In this beautifully written and strikingly original contribution to post-Holocaust literature, Sandor Goodhart locates in the Möbian structure first described by 19th-century mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius a model for difference or otherness that, in fact, attests to continuity and sameness. Tracing in Möbian fashion an autobiographical line extending from Homer to Beckett, Goodhart shows that we never stand outside the ... Read moredrama the literary presents to us. Suggesting that Möbian logic is endemic to all literary critical discourse, Goodhart, at once an astute philosopher and consummate Jewish storyteller, attests to the 'doubling back of language on itself' in a dark night that makes all writing 'the story of my death.'
Martha J. Reineke, Professor of Religion, University of Northern Iowa, USA
Möbian Nights presents a sensitive and novel reading of the Möbian as a theoretical and structural frame of interpreting literature. Here the Möbian, not unlike chiastic structures of language and thought, speaks to the interconnected relationship between past and present, difference and continuity, self and other, silence and bearing witness. Through a variety of challenging perspectives, this deeply engaging book gets at the heart of what it means to tell a story. Set against a post-Holocaust landscape and the legacy of night, Goodhart reflects upon a cautionary and discerning way of approaching the world in which we live.
Victoria Aarons, O.R. & Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of English, Trinity University, USA
In this extraordinarily rich and thought-provoking follow-up to his earlier Sacrificing Commentary, Sandor Goodhart offers us a new, 'Möbian' basis for a general theory of the literary, which encompasses an impressively wide range of texts and authors, from Homeric epic to Derridean deconstruction. The intellectual tour de force does not for a moment, however, lose sight of the real historical crisis of our time; for over it all hovers the shadow of Auschwitz. Möbian Nights will prove necessary reading for anyone seriously interested in literature and literary criticism, and their relation to each other, as well as to philosophy, Biblical religion, and ethics.
Bruce K. Ward, Professor of Religious Studies Emeritus, Thorneloe University at Laurentian, Canada
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