A Short Introduction to Anneliese - (Five Strange Languages) by James Elkins (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A Short Introduction to Anneliese is the second volume in author James Elkins' multi-volume mega-novel Five Strange Languages being published by Unnamed Press, all of which trace the final year of Samuel Emmer's life before he disappears.

When Samuel Emmer meets unemployed biologist Anneliese Glur for dinner during his stopover in Frankfurt, he has no notion of what to expect. Anneliese is an old friend and former colleague of his boss, and he agrees to dinner for no other reason than he has nothing better to do. As it turns out, Anneliese is a torrent-of observations; digressions; theories, hypotheses and resentments. She complains about her niece, who lives with her and her brother Paul (also, quietly, at dinner), and their uncle Hans, whose dementia haunts Anneliese's concerns about the state of her own mind. More crucially, she deconstructs the "awfulness" of language, calling it an ill-fitting suit, and challenges the validity of memory.

Most surprising is what Samuel comes to realize by the end of this strange dinner: that the insufferable but deeply compelling Anneliese is conducting a kind of interview with him-the purposes of which are not entirely clear. A month later, back home in Guelph, Samuel finds himself on the phone with Anneliese, listening to her once again.

Her monologues are wild, seemingly endless, often laugh-out funny, occasionally repellent; but nothing is random, for Anneliese Glur is systematically introducing Samual not just to her work, but to a breakdown in her mind for which she has identified thirteen distinct problems in her thinking. In short, she is no longer sure that she is sane, and she needs Samuel to read her book - a comprehensive theory of the essence of life, that transcends category or definition - to see if it makes sense. But first, through a series of long conversations, she introduces him to the world of her mind.

A Short Introduction to Anneliese has notes, which comprise a separate narrative at the end of the novel, written by Samuel in extreme old age (whom readers will recognize from Weak in Comparison to Dreams). This Samuel scarcely remembers Anneliese. Instead her way of talking sounds to him like music. Her startling ideas have evaporated, leaving only melodies.

Review Quotes

"Weak in Comparison to Dreams offers a profusion of visual and philosophical imagination... A deeply unconventional debut, it's an invitation into a teeming imagination. He has managed to suffuse this book with an unsettling essence...If Elkins weren't such a prolific and visible figure in the field of art history, one might read this novel, see these charts and imagine him a monomaniac in a cellar. As it is, he has managed to suffuse this book with an unsettling essence, partly borrowed from its dreams and partly from its hypnotic interest in humans and other animals." --John Williams, Washington Post

"Weak in Comparison to Dreams is an experimental feast, an illuminated palimpsest, a labour of intellectual love. It will push and pull and ask you, just how do you think you read?" --Maria Fusco, author of History of the Present

"Weak in Comparison to Dreams is a novel that will haunt its readers even as it enchants. An astonishing book; mesmerizing, dreamlike, phantastic, grimly real. James Elkins has written a book of shimmering depth. His remarkable, expansive, and materializing imagination at once produces a toppling sense of vertigo and a deep pleasure that so many connections, carelessly unseen, exist all around us. Never before have I felt such empathy for a diagram, nor could I have anticipated such fascination with the compelling descriptions (and depictions) of musical compositions about pain and suffering." --Pippa Skotnes, author of Lamb of God and The Book of Iterations

"Erudite and immensely entertaining, Weak in Comparison to Dreams takes the novel where it has never gone before. James Elkins probes what it means to be human. He has written a powerful, sometimes angry, and, yes, wise book. I was hooked from the first page." --Terry Pitts, Vertigo

"Every now and again, a book presents a new type of narrative that alters the way we see literature. James Elkins's Weak in Comparison to Dreams... surprises as much as it intrigues." --Kimberly Brooks, artist and author of The New Oil Painting

"Experimental in the best sense of the word..." --Eva Schuermann, author of Seeing as Practice: Philosophical Investigations into the Relation Between Sight and Insight