Borrowed Lives

Stanley Corngold is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He has written The Fate of the Self and Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form. He is also the editor and translator of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Irene Giersing , a former professor of French literature, owns The Strand, an Art Deco restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida.

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"Whether he be original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself," wrote Ortega y Gasset. In Borrowed Lives, Corngold and Giersing have written the "novel of himself" for their hero, the tenant Paul van Pein, who is at once original and a plagiarist. This narrative, novel, and critical fiction about an academic expatriate in the south of France tells the story of a life lived in response to the desire of another — the mysterious landlady Margot Stevens. Paul is conscripted into her plan, until he finally rebels against her subtle tyranny. In telling this story with wit and playful allusiveness, Corngold and Giersing enact the process of "original" novel writing; the story of their hero parallels their own original composition."Paul van Pein is an utter original: he lives, loves, laughs, and hates without restraint. His mysterious adversary Margot is equally fearsome. From slow dreamy beginnings the story gathers momentum and hurtles toward its awful climax." — Susannah York"I like the way this book plays on the notion of a quest for genuineness that always and inevitably falls short, whether the quest for a genuine love, a genuine character, or a genuine novel." — Clayton Koelb, University of Chicago