THE SECRET HEART OF THE CLOCK: NOTES, APHORISMS, FRAGMENTS 1973-1985

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 151 pages. Retrospective collection of notes, fragments, and aphorisms. One of Elias Canetti's finest achievements. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, of which there are several. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Elias Canetti's "Das Geheimherz der Uhr: Aufzeichnungen" in a felicitous English translation. More "jottings", that is, thinking-as-living, living-as-thinking. Taking up where "The Human Province" leaves off, these notes-to-oneself are all entries in the Notebooks he kept between 1973 and 1985: 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, 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. "On life, death, reincarnation, longevity, immortality, the development of ritualism in the child, and the importance and gist of Aubrey, Dostoyevski, Kafka, Klaus Mann, Schopenhauer, Sophocles, Walser, Lear, Zola, and Cezanne" (Publisher's blurb) . One exquisite example: "Each sentence connects with another, but between them lies a hundred years" (Elias Canetti) . An absolute "must-have" title for Elias Canetti collectors. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few copies of the 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 printings, 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 0374256942.