Agnomia

In this miniature masterpiece, Robert Gal—whom Joshua Cohen has called “a phenomenon”—conducts a noble experiment in uncategorizable prose. One long, unbroken paragraph, blending memoir, fiction, and philosophy, Agnomia takes the reader on a transcontinental journey from lower Manhattan to the Little Quarter of Prague, but most of all it takes the reader on a tour of the writer’s mind. Meditations on tautology, sexuality, and art culminate in an attentive evocation of a concert given by the composer and saxophonist John Zorn. For readers of Thomas Bernhard, Georges Bataille, and E. M. Cioran, Agnomia is a book to relish.