Naipaul on this one: "good writing doesn't draw attention to itself." Yet the book is full of interesting arcana if you're willing to endure the flights of fancy. If there's a problem with this book, it's that the author-this, assuming the translation is accurate-fancies himself a stylist. I never got a handle on the Catherine Wheel of abstractions Magris was spinning there. Yet Magris makes a compelling argument for his greatness while at the same time acutely rendering judgement. Céline went from "the great voice of the people" before World War 2 to that of "an iniquitous traitor, an anti-semite hunted down and reduced to the scum of the earth on a level with the Nazi butchers" afterward. That said, the long essay on Louis-Ferdinand Céline-who stayed at Sigmaringen Castle on the Danube when the collaborationist Vichy government was forced there by the retreating Germans-is fascinating. Magris is a critic and his assessment of cultural phenomenon along the river's course is often excellent, especially when he deigns to tell the reader what he's writing about. The river is here a device for writing about a mix of colorful events and persons associated with it. Danube is not a travel narrative in the classic sense. Erudite meditations on the Danube and the blood-soaked lands through which it winds.
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