NOTES FROM HAMPSTEAD: THE WRITER'S NOTES: 1954-1971

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 217 pages. Retrospective collection of notes, fragments, and aphorisms. The final published collection of the author's notes and aphorisms. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Elias Canetti's "Nachtrage aus Hampstead" in a felicitous English translation. An indispensable record of almost twenty years of "jottings", that is, thinking-as-living, living-as-thinking. These notes-to-oneself are all entries in the Notebooks he kept between 1954 and 1971: Brilliant, unsurpassed, and humane aphoristic writing that questions and upends accepted wisdom, and as such, is more valuable than almost all other writers' fully articulated essays and books. Not just a working journal but a full-fledged literary genre in Canetti's (and Kafka's) hands, he published five of them in all, spanning his entire adult life, not counting the very first precursor to the present volume (which covers the period 1942-1948, published in German only) , and including a posthumous one. As an aphorist, that is to say, as a writer who wanted to distill his Thought and have the Last Word on a particular subject, Elias Canetti had very few rivals in the Modern Era, excepting perhaps his great predecessors in Nietzsche and Kafka and near-coevals in Walter Benjamin, E. M. Cioran, and Theodor Adorno. Every great writer has one great Note to readers: To have a lifelong notion of, not just interest in, "everything" - and to care about nothing else. That is, to care, even obsess about, literature and other things besides (such as say, religion, philosophy, the arts) as well as the practical ends of life: Longevity, happiness, and freedom. For Canetti, "everything" is: "The significance of mythology and ethnicity, the nature of creativity, the extraordinary hold violence has on the twentieth century, literary history (one learns of Canetti's affection for Cervantes, Stendhal, and Gogol, and his adoration of Kafka) . Always, there is a fierce quarrel with death" (Publisher's blurb) . Two examples: "The bungler always gets what he does not want". "Self-satisfied: The self worn out" (Elias Canetti) . An absolute "must-have" title for Elias Canetti collectors. This title is a great collection. This is one of few copies of the 1998 First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent editions, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. One of the greatest writers of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ELIAS CANETTI TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374223262.