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I WAS AZIMUTHOID BACK THEN

THE DEATH OF SMALL WONDERS IS TRAPPED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE

The Death of Small Wonders (or, Noise and Silence) is a little-known novel by German author Joseph Strauss, first published in 1962 and largely considered to be his magnum opus.

It is the fictional story of Franz, a young, financially ruined ex-policeman who loses touch with reality over the course of the narrative. The story is narrated from the point of view of Franz, which eventually becomes stream-of-consciousness narration as Franz descends deeper and deeper into his psychosis. Strauss received a great deal of posthumous recognition for the meta-literary aspects of the book, which were quite revolutionary at the time.

Plot Summary

Part One

The narrative opens with Franz and his friend Soren talking in the alleyways of Munich about their new bohemian lifestyle. It is clear that there is some degree of tension in their friendship, which becomes even more apparent when the subject turns to Emily, Soren's new lover. Later, when Franz meets Emily for the first time at the wharf, it becomes apparent that they will soon fall in love. The majority of Part One details this secret romance and the subsequent alienation of Soren, who gradually becomes more abrasive and seems likely to lash out at Franz. Franz, however, believes that he is destined to love Emily, and he pursues her with the sorrow of knowing he is destroying his friendship with Soren. In Part One, Franz displays signs of psychosis only in his dreams, which become increasingly vivid and violent. Due to the seamless narration of his consciousness, there is often a lack of distinction between the "hot sweaty color" of his dreams and the reality of his waking life, which results in frequent, unsettling shifts of mood.

Part Two

Part Two begins some time after the end of Part One. At this point, Franz and Soren have returned to a more cordial relationship. Soren, in particular, once again displays the cold logic that defined his character before the tension over Emily began. However, Franz becomes prone to long periods of utter loss of reality as his strange dreams begin to spill over into his waking mind. He hallucinates that people on the street wear smiling, eyeless porcelain masks, and that silhouettes of cats and snakes follow him into dark rooms. He has many episodes where the narration is entirely a stream-of-consciousness depiction of the madness he sees. However, Emily's dialogue remains lucid, and is often the only clue as to what is going on outside the subjective world that grips Franz. It is implied that Franz, while now too weak of mind to dispel the visions that plague him, is able to hear Emily clearly because of the strength of his "transcendental" love for her. Also, at some point in Part Two it becomes clear that Soren is dead, and though the narrative is ambiguous there is a chance that Franz is responsible. At the end of Part Two, Emily disappears mysteriously, though her disappearance could also be attributed to the possible imprisonment of Franz.

Part Three

Disconnected from the only moderating influence on his psychosis, Franz descends into a deep well of radical subjectivity, possibly from the vantage point of a jail cell. He laments the impossiblity of truth and justice in his individual world and curses "the death of small wonders" that has resulted in his world's transition to constant and feverish astonishment. There are many smaller plotlines contained within Part Three, in which Franz explores various facets of the insane worlds of his mind, and meets characters that he has made up entirely. He shows signs that he remembers his past life, and he cries for Emily in his few moments of clarity. The narrative stops abrubtly at the end of Part Three at the height of his "infinite noise" and leaves no indication as to his ultimate fate.

Part Four (Epilogue)

While Part Four seemed to be intended originally as a coherent account of the downfall of Franz from Emily's perspective, the poorly-timed demise of Strauss leaves more questions in the epilogue than answers. With only a handful of recovered notes, the reader is left without any sort of definitive resolution.

The Death of Strauss

It is estimated that Strauss worked on The Death of Small Wonders continuously up until his death in 1939. The manuscript was sealed in his old apartment until the building was torn down in 1962, and the story was discovered by a small publishing company. It is speculated that Strauss left Part Four unfinished intentionally in an attempt to establish it as a work of metafiction, although scholarly debate over the matter continues.

Critical Reception

The Death of Small Wonders is widely praised as one of the most influential works of the modern age and a critical precursor to the postmodern movement. The framing device, along with Strauss's flair for the dramatic, also helped establish the novel as a seminal work of metafiction. Franz's musings on justice, stating that the assertion of truth is just a subjective form of self-absolution, are fairly unique, given the time period. Despite the novel's posthumous discovery and belated publication, it is generally accepted to be one of the more significant works of the 20th century.

Controversy

Little is known of the inspiration behind Strauss's magnum opus, and detractors of the work claim that it is heavily derivative of other notable writers of the era such as Kafka and Joyce. Many scholars of Strauss also admit that the story's framing device seems "hasty" and "added as an afterthought." Still, the lack of evidence complicates the matter to the point that such assertions may never be proven or disproven.

See Also

• modernism
• postmodernism
• Franz Kafka
• Stream-of-consciousness
• metafiction
• psychosis

Notes

Category:Books Category:Dystopian novels Category:Unfinished novels Category:Existentialist novels Category:Posthumous books