Interruptions

Hans-Jost Frey is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Zurich.

• Introduction by Georgia Albert Stories Interruption Nanteos Abyss "No..." Sign Law Surprise Signposts Asking i End Volcano Break-Off Ending Beginning Fragment and Whole Limit of the Possible Paradox Asking ii Asserting Wisdom of the Unfinished Fear Superfluousness Readability of the Fragment Fragmentary States Living Fragmentarily Waiting Boredom Slowness Indifference and Unconcernedness Exhaustion Improvisation Daredevil Embarrassment Speechlessness Mourning Testament Broken-off Relationships Hopelessness Wishlessness Absentmindedness On the Side

"This extraordinary book belongs in the company of Friedrich Schlegel's Athenaeum Fragments, Nietzsche's The Gay Science, Blanchot's Le pas au-delà, and Kafka's diaries, aphorisms, parables, and stories. In its laconic rigor, Interruptions is the best book on the fragment and on living fragmentarily. Just as a good book on irony cannot escape being ironical, so a good book on the fragment must be fragmentary. Interruptions starts and then stops, again and again, breaking off continually where there is no more to say and too much more to say. Georgia Albert's admirable translation matches the original in spare elegance and scrupulous rigor. Only occasionally, as is proper, does the translation break off or break down in the face of untranslatable word play in the original. Albert's splendid introduction fulfills Friedrich Schlegel's stipulation for a preface: 'A good preface must be at once the square root and the square of its book.'" — J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine