From Publishers Weekly
Olsen (
Tonguing the Zeitgeist) delves into the fractured mind of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) hours before his death in a Weimar institution. In the opeining narrative, Nietzsche counts his last hours, doted upon by nurse Alwine and his righteous sister, Lisbeth ("the llama"). Alternately, there are chapters titled by body parts ("Tail," "Bowels") which offer a kind of dreamlike record of Nietzsche's memory, rendered in a stream-of-consciousness second-person. Finally, a more cohesive narrative fills in the details of Nietzsche's life and works backward in time: his travels to Italy, where he fell in love with the unattainable Lou Salome; his waning years as a professor in Turin; his first literary success with
The Birth of Tragedy, championed by Richard Wagner before their falling out; finally, his youth in Naumburg and his birth as a pastor's son. Fancifully embroidering into the narrative Nietzsche's themes and aphorisms—"Every sentence is a kiss"—Olsen is a fine and daring writer, equal to the material.
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Review
"Nietsche's Kisses is a brilliant book and a book of brilliances, one of which follows the logic of the disintegration of a great mind with poetic grace, profound comedy, and a sense of tragic inevitability. With this novel Lance Olsen moves well beyond mere experimentalism to occupy a ground worthy of the magisterial and manic figure of Nietzsche himself. This is a deeply moving, compelling, intelligent, and utterly human account of the power of mind and the glory of post-history's first and most vulnerable superman."
—Michael Joyce
Lance Olsen's Nietzsche's Kisses has a Dionysian soul that the great philosopher would have loved. More importantly, Olsen, and the novel, understand what Nietzsche meant about the scary business of looking into the abyss."
—Percival Everett
"Kisses, tears, and laughter. Pride, embarrassment, and humiliation. Lance Olsen's beautiful novel gives us both the 'human, all too human' side of Nietzsche and the dream of lightness and grace that was central to his philosophy, but that is too often forgotten or ignored by his disciples." —Steven Shaviro
