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Now: Gabriel Josipovici
Written entirely in dialogue, this novel is about families, parents and children, partners and lovers. The incidents are commonplace: going to work, the weekend, the afternoon of furtive sex, the art exhibition. The novel is about now, where urban people are today, and where they might go.
180 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1998
21 people want to read
About the author
Gabriel Josipovici
55Ìýbooks69ÌýfollowersGabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of seventeen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published A Life, a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are Two Novels: 'After' and 'Making Mistakes' (Carcanet), What Ever Happened to Modernism? (Yale University Press), Heart's Wings (Carcanet, 2010) and Infinity (Carcanet, 2012).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 15, 2024
CRITIQUE:
Dialogical Critique
-- There seem to be a lot of dashes in that novel, said FM Sushi.
-- The author used them to mark dialogue.
-- Why didn't he just use quotation marks?
-- Like inverted commas? Marvin asked.
-- Yes, punctuation marks that mark direct speech.
-- It might be a usage issue.
-- What do you mean?
-- Maybe, he didn't want to worry about whether he should use single or double quotes.
-- What difference would it make?
-- I think it's an American versus British usage thing.
-- Where is the author from?
-- He lives in the UK. I'm not sure where exactly.
-- Why are there so many dashes in the first place?
-- It's a dialogical novel.
-- What's that?
-- It's an experimental novel that consists mainly of dialogue between two or more characters at a time.
-- What? Do you mean it doesn't contain any description or action?
-- Sort of. Description might be conveyed by a character through their speech, rather than the narrator/author. Action might also be referred to in the speech of the characters, rather than described by the narrator/author.
-- What's the point of it?
-- It's an experiment. The author was just trying to see whether he could create a stylistic rule, and then maintain it through the whole of the novel.
-- Did he succeed?
-- I suppose so. At least 99% of the text is dialogue. Only occasionally, he says something like, "Julie pulls in opposite the tube station."
-- With quotation marks?
-- No. No quotation marks, or dashes. It's not something that a character said. I just added the quotes when I transcribed our conversation.
-- Which hasn't occurred yet. I don't see when you could have written it down. So what's the point of the experiment then?
-- I suppose the author was just trying to see whether fiction, or the novel generally, is dependent on certain stylistic conventions. Will it work if you don't comply with a particular convention?
-- I don't know why he bothered. It sounds very academic.
-- It makes the author an experimental author, or the writer of experimental fiction.
-- Big deal, FM Sushi responded.
-- I could make you part of a dialogical critique, if you like!
-- Haha. Only you would think that was a big deal.
-- You may be right.
-- Don't you mean I might be right?
SOUNDTRACK:
Dialogical Critique
-- There seem to be a lot of dashes in that novel, said FM Sushi.
-- The author used them to mark dialogue.
-- Why didn't he just use quotation marks?
-- Like inverted commas? Marvin asked.
-- Yes, punctuation marks that mark direct speech.
-- It might be a usage issue.
-- What do you mean?
-- Maybe, he didn't want to worry about whether he should use single or double quotes.
-- What difference would it make?
-- I think it's an American versus British usage thing.
-- Where is the author from?
-- He lives in the UK. I'm not sure where exactly.
-- Why are there so many dashes in the first place?
-- It's a dialogical novel.
-- What's that?
-- It's an experimental novel that consists mainly of dialogue between two or more characters at a time.
-- What? Do you mean it doesn't contain any description or action?
-- Sort of. Description might be conveyed by a character through their speech, rather than the narrator/author. Action might also be referred to in the speech of the characters, rather than described by the narrator/author.
-- What's the point of it?
-- It's an experiment. The author was just trying to see whether he could create a stylistic rule, and then maintain it through the whole of the novel.
-- Did he succeed?
-- I suppose so. At least 99% of the text is dialogue. Only occasionally, he says something like, "Julie pulls in opposite the tube station."
-- With quotation marks?
-- No. No quotation marks, or dashes. It's not something that a character said. I just added the quotes when I transcribed our conversation.
-- Which hasn't occurred yet. I don't see when you could have written it down. So what's the point of the experiment then?
-- I suppose the author was just trying to see whether fiction, or the novel generally, is dependent on certain stylistic conventions. Will it work if you don't comply with a particular convention?
-- I don't know why he bothered. It sounds very academic.
-- It makes the author an experimental author, or the writer of experimental fiction.
-- Big deal, FM Sushi responded.
-- I could make you part of a dialogical critique, if you like!
-- Haha. Only you would think that was a big deal.
-- You may be right.
-- Don't you mean I might be right?
SOUNDTRACK:
February 20, 2015
A book with just dialoges, the whole story, the persons, the places, everything is discovered by the reader through day-to-day speech. The banal and often absurd talks made me aware that the same is happening every day around me as well. The book is not interesting because of its story, but because of how it is written and what is tells you behind the story itself.
August 1, 2012
A highly overrated writer full of overblown ideas, few of them original.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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