In the historic tradition of calendar stories and calendar illustrations, author and film director Alexander Kluge and celebrated visual artist Gerhard Richter have composed "December", a collection of thirty-nine stories and thirty-nine snow-swept photographs for the darkest month of the year. In stories drawn from modern history and the contemporary moment, from mythology, and even from meteorology, Kluge toys as readily with time and space as he does with his characters. In the narrative entry for December 1931, Adolf Hitler avoids a car crash by inches. In another, we relive Greek financial crises. There are stories where time accelerates, and others in which it seems to slow to the pace of falling snow. In Kluge's work, power seems only to erode and decay, never grow, and circumstances always seem to elude human control.
"More than a few of Kluge's many books are essential, brilliant achievements. None are without great interest." (Susan Sontag) "Alexander Kluge, that most enlightened of writers." (W. G. Sebald) "Alexander Kluge's genius is for exposing those little interruptions, those moments that escape totalizing systems, whether National Socialist or Stalinist." (Ben Lerner, Artforum)"
Title: December
Subtitle:
Contributors:
By (author)
Gerhard Richter
;
By (author)
Alexander Kluge
;
Translated by
Martin Chalmers
ISBN 13: 9780857420350
ISBN 10: 0857420356
Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
Imprint: Seagull Books London Ltd
Publication Date: 8/06/2012
Place of Publication:
Greenford,
United Kingdom
Edition:
BIC Subjects:
General & literary fiction
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction
Format: Hardback
Pages: 130
Height: 197mm
Width: 140mm
Thickness: 18mm
Weight: 438g