Georges Simenon's Maigret Bides His Time provides an unabridged Jules Maigret mystery telling of a detective plagued by jewelry store heists - in the daylight. The Parisian inspector has his hands full, and Clifford Norgate's background in Shakespearean drama brings the underlying drama to life in this mystery.

I'm joining the chorus of those asking for a direct translation. Let me quote the opening paragraph of the novel I translated from the original as a quick test:

"But let me tell you another, even more curious adventure...

Sweat, Fuks walks on, me behind him, trouser-legs, heels, sand, we plod on, plod on, earth, ruts, clod, glitter from glassy pebbles, glare, the heat buzzes, shimmering, everything black with sunlight, houses, fences, fields, woods, this road, this march, where from, how, it's a long story, to tell you the truth I was sick of my father and mother, my family in general, besides I wanted to do away with at least one exam, also to try a change, leave it all, live somewhere far away for a while. So I took off to Zakopane, I walk through Krupówki, think where the heck to get a cheap pension when I run into Fuks, his red-haired faded blond mug, protruding, his gaze pasted with apathy, but he was happy, and I was happy, how are you, what are you doing here, I'm looking for a room, so am I, I have an address - he said - of a small manor-house where it's cheaper as it's a long way out, almost bare countryside. So we walk, trouser-legs, heels in sand, the road and the heat, I look down, earth and sand, the pebbles sparkle, one, two, one, two, trouser-legs, heels, sweat, sleepiness in tired eyes from the train and nothing besides this pacing from down below. He stopped."

If you have the book handy you'll notice how the published English version breaks up Gombrowicz's long meandering sentences and how it flattens certain phrases ("gaze pasted with apathy" becomes "fishlike eyes") not to mention misspelling one of the main character's names. Another example, a short one this time:

"...how many times have I told her, Kata, don't be lazy, don't be afraid, go to the surgeon, get the operation done, get that appearance of yours regulated..."

becomes: "...how many times have I told her not to put it off any longer but to go and see the surgeon and have it done...".

These novels map internal states, tenors of mind, and they do so with courage, dramatising the internal by portraying fantastic events in the external world. 'Cosmos' focuses (obsessively) on a conjuction of paranoia and an irrational insistence for connections on the part of its young protagonist. 'Pornographia' shows elders living vicariously through the apetites of the young.
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Both novels seem to satirise the basic premises of the bourgeois comedy of manners, being set in country households filled with characters respectful of middle-class ideals, only to unveil irrational psychological forces close by the surface. It is hard to imagine either novel being written without the author living through the horror of the Second World War - rationality itself and, more specifically, the veneration of tradition and culture are under attack - how can Gombrowicz have faith in such concepts when he has witnessed the unthinkable brutality initiated by so-called civilised, rational individuals, most notably by those inhabiting arguably the most civilised and rational of nations? Settings and presuppositions that functioned admirably in the work of Thomas Mann, or at least stumbled by in Chekov, now not only fail dismally, but engender a grotesque horror show.
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Similar responses arose after the First World War, most persistently in the guise of surrealism. Their effects linger to this day - a suspicion of the merits of rationality still inhabits critical thinking, and few would subscribe to the idea that education and cultural refinement guarantee the moral and ethical worthiness of a person (thus we have the archetypal psychopath who listen to Beethoven as in 'A Clockwork Orange', and numerous other related examples inhabiting popular culture (the villains in James Bond movies, or even the Rickman character in 'Die Hard'). Gombrowicz lends his own unique voice to this chorus.
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The literary style remains readable despite certain difficulties, possibly arising from translation. It is also very humorous, in the way that the Samuel Beckett of 'Watt' or 'Molloy' is humorous, and indeed Gombrowicz's assault on the mechanisms of rationality is reminiscent to that found in 'Watt'.
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For me, these works appeal in the similar ways to those of Bruno Schulz, Stig Dagerman, Kafka, John Hawkes, Celine, and, as mentioned, Beckett, but beyond the similarities these novels are something special and inimitable. Hope this is something of a guide for what lies in store for you.

"Cosmos" cannot be compared to ordinary literature. Its closest companion might be Kafka's "The Castle." It brings out the potency and 'uniqueness of individual experience' by original and bizarre methods indicative of abnormal psychology. The narrator, of the same name as the author, is baffled by events which may not be events. He comes across a sparrow hung by wire on the branch of the tree. Later on he rents a boarding house whereupon he stumbles on a piece of wood, likewise hung by wire, in the backyard. Is there a connection between the sparrow and wood? This type of anxiety over something, which may be nothing at all, recurrs throughout. The mind of the narrator is mystified by objects, people, and senses of strangeness. The individual characters become unusual. There are instances of silence, mysticism, and suspense. The sentencing is done via fragments. My father once said that Gombrowicz had "the intensity of Kafa with the prose of Fitzgerald."

"Pornographia," written later, is more poetically sound than "Cosmos." Very simply, "Pornographia" is about what I call "the vitality of youth." Old men in rural Poland are transfixed by two teens, a boy and girl, who may as well be having sex. But they may only be friends. A fascination envelops...then murder.

Chances are I have not done Witold Gombrowicz justice. My attempted descriptions of his work are not competent enough. You see, his books have a life of their own: they are haunting. For this reason, Gombrowicz is among the best literary figures of the twentieth century.

In this short (and at times very difficult) collection of essays, Bataille challenges Sartre's view that "literature is innocent". A selective survey of key writers - including Bronte, Genet and Sade - shows that literature is a necessary antidote to the overarching Superego and Capitalism's emphasis on the Reality Principle. In this way, Bataille shows that literture is in fact evil, in that it is anti-utilitiarian and thus embedded in the childish Pleasure Principle. While Bataille seems to alternate between ascribing the driving force of literature to both the Life Drive (Eros) and the Death Drive (Thanatos), he does succeed in showing how Freud - although he never explicitely invokes the name - can be used for a new method of reading literature.

If you're into postmodernism and literary theory, you can't go wrong by reading this book. And what makes this book a cut above most books in po-mo literary theory is that it's got an accessibe layer that any fool can understand. There's also an esoteric underbelly that only people who've read Nietzsche closely will get. But the only time the esoteric underbelly becomes important is in the chapter on Genet.

Bataille claims Genet did not know how to give, because he liked to betray people. And since he did not know how to give, he wasn't truly evil because he sacrifices nothing. By which Bataille means that he doesn't know how to take. There's no collusion with doing a 100% gratuitous act, like committing suicide. (Let's face it: the suicide is the most selfish person around. The subway system in my city is frequently held up by them, preventing all sorts of people from going to work on time. All because their life is depressing.) Bataille's entire oeuvre is a celebration of paradoxes and the idea of give = take is not so far from his idea in Inner Experience of the subjectobject.

Apparently contemporary postmodern theory finds itself in crisis. Any outside observer could tell you why: the thinkers are opaque. The reason they are opaque is because they like to give. What Bataille knew is that in order to give, you also have to take. Hence his exoteric, loquacious facade and his esoteric, unutterable interior. If you are an American postmodernist, you ignore this advice at your peril.

Georges Battaille throws down a challange to Jean-Paul Sartre, who held that "literature is inncocent". Bataille, in his examination of such figures as Emily Bronte, Sade, Baudelaire, Genet, Kafka and Michelet, and the component of "evil" in their works, argues that literature is, in fact, "guilty" and that, moreover, it must acknowledge itself as such. In his reading of these literary figures, Bataille proceeds to analyse literature's complicity with evil and how this enables it reach a fuller level of communication. Drawing on Freud, he "eroticises" literary creativity and contends that the notion of "Art for art's sake", which emerges as a reaction to a fragmented and reified social world dominated by utilitarianism and commodity fetishism, is actually a subterfuge, literature masquerading as innocent under the mantle of "pure art", in order to rechannel the forces that are dammed up owing to the repressions imposed by culture. Though elliptical and opaque, this book is a challenging and fascinating study, which has a potential for laying the foundations for a philosophy of composition that underwrites the aesthetic of evil and explores its relation to the overarching forces of institutional and administrative surveillance.

I have read many Simenon novels and this is one of his best. It deals with a moral dilemma and has a great set up with incredible suspense. A man mysteriously ends up with a suitcase full of money belonging to a mysterious stranger and goes on the run with it. The ending is a little bleak and I think could have been a little more satisfying, but the journey there is definitely worthwhile. An interesting psychological portrait of a man dirven by inexplicable impulses that he cannot come to terms with. Why we lie? Why we cheat? WHy we do self-destructive things? Those are the questions which plague Simenon and ourselves.

This third volume of A. Artaud for whom Sartre siad that he is "the new poet of horror" continued the complete edition of his works. It is not as important as the "Theatre and its double" or Artaud's poems, but includes some of his Scenarios, views on the Cinema, Interviews held with Artaud, as well as his correspondance with Mademoiselle Yvonne Gilles, Madame Yvonne Allendy, Louis Jouvet and others. Although this volume might not be as significant as those containing his poetry and views on the theatre, it is an important link if we want to understand - as far as this is possible - the inner world of a man of tragic insolubility without gaining a distance of safety - that of an audience. Despite being known for his thetre of cruelty, Artaud is more a poet of sharp realization of existence; this volume adds to this understanding.