The Confessions of Joseph Baisz [Paperback]

Dan Jacobson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

Josef Baisz is a remarkable creation. Throughout his life - whether soldier, scholar, husband, murderer, kidnapper or traitor - he is perpetually driven by one thing - the desire to destroy. A man of peculiar genius, this desire spurs him on to 'greater' things on course to his ultimate, and inevitable, denouement. In Josef Baisz, we see Judas reborn

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dan Jacobson was born in Johannesburg to Jewish Lithuanian parents. He has worked as a teacher in London, a journalist in South Africa and has also spent some time on a kibbutz in Israel. He moved to England in 1958 where he pursued an academic career, starting as a lecturer at University College London and becoming Emeritus Professor in 1994. He has also held the positions of vice-chairman of the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain (74-76) and Fellow of the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University in 1981. As a Jew, he has an interest in Old Testament history and many of his books take on Biblical themes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: House of Stratus Ltd (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184232134X
• ISBN-13: 978-1842321348
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,438,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars The most evil of evil doers Joseph Baisz, March 30, 2005

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Confessions of Joseph Baisz (Paperback)

Have you ever carried a book around from place to place and neglected to read it? My first edition copy of THE CONFESSIONS OF JOSEPH BAISZ has been such a companion since 1978 but having started it a night ago, read it through in two sittings. If it is the case that trust is the only way in which a society can function, then Joseph Baisz the character is a pre-eminent example of an individual who can, like a cancer destroys a body, destroy society. And if it is the case that Stalin and Hitler, for example, could only have arisen because too many persons sought individual advancement through betraying their relatives, their friends, their neighbours, then the novel CONFESSIONS OF JOSEPH BAISZ is a fascinating case study of the mind of one of those individuals. And it is those little betrayals that can lead to the big ones. Although the parallels with other evil characters are alluded to such as RICHARD 111 and his ability to kill a man then woo and win his wife and relish doing it, Joseph Baisz is more akin to the murderers engage by RICHARD 111 to kill Gloucester - except that Joseph too gets pleasures from his many victories Like RICHARD but is unable to let go relationships with his victims.
Set in a totalitarian state there are no McDonald's arches visible in this novel and the landscape matches the mind of Joseph, an ordinary mind, but one that has a greater desire for Schadenfreude than most. The tone is comic, black but comic, where treachery can lead to love (p.70) where kidnapping children is the end result of fostering their trust (p.117) where the exquisite denoument is to betray one's closest kin, one's sister, whilst ON PARADE. The novel also contains one of the most potent paragraphs I've read about the nature of a gun - "....its ever open mouth, rounded in an expression of imbecile willingness. Overhanging the butt, like the back of a tiny cranium, was the curve of metal that contained the firing mec hanism: the only brain it had, capable of performing just one trick." p. 158 A measure or extension of the nature of those who use the things the author seems to suggest. In all, an apparently neglected novel well worth reading.