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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
La Danse de Gengis Cohn by Romain Gary,
This review is from: La danse de Gengis Cohn (Paperback)
This book is a gem of post war Jewish literature. Romain Gary, born in Russia and raised in France, was a cosmopolitan figure, and at one time was married to the actress Jean Seberg. Gary's work is insightful and sprinkled with a black humour that gives you goose bumps. How did the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities live with themselves after the war? The anti-hero of this book is haunted by the dybbuk of a Jew he ordered to be shot and who now 'lives' inside his head. There are clever plays on German words: the characters live in a place called "Geist", the German for spirit. Beauty and Death are personified as characters. This is a book that delves deep into the psyche. Perhaps it was inevitable that someone who thought so deeply about the torment of the human soul should in the end have taken his own life. Everyone should read this book.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This might be pulp fiction to most people.,
By
This review is from: La danse de Gengis Cohn (Paperback)
The printing looks good to me, so it must be the cheap paper that someone noticed. I would consider this paper soft, not slick, and I would expect the pages to stick together and tear into pieces if they ever got wet and I tried to keep reading, but I don't expect to be reading this book out in the rain in Vietnam, which I littered with wet copies of the great historical novel U.S.A. by John Dos Passos and a few books by Nietzsche, painfully peeling off the pages and leaving a trail of single sheets that I had read. That wasn't the last time I squeezed a book to see how much water would come out of it, but I actually have an apartment, now, and I expect this book to be fine here.It is unfortunate for me that this book is in French, a language which does not sound to me like what I see on the page, so that even when I see it, I don't know how to say it. I also have a copy or two of the English translation, but a quick comparison has convinced me that they are not the same book. The Contents are listed in the front of the English version, but follow page 353 in the French. Part One - The Dybbuk has 16 section titles, but Premiere Partie: Le Dibbuk goes to XVIII. I doubt if "Tfou, Tfou, Tfou" is a literal translation of "Il lui faut un homme providentiel." There appears to be more on each page in the English version than in the French, so it isn't too surprising that what I find on page 243 in the English version matches page 351 of the French, if "Il y a un monsieur qui nous suit" might mean "there's a furious little man following me." It bothers me a bit, that Romain Gary might have regretted something which he wrote in the original French, and was ashamed to have some tirade or ranting and raving translated into English, and those would be the parts that would be most mysterious to me, because I am such a novice in French, when I try to compare the translation with the original. I envy people who can actually read French. They could be the first to know what I am missing in this book. If you can read French, buy the original, be it pulp or whatever. You might end up knowing more than I do about this book, but I think I know what it means.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get your own ghost.,
By
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This review is from: La danse de Gengis Cohn (Paperback)
I read this book in an English translation which was copyright 1968, and I am sorry to see that the English title, THE DANCE OF GENGHIS COHN, is no longer on the market. If there is any question of people laughing about some intellectual alliance between a new country which was created after World War II and Germans, the arch-enemy of the ghost who is the title character of this book, the lack of this title to laugh it is a small price to pay for "Peace to our ashes," and ashes to Ashcroft, while we're at it, or whatever.
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