May 30, 7:30 pm
The inaugural meeting for New Holland’s literary club will be dedicated to Putovoditel’ po N (Guidebook for N), by Alexander Skidan. First published in 1996 in the literary magazine Commentary, the novel explores the particular madness of Friedrich Nietzsche, the deconstruction of his consciousness, as illustrated in his “deconstruction of the text.” Putovoditel’ po N consists of “alien” phrases, appropriated from the novels of Nietzsche’s contemporaries (Rilke, Thomas Mann, Proust) as well as the Russian classics (Dostoevsky, Bunin, Nabokov.) The author of the work, Alexander Skidan, will be present to read excerpts from the novel, and also comment on his technique of collage and appropriation.
Alexander Skidan is a poet, fiction writer and translator, who remains one of the most important representatives of the contemporary literary scene in St Petersburg. Among his books are Rasstorzhenie (Dissolution), Summa poetiki (Sum of Poetics) and Krasnoe smeshchenie (Red Shifting), for which he won the Andrey Bely Prize for Poetry in 2006. Last year Skidan published a selection of poems, Membra disjecta.
Admission is free of charge. The number of participants is limited. Please register in advance.
