Verwandte Artikel zu Night School: A Reader for Grownups

Night School: A Reader for Grownups - Softcover

Bán, Zsófia

 
9781940953885: Night School: A Reader for Grownups
Softcover
ISBN 10: 194095388X ISBN 13: 9781940953885
Verlag: Open Letter Books, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book in Translation of 2019

Zsófia Ban’s Night School: A Reader for Adults uses a textbook format to build an encyclopedia of life—subject by subject, from self-help to geography to chemistry to French. With subtle irony, Ban’s collection of “lectures” guides readers through the importance and uses of the power of Nohoo (or “know-how”), tells of the travels of young Flaubert to Egypt with his friend Maxime, and includes a missive from Laika the dog minutes before being blasted off into space, never to be seen again. A wildly clever book that makes our all-too-familiar world appear simultaneously foreign and untamed, and brings together lust, taboos, and the absurd in order to teach us the art of living.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zsófia Bán grew up in Brazil and Hungary, and is the author of three works of fiction and four essay collections. She's won the Glass Marble Prize, Tibo Déry Prize, Palládium Prize, Mozgó Világ Prize, Attila József Prize, and Balassa Péter Prize for her writing. A former writer-in-residence at the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) program, she is currently a professor of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Jim Tucker, a classical philologist living in Budapest, translated works from German, French, and Italian before making the acquaintance of George Konrád for whom he has translated some 35 essays from the Hungarian, in addition to works by numerous other authors.

Péter Nádas is one of Hungary's greatest authors, and has had seven volumes translated into English, including The Book of Memories and Parallel Stories.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

“Self Help, Or: the Power of Nohoo”
"Children," Mrs. Grant used to say, "life is unfathomable. But any actual situation requires actual responses that are quite fathomable indeed. You should always be able to get yourselves out of a fix, but to do that you need to acquire―anyone?―the knowledge you need. Because any situation can be fixed if you have the Nohoo."
Of course none of us had any idea what Nohoo was, but no one dared ask. The word had such a powerful, suggestive aura about it that we visualized it capitalized from the outset. Perhaps it will come as no surprise if I tell you that it became our class motto. We used it to greet one another in the halls, out in the courtyard, on the street and the tram, at the baker's and butcher's. Mrs. Grant became our hero. We called her "General Grant," which always elicited a permissive, kindly smile. She let us do anything (almost), as long as we were willing to use Nohoo. We looked down on anyone who was lazy or sloppy about it, and shut them out. Learning Nohoo became a question of honor, and anyone whose behavior undermined the project was no longer a member of the pack. In this spirit we voraciously awaited Mrs. Grant's newest pronouncements each week, and noted them down in our lined, indigo notebooks. Here I shall publish the esteemed contents of my notebook, which I have saved till this day. May the Nohoo be with you.
1) Should you find yourself at the top of a waterfall, you must do the following:
Take a deep breath just before you go over the edge.
As long as you are in midair, you won't have too much control over events. Get used to that. Gravity is a stern taskmaster, and the water might be deep.
Dive feet first. Don't even think about trying it head first or any other idiotic way you nusually do it. Hold your legs tightly together.
Jump out in front of the waterfall as far as is humanly possible.
Wrap your arms around your head to protect it. After all, if your head gets injured, you can kiss the Nohoo good-bye.
Start swimming the second you reach the bottom of the waterfall and plunge into the mass of water below. Start swimming before you come up to the surface, because swimming will slow any further sinking. Swim at the top of your lungs. Swim like a bird in flight. Swim like crazy. Swim, my dears, swim. To be perfectly clear: swim downward, with the flow, away from the waterfall. Now I know there's always someone who tries to be cute and swim back behind it to see what's back there, but there's nothing to see there, dear boy, just some very big rocks that will smash up your sweet little head till it's nice and bloody. Alright.
2) If it looks like a tsunami is on the way, you must do the following:
First of all make sure you are not confusing this event with the ebb and flow of the tides. Make sure you are not confusing it with the movements of the stars and the planets. Make sure you have not confused the sky with a double bass, and that you are not seeing things and that your little souls don't just have the hiccups. I know, I know—a little soul can have a big hiccup, but let us not confuse a little soul's big hiccup, mes amis, with a big tsunami, no. We know the difference. We know how to make distinctions. We know what is how big. (Calculate what is how big!) Finally then, before you do anything, make sure that the gas in the kitchen is shut off, because later, when the tsunami comes, you won't have the chance to go back and check, and all through the tsunami you will soil your little panties wondering whether you have shut it off or not. This we call OCD, and it's every bit as bad as your medium-sized tsunami.
To sum up, then, if you see that the wall of water is not moving the way it is supposed to (be sure to check how it is supposed to!), you must do the following:
Run up and down the beach and scream in the ears of the porky bathers who are lounging there red as horseshoe crabs Mister, lady, get up, get up, there's a tsunami on the way!, and don't for a minute be surprised if everyone just keeps lounging around and just orders another drink from the floating bar. Just move on, ever inward toward the middle of the country until you reach a place where three roads meet, but of course you, with your Nohoo, will know exactly which road to take, I can't recall at the moment but I'm sure I'll remember by the end of the hour, so just keep going on that road until you reach the foot of an improbably high mountain, and look for the nearest ski lift and take it up to the top that stands proud in sun and wind, and then you will notice that your peaceful hearts are calm now, undisturbed by any fresh passions, which in turn will fill you with bottomless melancholy, but you can be sure that then everything will be just fine, and the tsunami will see that it doesn't have a chance with you and will just have to slink back to where it came from and then the double rainbow will come out of nowhere and all the animals will leave the ark, and then Take that, tsunami!

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Verlag
Open Letter Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
194095388X
ISBN 13 
9781940953885
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
270
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