Just as Kraus’s densely argued texts deplore the mechanization of verse, so Franzen’s unstructured exegeses attempt to summon a similar abhorrence of the digitization of the novel.

Conversely, giving a summary of these books is like producing a Mahler medley, condensing periphrastic brass into a brief fanfare

Keller was citing Mahler’s Third Symphony, which contrasts its scherzo with the scherzo’s historical forerunner, the courtly minuet.

living on the same Manhattan island, just blocks south, but they in sumptuary garb, practicing traditions from centuries past

His absence here speaks every cliché in the world: “louder than words,” certainly louder than de La Grange’s logorrhea

That history cannot repeat, which is an idea infused with both European Weltschmerz and hopeful American gusto, finds resonance in Mahler’s greatest contribution to compositional technique

Hrabal suggested another word for his works: pábení, Englished by the writer Josef Škvorecký as “palavering,” meaning “idle chatter” or “flattering babble,” here intended to characterize looping, loopy conversation

His best novel, Histoire de l’œil (Story of the Eye), today a classic of obscure symbolism and underage sex, was published in 1928 and peremptorily banned

Chester returned to New York, where he became one of the foremost critics of the ’60s, writing witty, scabrous reviews for The New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, and Commentary

“Sleeveless errand” is superannuated slang for a fool’s errand, or fruitless endeavor.