Product Description
This is the third volume of Elias Canetti's autobiography, following "The Tongue Set Free" and "The Torch in My Ear". It is set in Vienna between 1931 and 1937, at a time when the European catastrophe was already clear to anyone with eyes to see. The book is both a portrait of its time and an intellectual and spiritual autobiography. Canetti describes his relationships with Herman Broch, Robert Musil, Fritz Wortruba, the composer Alban Berg, and Alma Mahler. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A sardonic "bestiary" of human psychological types...

I bought *Earwitness* on the strength of my unqualified admiration for Canetti's *Crowds and Power." This book, while a great deal different--slighter, lighter, more playful--nonetheless bears the same biting cynical sensibility. Here, Canetti directs his scathing attention not to humanity in crowds and communities, but as individuals as organized by psychological type.

In 50 short chapters, under such fanciful headings as "The Paper-Drunkard," "The Never-Must," and "The Earwitness," Canetti describes each specimen of psychological aberration with the kind of mock-serious generality one might find in an astrology book. Part of the fun of *Earwitness* is recognizing family, friends, and enemies among the 50 types Canetti chronicles. A little less fun, perhaps, but certainly more enlightening, is recognizing yourself and the particular strategies you employ to dissemble, evade, and basically survive in a jungle full of characters different but every bit as screwed up as yourself.

I wouldn't go out of my way to buy *Earwitness,* but if you happen across it, it's worth a read. I found it both astute and funny at times, but nearly as often ho-hum or off-mark. In the end, it's sort of like a humorous pop-psychology book written by a bona-fide genius. Not to be taken terribly seriously, but not to be discounted altogether.
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