The Crab Nebula (Paperback)

by Eric Chevillard (Author), Jordan Stump (Translator), Eleanor Hardin (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Fans of post-modern fiction will love Éric Chevillard's new novel, The Crab Nebula, where paradox piles on top of non sequiturs and time runs sideways until all trace of coherence is lost in the flood of words and images. Readers who enjoy linguistic acrobatics and are comfortable amid chaos will find The Crab Nebula an entertaining read. However, those who prefer more traditional fare should keep looking.

From Library Journal
In this first translation of his work into English, the French novelist Chevillard attempts to pen the "biography" of Crab, a loser, a Great Man, a maimed artist, a nobody, but gives up because the author discovers that "Crab had been born dead." Crab is knocking against the human condition. He hopes to "learn his true nature" by biting the nails of his left hand when he feels apprehensive and the nails of his right hand when he feels impatient, so that in the evening "the condition of his two hands will tell him who he really is." Crab "wants nothing so much as the chance to enter the service of a passion, an idea." The details of his sad life touch the reader in all their familiar, human futility. Chevillard seems to delight in undercutting his Crab, physically and emotionally, like a cat with his prey, like God with man. The American reader, while appreciating the author's ability to render in crisp, witty language the absurdities of existence, is not entirely engaged by the work. Nimbly translated, this novel will appeal to comparative literature collections.?Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (February 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803263708
• ISBN-13: 978-0803263703
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,854,747 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The next testament for the clinically insane., April 7, 1997

By A Customer

Reading this book is like having a disjointed series of intellectual dreams after eating too much spicy chili before bed. What's real one minute, or one page, is ethereal the next. Like reading Nostrodamus, the messages are sometimes obscured by the text, but there are so many messages to be found that it doesn't matter. Basically, this book makes one laugh, think, and rub the chin in joyous confusion. If Kafka had Vonnegut's sense of humor, he might have written this book

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece of the imagination., July 28, 2005

By	Jan Dierckx (Belgium, Turnhout) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I love this book because I often wonder if there are any boundaries to imagination ( The English scientist and SF writer Arthur C.Clark once said that the only way for travel into space is by imagination ).
Why the title The Crab Nebula ? Modern physics tells you that chaos rules the universe and if you can say one thing for sure about Crab: he is chaotic.

This novel has no story. The Crab Nebula is comprised of fifty-two chapters that provide insights into the existence of this nebulous man named Crab.

This novel explains the possible relationships between a writer and his character.
On the cover the publisher says: " A postmodernist novel par excellence, The Crab Nebula, parodies literary conventions, deconstructs narrative and meaning and brilliantly combines absurdity and hopelessness with irony and humor."

Yes, Crab is a very strange man. In fact he doesn't exist. Well maybe he exists but only through language. Language is the essence of his personality. But if language is his essence he can only exist in the mind of the writer.
You see, the writer is in control of everything: he invents his own laws of nature and logic, in his mind the Earth can be flat or square.

He can toy with Crab as much as he likes, he can send Crab this way and at the same time the opposite way.
Therefore to us readers, Crab acts like a man who cannot make up his mind, he's a victim and an evildoer at the same time.

When you read this novel you have to keep one thing in mind and one thing only: language and imagination are in control

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crab et Eric, November 28, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crab Nebula (Hardcover)

La vie qui traverse les personnages d'Eric Chevillard est revisitée, réinventée avec une loufoquerie si délicate et si légère. Ils ont le charme des vrais originaux, comme mon grand-père.