Posts tagged 1930s

Robert Doisneau, La Sonnette, 1934 (A Photographer’s Life, pl. 84)

Robert Doisneau, La Sonnette, 1934 (A Photographer’s Life, pl. 84)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Trafalgar Square on the Day of the Coronation of George VI, 1937

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Trafalgar Square on the Day of the Coronation of George VI, 1937

Elizar Langman, ‘To Work!’, Zaporojie, Ukraine, 1930s

Elizar Langman, ‘To Work!’, Zaporojie, Ukraine, 1930s

Yakov Khalip, The Battleship Marat, Kronstadt, 1936, printed 1960s

Yakov Khalip, The Battleship Marat, Kronstadt, 1936, printed 1960s

“The central device of Trumbo’s novel is the body of the protagonist, a young American soldier who, incredibly, has lost his face and both arms and legs during combat. Unable to see, speak, hear, smell, or act, he is fully conscious, but seemingly completely without agency. As he struggles to come to terms with his personal tragedy, he strains to communicate with the outside world. The entire book was written without commas, though all other punctuation conforms to established conventions.”

Antonia Hirsch, Komma (after Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun), 2010

“Every choice I made was dependent on a choice Bruno Schulz had made. On top of which, so many of Schulz’s sentences feel elemental, unbreakdownable. And his writing is so unbelievably good, so much better than anything that could conceivably be done with it, that more often than not I simply wanted to leave it alone.” [an interview: part 1 and part 2; more info. here]

Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes (Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles)