THE AGONY OF FLIES: NOTES AND NOTATIONS: THE BILINGUAL EDITION

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 233 pages. Retrospective collection of notes, fragments, and aphorisms. One of Elias Canetti's finest achievements. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents, in a Bilingual Edition format, Elias Canetti's "Die Fliegenpein: Aufzeichnungen" in a felicitous English translation as "The Agony of Flies: Notes And Notations". German original on the left-hand page, English translation en face. A dazzling selection of "jottings", that is, thinking-as-living, living-as-thinking, from a lifetime spent doing so. Brilliant, unsurpassed, and humane aphoristic writing that questions and upends accepted wisdom, and as such, is more valuable than almost all other writers' fully articulated essays and books. Not just a working journal but a full-fledged literary genre in Canetti's (and Kafka's) hands, he published five of them in all, spanning his entire adult life. As an aphorist, that is to say, as a writer who wanted to distill his Thought and have the Last Word on a particular subject, Elias Canetti had very few rivals in the Modern Era, excepting perhaps his great predecessors in Nietzsche and Kafka and near-coevals in Walter Benjamin, E. M. Cioran, and Theodor Adorno. "My stubborn resistance to the Bible, which kept me away from it for decades, has to do with the fact that I never wanted to submit to my origin. I did not wish to lead a spiritual life which had been previouly determined. I did not want a preordained spiritual life" (Elias Canetti). An absolute "must-have" title for Elias Canetti collectors. This title is a great collection. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American/Bilingual) still available online and is in especially condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent editions, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ELIAS CANETTI TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374102546.