THE STREET OF CROCODILES - BRUNO SCHULZ

Short little number I picked up a the local bookstore really cheap. I’d heard of this book before, Schulz is supposed to be something of Kafka, but I’d never picked it up. Schulz ended up with one of the worst bits of birth-luck possible, being born in early 20th century Poland, and he did not survive WWII. This book is certainly Kafka-esq in some sense, it is bizarre and full of strange, inscrutable characters however, I did not feel the dread and despair that I associate with Kafka’s depictions of modern life. Instead, I got more Márquez, where strangeness and fantasy bloom out of a regular world. Not necessarily positive or negative strangeness, but more like metaphors that you can’t quite work all the way out. The book focuses on a Polish (tho, I think the town that this book is based on is now in Ukraine) family with an insane father. While the family seeks to lead a normal life as merchants, the father is spiraling off collecting rare eggs, and then rare-birds, talking about how mannequins are real, quasi-transforming into a cockroach. There is a nice balance to this book, which could easily just be a collection of weird things the father did, which is achieved by having the adolescent male narrator be drowning in desire and horniness. A very beautifully written, florid book with all sorts of wonderful images and scenes. Obviously it’s a bit of an understatement to resent the Nazi for depriving us of his future work but damn, the man nailed down a vibe and who knows what he could have done if he’d had the time to really flesh it out.