Skip to main content
Read page text
page 4
‘Dolls, those emissaries between dead and living . . .’ – Andrei Sinyavsky Praise for Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life: “Kenneth Gross is particularly illuminating about the passionate intensity or violent hunger for being that seems to be the particular characteristic of puppets; it is as though, as the fossilised form of human longing, the puppet longs in turn, vividly and vivaciously, for the life that can never be its own. The most telling insight is about the puppet’s intrinsic poverty. For Gross, the puppet is so poor, so close to the condition of deprivation and fragility, that it seems perversely, unnervingly, and triumphantly unkillable. The puppet cackles in the face of death, because it has been killed and revived so many times over . . . A canny and alert examination of the mechanics of animistic and magical thinking.’ – Steven Connor, Literary Review ‘“How are we devoured by the things we make?” it asks. “And when might that devouring save us?” My copy burns brightly on my favorite shelf, beside The Poetics of Space, Eccentric Spaces, and In Praise of Shadows . . . a treasure!’ – Rikki Ducornet Kenneth Gross is Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His books include The Dream of the Moving Statue (1992), Shakespeare’s Noise (2001), Shylock is Shakespeare (2006) and most recently Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life (2011).
page 5
ON DOLLS – Heinrich von Kleist, Charles Baudelaire, Sigmund Freud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Walter Benjamin, Elizabeth Bishop, Dennis Silk, Marina Warner – edited by Kenneth Gross

Page Text

View plaintext

‘Dolls, those emissaries between dead and living . . .’ – Andrei Sinyavsky

Praise for Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life: “Kenneth Gross is particularly illuminating about the passionate intensity or violent hunger for being that seems to be the particular characteristic of puppets; it is as though, as the fossilised form of human longing, the puppet longs in turn, vividly and vivaciously, for the life that can never be its own. The most telling insight is about the puppet’s intrinsic poverty. For Gross, the puppet is so poor, so close to the condition of deprivation and fragility, that it seems perversely, unnervingly, and triumphantly unkillable. The puppet cackles in the face of death, because it has been killed and revived so many times over . . . A canny and alert examination of the mechanics of animistic and magical thinking.’

– Steven Connor, Literary Review

‘“How are we devoured by the things we make?” it asks. “And when might that devouring save us?” My copy burns brightly on my favorite shelf, beside The Poetics of Space, Eccentric Spaces, and In Praise of Shadows . . . a treasure!’

– Rikki Ducornet

Kenneth Gross is Professor of English at the University of Rochester. His books include The Dream of the Moving Statue (1992), Shakespeare’s Noise (2001), Shylock is Shakespeare (2006) and most recently Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life (2011).

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content