen) whose “capacity for inventions is immense” (BookForum)—comes a new collection of her earliest work: two wildly funny novellas (Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats and European Story for Avner Shats) available in one compact volume
Years ago, Nell Zink resolved to write a book for her friend, the Israeli novelist Avner Shats, that would mirror his remarkable style. Unable to read his Hebrew, she was forced to start from scratch. Now, this tongue-in-cheek homage is available to Nell’s growing readership for the first time, accompanied by a second dazzling and imaginative work that breathes—at Shats’s request—the perfumed air of the Old Europe and stars a figure very much like Shats.
Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink’s faux-translation of Shats’s 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia (“Sailing Towards the Sunset”). It flows with a narrative spin only the singular Zink could pull off—including both authentic and fictional versions of characters from Shats’s life and work such as the author herself.
A fast-moving portrait of expat artists, authors, and academics on fellowships at the Villa Romana in Florence, European Story for Avner Shats centers on a trio of three indelible characters: an Israeli writer vaguely reminiscent of Shats, a German specialist in ancient lint, and a beautiful and fraudulent Russian performance artist.
Demonstrating the hallmarks of Zink’s unique talent, Private Novelist is an intimate look into this acclaimed novelist’s early work that will please her coterie of admirers and further burnish her lustrous reputation.
Years ago, Nell Zink resolved to write a book for her friend, the Israeli novelist Avner Shats, that would mirror his remarkable style. Unable to read his Hebrew, she was forced to start from scratch. Now, this tongue-in-cheek homage is available to Nell’s growing readership for the first time, accompanied by a second dazzling and imaginative work that breathes—at Shats’s request—the perfumed air of the Old Europe and stars a figure very much like Shats.
Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats is Zink’s faux-translation of Shats’s 1998 novel Lashut El Hashkia (“Sailing Towards the Sunset”). It flows with a narrative spin only the singular Zink could pull off—including both authentic and fictional versions of characters from Shats’s life and work such as the author herself.
A fast-moving portrait of expat artists, authors, and academics on fellowships at the Villa Romana in Florence, European Story for Avner Shats centers on a trio of three indelible characters: an Israeli writer vaguely reminiscent of Shats, a German specialist in ancient lint, and a beautiful and fraudulent Russian performance artist.
Demonstrating the hallmarks of Zink’s unique talent, Private Novelist is an intimate look into this acclaimed novelist’s early work that will please her coterie of admirers and further burnish her lustrous reputation.
- GenresFictionLiteratureNovels
336 pages, Paperback
First published October 4, 2016
About the author
Nell Zink
13 books426 followersNell Zink was raised in rural Virginia, a setting she draws on in her second novel, Mislaid. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary. In 1993, while living in West Philadelphia, Zink founded a zine called Animal Review, which ran until 1997.
Zink has worked as a secretary at Colgate-Palmolive and as a technical writer in Tel Aviv. She moved to Germany in May 2000, completing a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen. Zink has been married twice, to US citizen Benjamin Alexander Burck and to Israeli composer and poet Zohar Eitan.
After 15 years writing fiction exclusively for a single pen pal, the Israeli postmodernist Avner Shats, Zink caught the attention of Jonathan Franzen. The two writers began a correspondence.
In early 2012, Zink sent Franzen her collected manuscripts. Franzen tried unsuccessfully to interest publishers in her 1998 novel. It was Franzen’s agent who ultimately negotiated a six-figure publishing deal for Zink’s Mislaid, a novel she has described as “agent bait”.
ZInk's debut, The Wallcreeper, was published by Dorothy, a publishing project in the US in 2014 and named one of 100 Notable Books of 2014 by The New York Times. Zink lives in Bad Belzig, Germany.
Zink has worked as a secretary at Colgate-Palmolive and as a technical writer in Tel Aviv. She moved to Germany in May 2000, completing a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen. Zink has been married twice, to US citizen Benjamin Alexander Burck and to Israeli composer and poet Zohar Eitan.
After 15 years writing fiction exclusively for a single pen pal, the Israeli postmodernist Avner Shats, Zink caught the attention of Jonathan Franzen. The two writers began a correspondence.
In early 2012, Zink sent Franzen her collected manuscripts. Franzen tried unsuccessfully to interest publishers in her 1998 novel. It was Franzen’s agent who ultimately negotiated a six-figure publishing deal for Zink’s Mislaid, a novel she has described as “agent bait”.
ZInk's debut, The Wallcreeper, was published by Dorothy, a publishing project in the US in 2014 and named one of 100 Notable Books of 2014 by The New York Times. Zink lives in Bad Belzig, Germany.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 22, 2017
This is a truly strange book, and it should be read in the same spirit that you might browse through a collection of old fairy tales, badly translated and with a lot of missing pages. Not that it’s particularly fey or sentimental. It’s fanciful, and disjointed, and sometimes witty. And occasionally it’s a bit tedious because you just can’t ride along on every tangent than the author takes.
The author makes herself one of the characters, and her process in writing the book is part of the plot, if you could call it that. The beginning of the book is the most disjointed part, and the author breaks away frequently to let us know her literary opinions. At one point, she has a little diatribe towards people who are horrified at the thought of throwing out books. Towards the end, there’s a little bit more continuity when it comes to characters, although I still found them bewilderingly interchangeable.
Let me give you a little taste of what goes on in these pages. There’s a silkie, a woman who is half-seal. There’s a guy who sculpts in cheese, and a woman who steals his cheese for a performance piece. There’s an art historian who specializes in lint. There’s a lurking submarine which seems to be organic and which shoots missiles filled with semen, and it’s covered with pornographic dolphin graffiti. There’s a ship-in-a-bottle convention in which people dress up as sea captains. There’s a teddy bear, traumatized because its owner had sex with it as a nine-year-old boy, which has come to life because the words “Moshe Dayan” were attached to its body, and is now dealing with its trauma. All this mostly happens in Tel Aviv and New York, although all the characters get around quite a lot.
There are occasionally clever observations: “Amy smiled. Maybe it was because she liked Ingo. Maybe it was because any woman, generally speaking, will flirt with anyone at all, regardless, just for the feeling of power she’s going to have later when she’s making fun of him for misunderstanding her.”
And yes, it’s funny at times. After a character gives a particularly florid speech, the next paragraph goes like this. “With that, he opened his briefcase and began preparing to teach the next day’s music analysis class, pausing only to extort a promise that he will be assigned no more lines of dialogue, especially ones like those above, from now until the end of the novel.”
The author makes herself one of the characters, and her process in writing the book is part of the plot, if you could call it that. The beginning of the book is the most disjointed part, and the author breaks away frequently to let us know her literary opinions. At one point, she has a little diatribe towards people who are horrified at the thought of throwing out books. Towards the end, there’s a little bit more continuity when it comes to characters, although I still found them bewilderingly interchangeable.
Let me give you a little taste of what goes on in these pages. There’s a silkie, a woman who is half-seal. There’s a guy who sculpts in cheese, and a woman who steals his cheese for a performance piece. There’s an art historian who specializes in lint. There’s a lurking submarine which seems to be organic and which shoots missiles filled with semen, and it’s covered with pornographic dolphin graffiti. There’s a ship-in-a-bottle convention in which people dress up as sea captains. There’s a teddy bear, traumatized because its owner had sex with it as a nine-year-old boy, which has come to life because the words “Moshe Dayan” were attached to its body, and is now dealing with its trauma. All this mostly happens in Tel Aviv and New York, although all the characters get around quite a lot.
There are occasionally clever observations: “Amy smiled. Maybe it was because she liked Ingo. Maybe it was because any woman, generally speaking, will flirt with anyone at all, regardless, just for the feeling of power she’s going to have later when she’s making fun of him for misunderstanding her.”
And yes, it’s funny at times. After a character gives a particularly florid speech, the next paragraph goes like this. “With that, he opened his briefcase and began preparing to teach the next day’s music analysis class, pausing only to extort a promise that he will be assigned no more lines of dialogue, especially ones like those above, from now until the end of the novel.”
December 29, 2020
It's become increasingly clear to me that most of my concentrated reading over the years has been done in cafes, restaurants, and on public transit; I find that reading at home presents too many distractions. Over the past nine months, those options haven't been open to me, and so my reading has slowed to a crawl. If ever there was a book that demands momentum, it's this collection of two novellas.
This is my first excursion into Nell Zink's world of trick mirrors, where plot is strictly notional and themes and motifs are played like riffs by Ornette Coleman. My eye slipped so far off the ball that I was half way through "A European Story for Avner Shats" before I realized that it was a completely separate story, and none of the characters from the previous story were apt to put in an appearance.
Side note: I was taken with Zink's contention that Uncle Toby, Pickwick, and Daniel Deronda are the three most sympathetic characters from English literature; I would slip the Reverend Septimus Harding in front of those three.
This is my first excursion into Nell Zink's world of trick mirrors, where plot is strictly notional and themes and motifs are played like riffs by Ornette Coleman. My eye slipped so far off the ball that I was half way through "A European Story for Avner Shats" before I realized that it was a completely separate story, and none of the characters from the previous story were apt to put in an appearance.
Side note: I was taken with Zink's contention that Uncle Toby, Pickwick, and Daniel Deronda are the three most sympathetic characters from English literature; I would slip the Reverend Septimus Harding in front of those three.
Read
July 17, 2017no idea what the hell was going on, but liked it anyway
October 5, 2020
Some years ago, Avner Shats, a man “regarded as Israel's token postmodernist,” according to his Wikipedia page, received a series of daily emails, purporting to be chapters of his book, Sailing Towards the Sunset. This would be the beginning of a new stage in the literary career of his friend, Nell Zink. Why, one might ask oneself, upon learning this, is Israel said to feel the need (as a people? as a country?) to have a 'token postmodernist?' What is a 'token' in these postmodern times? Surely it is what you have when you want not to actually honor a group – postmodernists in this instance – but intend contrarily to ostentatiously dishonor it through the act tokenism. They (whoever “they” is or are) could have said, “Israel's representative postmodernist,” or even, “Israel's postmodernist.”
There are six reviews in Goodreads of Shats's 2016 short story collection whose title is rendered by google translate as White Men Die, or alternately, in the longest and most laudatory review of the six, as Dead White Men. This enthusiastic reviewer places Shats third among masters of the short story (gold and silver medals go to awarded to Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway). “The writer has collected anecdotes about characters who would otherwise be dull and madly forgotten and turned them into living and fluttering in an exciting and fascinating stardust glow,” we are told. Thank you, once again, Google Translate: you are the token postmodernist of AI's.
Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats – the one by Avner Shats, that is, as opposed to the one by Nell Zink -- has a back cover blurb (written, says Avner Shats, by Avner Shats) which says, “Is this a love story or a thriller? a cruise into the maze of Israeli culture or just a post-modernist game? an espionage story or an excuse for a magic journey to the Shetland Islands, a kingdom by the sea? 'Sailing towards the Sunset' evades definitions: it is at the same time funny and sad, cynical and emotional, nostalgic and skeptic, fantastic and realistic; a reading experience of a different kind.”
I await the English translation. Meanwhile, we've got this: Nell Zink's rendition of what the Avner Shats book might be but most likely is not, not to ignore or reject outright the possibility, farfetched as it may be, that with a few clever deductions and a lucky guess or two have resulted in Zink's novel being exactly what it purports to be. If I was Borges, and if this wasn't a real review, or if either or both of the books about which I am writing were non-existent, then surely it would be so. Meanwhile, noone knows: it's a Shroedinger's Cat sort of thing. Well, okay, Shats knows, and anyone capable of reading both English and Hebrew could find out, but that's hardly the point.
The point is that if we let N be the number of books that the collected authors of the world have written which I still haven't read, that if I learn down the road that I can subtract one from N, it doesn't matter much, as N is still quite large.
Zink's book was enjoyable regardless of its origins. There's a story within a story about the smallest city on a Russian railway and how it came to be; a surrealist science fiction “irrelevant interlude,” in which the narrator receives a diamond/viewfinder thing, and while delivering a thank-you note, rescues a lamb; and on page 191, a character says, “I think the Yankees' mistake was being too influenced by La Monte Young and Phil Niblock, or the CIA or whatever it was – they were thinking in terms of mind control on an organic level, when you can do the same thing using musical effects. Like, if you were in the fifth inning of a no-hitter on a full count, would you want to be hearing Penderecki's Tren Ofiarom Hiroszimy?” I really do hope that that's in Shats's book! The main “plot” such as it is, is maybe a love story or a thriller, about a silkie from the Shetland Islands, and an Israeli agent. There's also an organic submarine, and various passages about George Eliot, Kafka, and Robert Walser (Thank you, Nell Zink, for introducing me to Walser, by including a translation of "The Job Application," one of the funniest and most poignant things I've ever read -- which, regardless of the translator, seems mistranslated.) And then when that ends, there's a short story about some crazy European artists and an art historian at an awful artist's retreat, which was also pretty good.
There are six reviews in Goodreads of Shats's 2016 short story collection whose title is rendered by google translate as White Men Die, or alternately, in the longest and most laudatory review of the six, as Dead White Men. This enthusiastic reviewer places Shats third among masters of the short story (gold and silver medals go to awarded to Alice Munro and Ernest Hemingway). “The writer has collected anecdotes about characters who would otherwise be dull and madly forgotten and turned them into living and fluttering in an exciting and fascinating stardust glow,” we are told. Thank you, once again, Google Translate: you are the token postmodernist of AI's.
Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats – the one by Avner Shats, that is, as opposed to the one by Nell Zink -- has a back cover blurb (written, says Avner Shats, by Avner Shats) which says, “Is this a love story or a thriller? a cruise into the maze of Israeli culture or just a post-modernist game? an espionage story or an excuse for a magic journey to the Shetland Islands, a kingdom by the sea? 'Sailing towards the Sunset' evades definitions: it is at the same time funny and sad, cynical and emotional, nostalgic and skeptic, fantastic and realistic; a reading experience of a different kind.”
I await the English translation. Meanwhile, we've got this: Nell Zink's rendition of what the Avner Shats book might be but most likely is not, not to ignore or reject outright the possibility, farfetched as it may be, that with a few clever deductions and a lucky guess or two have resulted in Zink's novel being exactly what it purports to be. If I was Borges, and if this wasn't a real review, or if either or both of the books about which I am writing were non-existent, then surely it would be so. Meanwhile, noone knows: it's a Shroedinger's Cat sort of thing. Well, okay, Shats knows, and anyone capable of reading both English and Hebrew could find out, but that's hardly the point.
The point is that if we let N be the number of books that the collected authors of the world have written which I still haven't read, that if I learn down the road that I can subtract one from N, it doesn't matter much, as N is still quite large.
Zink's book was enjoyable regardless of its origins. There's a story within a story about the smallest city on a Russian railway and how it came to be; a surrealist science fiction “irrelevant interlude,” in which the narrator receives a diamond/viewfinder thing, and while delivering a thank-you note, rescues a lamb; and on page 191, a character says, “I think the Yankees' mistake was being too influenced by La Monte Young and Phil Niblock, or the CIA or whatever it was – they were thinking in terms of mind control on an organic level, when you can do the same thing using musical effects. Like, if you were in the fifth inning of a no-hitter on a full count, would you want to be hearing Penderecki's Tren Ofiarom Hiroszimy?” I really do hope that that's in Shats's book! The main “plot” such as it is, is maybe a love story or a thriller, about a silkie from the Shetland Islands, and an Israeli agent. There's also an organic submarine, and various passages about George Eliot, Kafka, and Robert Walser (Thank you, Nell Zink, for introducing me to Walser, by including a translation of "The Job Application," one of the funniest and most poignant things I've ever read -- which, regardless of the translator, seems mistranslated.) And then when that ends, there's a short story about some crazy European artists and an art historian at an awful artist's retreat, which was also pretty good.
Read
December 18, 2016Huge disappointment. I guess this is what happens when you love a novelist and they change things up. I see what she's done here and I felt it to be overly self-indulgent. For whom was this written? And why? I give this zero stars. Please go back to your edgy tales and leave this highbrow bullshit to those who care.
August 7, 2018
this was crap. not even postmodern crap, which i would then appreciate. just crap. nonsense that does not even take itself seriously and does not engage.
weird how i read such good reviews about the author and no one mentioned this book is a flop. so here, i say it, a flop.
weird how i read such good reviews about the author and no one mentioned this book is a flop. so here, i say it, a flop.
Read
December 15, 2016wtfdidijustread?! this was amazing.
April 21, 2018
Zink's words and her sentences make this book worth reading. The plot is goofy, but I don't care. Her sentences make it worth reading.
July 20, 2018
Zionist
January 15, 2025
“Many people think it is wrong to throw books in the trash. They think because they happen to love some books, they should love all others too. Their relation to books, regardless of their content, is one of respectful stewardship buoyed by paranoia, […] the people who give all their worst books, which they would not read again, to charity.” Nell Zink’s Private Novelist brings together two novellas, first written in 1998 + 2005 respectively, in an exercise of literary mischief, having fun with craft in original ways. The first novella, ‘Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats’, is a kind of metafictional / critical fiction attempt to translate the titular novel by Zink’s friend Avner Shats, which weaves in elements of a number of Zink’s previously unpublished short stories, and provides commentary not only on the text in question but also on Daniel Deronda, The Pickwick Papers, Pamela (“an embarrassment, a bore”), Gravity’s Rainbow (which Zink feels she “should mention” but won’t), Tristram Shandy, Moby-Dick and more. Zink’s style frequently puts me in mind of Chris Kraus: from its beginning (“It having become apparent that I should write a novel, my next concern became which novel I should write.”) to its focus at times on such ideas as the Anxiety of Influence, German ontological theories and Socratic philosophy, it blends high-culture concerns with an irreverent style of writing. The second novella, ‘European Story for Avner Shats’, features someone critiquing the craft: “If you mean what is more horrible, nature or naturalism, then clearly fiction is worse. It shows not only the shortcomings of life itself, but also the depravity of the human mind.” This sense of playful disregard for the status quo is what makes Zink so refreshing.
February 1, 2022
The book is a combination of two unrelated novellas: the first involves the author herself writing an English version of "Sailing Toward the Sunset" by Israeli author Avner Shats, based not on the Hebrew original but on rumors and hearsay. The author Shats is real, but the book of his in question is not. The second novella is about a trio of individuals from various European backgrounds and professions, all living together for a time and eventually becoming entangled in a cache of fine art that has been hidden for decades. Zink is a brilliant if often times outlandish writer. The most entertaining portions of the book were not about the aforementioned stories themselves but the self-referential sections where she talks about herself and Shats. There is also no transition between her fictional imaginings and the nonfiction portions. Her two previous novels that I read were much more coherent, though I imagine it was her intention to be even more experimental with this piece. Postmodern, witty, it reads like Pynchon on psychedelics – as if he weren’t zany enough.
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
October 21, 2024
Another disaster by Nell Zink, read for my reading group-- could barely get through this one, like the others. Not even sure what I'm reading here, though she can certainly claim it is 'satire' when she has no idea how to write a book.
Zink proves that if you are connected to a famous white man like Franzen and contact him incessantly to promote your books, you need not actually write a book, ever edit it, or do as much as lift a finger in the commission of actual work.
The risks of being a coddled, privileged American white feminist are obvious here: not a bit of quality, and apparently, not as much as one finger lifted.
If these weren't assigned for our writing group, I would never read them.
No need to buy or read.
Zink proves that if you are connected to a famous white man like Franzen and contact him incessantly to promote your books, you need not actually write a book, ever edit it, or do as much as lift a finger in the commission of actual work.
The risks of being a coddled, privileged American white feminist are obvious here: not a bit of quality, and apparently, not as much as one finger lifted.
If these weren't assigned for our writing group, I would never read them.
No need to buy or read.
October 18, 2023
This is my kind of weird!!! When I first started reading this I did not think I was going to like it, but once I embraced Nell Zink's writing process and just went with it I was fully on board. This is a super unique read and definitely not one everyone will enjoy. Personally, I loved the main story "Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avnar Shats" as well as the author's deviations from it. I also really enjoyed "European Story for Avner Shats" although certain parts of it could have been left out imo. Also, in general, there were parts where the story dragged a bit, but overall I didn't mind.
November 24, 2018
I'm so glad I picked this up at the Harvard Bookstore's warehouse sale. Zink is a smart, funny and wildly imaginative writer whose precocity will remind you of Mark Leyner in a good way. Anyone like me with a weakness for absurdism and postmodern narrative gimmicks will enjoy the cheese out of this.
November 5, 2016
I won a copy of Private Novelist from a Goodreads Giveaway.
I have never read anything by Ms. Zink before and I have no doubt she writes well but I just didn't get this. It just wasn't for me.
I have never read anything by Ms. Zink before and I have no doubt she writes well but I just didn't get this. It just wasn't for me.
February 6, 2018
I've read a lot of Zink's books (all?) and even though I never love them I'm always glad I gave them a shot.
April 30, 2023
Loved "Mislaid" with all my heart, but could't get into this one....
November 19, 2023
I think I read this too disjointedly, which made the book's disjointedness even more acute. It was fun and playful and different, but it didn't hook me.
June 25, 2026
The author had a lot more fun as a writer with this than I did as a reader.
May 24, 2018
[DNF at 22%]
I don't think this is poorly written, I just didn't get it. There must be a bunch of reference points that went right over my head, and it quickly became a confusing slog.
I don't think this is poorly written, I just didn't get it. There must be a bunch of reference points that went right over my head, and it quickly became a confusing slog.
April 8, 2020
"People today are often heard to remark that I am articulate. Why should they be made to suspect that my verbal skill, such as it is, originated not in a habit of speaking, but in a lifetime spent preparing a single essay (any length, as long as it might hold the wandering attention of the listener from start to finish) on the subject, 'Why are you crying?'"
Unable to recommend; unable to resist buying a physical copy to keep forever.
____________
4.5 rounded up to 5
Unable to recommend; unable to resist buying a physical copy to keep forever.
____________
4.5 rounded up to 5
September 22, 2016
I fell in love with Nell Zink’s writing when I read this short story in Harper’s Magazine. Read it, it is a work of wonder, rich in humor and humanity by a writer who is deeply in love with language. I read the novel Mislaid from which it was excerpted. So of course, when I saw that Private Novelist was soon to be published, I was eager to read it as well.
So what is Private Novelist? It is usually described as a postmodern novel. It is certainly very self-referential. Nell Zink is both author and character, her character being the author Nell Zink who is writing a novel via e-mail, a translation of the Hebraic book Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats. Her translation is not impinged by her lack of Hebrew or incapacity to read the book she is translating. So you get the idea.
In some ways, Private Novelist is a tour de farce, nonsensical and hilarious, an utterly madcap writing experiment gone wryly right. Or wrong if you get hung up in understanding all the intricacies of the plot. It’s not really the plot that matters, it’s the writing. At that Zink excels. Chapter Seventeen features a story within the story, written by one of the novel’s characters about a man who goes to a remote village in Siberia where the train comes once every six months. He is waiting for the next train, through the long winter. Spring comes, “Then, in the end, rain fell, the poppies opened their orange mouths, the sky took on a faint glow like dawn, and from an oblique angle, if one lay on the ground, the steppes appeared green. Soon I saw a weasel hunting for mice. Then the train came in a slow smear of colored smoke.”
“The poppies opened their orange mouths.” It is that kind of excellence that brings me to a stop, to close my eyes and visualize the scene and to admire the brilliance of the metaphor. That is why I like Nell Zink. Also, she cracks me up.
I have mixed emotions about Private Novelist. It was written before her other published work. There might be a reason it was not published before she was an international awarded and best-selling author. It is chaotic and incredibly self-referential, even self-indulgent. Zink has read a lot of literature and she knows a lot of stuff and makes sure we know she knows it. She demonstrates she can write the cant of the literati with the best of them, though I snorted at “the advanced state of mental decomposition that later became known as deconstruction.”
Private Novelist feels like what it is, an inside joke for Zink and her friends, a shared writing experiment that was fun and worthy and far more meaningful to those involved than readers like me. Nonetheless, it is worth reading. It is entertaining and funny. There’s a giant submarine that shoots missiles filled with semen, reductionist and hysterical at the same time. If you are willing to suspend not just your disbelief, but your adherence to reality and logic, you will enjoy this book. If a book has to make sense, then run away quickly so that missile does not catch you.
Private Novelist will be released October 4th. I was provided an advance e-galley by the publisher through Edelweiss.
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpres...
So what is Private Novelist? It is usually described as a postmodern novel. It is certainly very self-referential. Nell Zink is both author and character, her character being the author Nell Zink who is writing a novel via e-mail, a translation of the Hebraic book Sailing Toward the Sunset by Avner Shats. Her translation is not impinged by her lack of Hebrew or incapacity to read the book she is translating. So you get the idea.
In some ways, Private Novelist is a tour de farce, nonsensical and hilarious, an utterly madcap writing experiment gone wryly right. Or wrong if you get hung up in understanding all the intricacies of the plot. It’s not really the plot that matters, it’s the writing. At that Zink excels. Chapter Seventeen features a story within the story, written by one of the novel’s characters about a man who goes to a remote village in Siberia where the train comes once every six months. He is waiting for the next train, through the long winter. Spring comes, “Then, in the end, rain fell, the poppies opened their orange mouths, the sky took on a faint glow like dawn, and from an oblique angle, if one lay on the ground, the steppes appeared green. Soon I saw a weasel hunting for mice. Then the train came in a slow smear of colored smoke.”
“The poppies opened their orange mouths.” It is that kind of excellence that brings me to a stop, to close my eyes and visualize the scene and to admire the brilliance of the metaphor. That is why I like Nell Zink. Also, she cracks me up.
I have mixed emotions about Private Novelist. It was written before her other published work. There might be a reason it was not published before she was an international awarded and best-selling author. It is chaotic and incredibly self-referential, even self-indulgent. Zink has read a lot of literature and she knows a lot of stuff and makes sure we know she knows it. She demonstrates she can write the cant of the literati with the best of them, though I snorted at “the advanced state of mental decomposition that later became known as deconstruction.”
Private Novelist feels like what it is, an inside joke for Zink and her friends, a shared writing experiment that was fun and worthy and far more meaningful to those involved than readers like me. Nonetheless, it is worth reading. It is entertaining and funny. There’s a giant submarine that shoots missiles filled with semen, reductionist and hysterical at the same time. If you are willing to suspend not just your disbelief, but your adherence to reality and logic, you will enjoy this book. If a book has to make sense, then run away quickly so that missile does not catch you.
Private Novelist will be released October 4th. I was provided an advance e-galley by the publisher through Edelweiss.
http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpres...
February 6, 2017
I admire Nell Zink's intellect, wit, playful innovation, but none of those are enough to sustain my interest over the length of a novel. It's not her fault, I'm just not made for these postmodern times. I bet she's fun to hang out with at parties, though.
October 24, 2016
There are two books in this one, the first, Sailing toward the Sunset by Avner Shats, I would give a 4. Nell Zink is a very clever person, sometimes her cleverness gets in the way of writing, but I do know why people love her. The second, a novella called European Story for Avner Shats, I liked less, so overall I give this book a 3.6. Her writing is growing on me, but sometimes it is hard to read.
December 22, 2016
These stories are wacky, and Zink doesn't take them seriously—but it's not about the stories or plots here. It is about the unexpected turns of phrase, and the amusing originality she has cooked up, which makes for thoroughly entertaining reading throughout. One of the few authors who has me cracking up out loud.
July 11, 2016
Postmodern high jinks from a smart, funny writer who clearly has a full head of literary knowledge. Prepare to question everything you read.
October 31, 2016
After reading this and Mislaid, beginning to think that Nell Zink was a one pump chump (the pump being the Wallcreeper)
August 22, 2019
In a similar vein to The Wallcreeper but not as fully formed. But still, lots of fun.
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