This post is an example of what I will likely be primarily using this newsletter for. So without any preamble, here are some thoughts on my final reads of the year. Zündel’s Exit by Markus Werner (Dalkey Archive, translated by Michael Hofmann) This strange short novel takes the idea that we are all one assault on our comfort and security away from a complete existential collapse to a wild extreme. Konrad Zündel is a respected schoolteacher harboring an arrogant philosophical malaise that has no outlet other than relentlessly criticizing his wife. After a trip is cut short following him losing a tooth in front of horrified bystanders and finding a severed finger in a bathroom, signs of ominous deterioration, Zündel returns home to seemingly discover that his wife is having an affair. Split between righteous indignation and wounded betrayal, Zündel vanishes.
The presence of the long "La Horla" in all those other books, that is itself the explanation, the logic, for using the shorter version.