Nietzsche's Kisses

Nietzsche's Kisses
Author Lance Olsen
Country United States
Language English
Genre Postmodern novel, Historiographic metafiction
Publisher FC2
Publication date
 February 28, 2006
Pages 244
ISBN 1573661279

Nietzsche's Kisses is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published in 2006 by Fiction Collective Two. It is a work of historiographic metafiction.[1]

Plot

Nietzsche's Kisses is the narrative of Friedrich Nietzsche's last mad night on earth. Locked in a small room on the top floor of what would become The Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, one of the most radical and influential of nineteenth-century German philosophers hovers between dream and wakefulness, memory and hallucination, the first person, second, and third, past and present, reliving his brief love affair with feminist Lou Andreas-Salomé, his stormy association with Richard Wagner, and his conflicted relationship with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his radically anti-Semitic sister.

Narrative structure

The novel is written in narrative triads: a first-person section (comprising the real-time of Nietzsche's last few hours alive), a second-person section (comprising hallucinations experienced by Nietzsche), and a third-person section (comprising Nietzsche's attempt to narrativize his own life; that triadic pattern is repeated throughout the novel.

Reception

In an in-depth critical article, Electronic Book Review called Olsen's novel "quite remarkable,"[2] while Publishers Weekly said Olsen is a "fine and daring writer, equal to the material."[3]

References

  1. ↑ To hear Olsen discuss his perspective on Nietzsche's Kisses, the biographical novel, and historiographic metafiction with Jay Parini and Bruce Duffy, see the discussion at http://ias.umn.edu/2012/09/20/duffy-parini-olsen-biographies/%5Bpermanent+dead+link%5D
  2. ↑ "The Eternal Hourglass of Existence". Electronic Book Review. 10 October 2006. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
  3. ↑ "Nietzsche's Kisses". Publishers Weekly. 2 March 2006. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.