Nietzsche's Kisses
{{Short description|2006 novel by Lance Olsen}}
{{Infobox book
| name = Nietzsche's Kisses
| image = Lance Olsen's Nietzsche's Kisses.jpg
| author = Lance Olsen
| country = United States
| language = English
| cover_artist =
| genre = Postmodern novel, Historiographic metafiction
| publisher = FC2
| pub_date = February 28, 2006
| pages = 244
| isbn = 1573661279
}}
Nietzsche's Kisses is a postmodern novel by Lance Olsen, published in 2006 by Fiction Collective Two. It is a work of historiographic metafiction.To hear Olsen discuss his perspective on Nietzsche's Kisses, the biographical novel, and historiographic metafiction with Jay Parini and Bruce Duffy, see the discussion at [https://web.archive.org/web/20121006040114/http://ias.umn.edu/2012/09/20/duffy-parini-olsen-biographies/]
Plot
Nietzsche's Kisses is the narrative of Friedrich Nietzsche's last mad night on earth. Locked in a small room on the top floor of what would become The Nietzsche Archives in Weimar, one of the most radical and influential of nineteenth-century German philosophers hovers between dream and wakefulness, memory and hallucination, the first person, second, and third, past and present, reliving his brief love affair with feminist Lou Andreas-Salomé, his stormy association with Richard Wagner, and his conflicted relationship with Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, his radically anti-Semitic sister.
Narrative structure
The novel is written in narrative triads: a first-person section (comprising the real-time of Nietzsche's last few hours alive), a second-person section (comprising hallucinations experienced by Nietzsche), and a third-person section (comprising Nietzsche's attempt to narrativize his own life; that triadic pattern is repeated throughout the novel.
Reception
In an in-depth critical article, Electronic Book Review called Olsen's novel "quite remarkable,"{{cite news|title=The Eternal Hourglass of Existence|url=http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/fictionspresent/resisting|accessdate=4 December 2012|journal=Electronic Book Review|date=10 October 2006}} while Publishers Weekly said Olsen is a "fine and daring writer, equal to the material."{{cite news|title=Nietzsche's Kisses|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-57366-127-0|accessdate=4 December 2012|newspaper=Publishers Weekly|date=2 March 2006}}
External links
- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL82d7KP42Y Lance Olsen reads from Nietzsche's Kisses at The Writers Edge conference in Portland, Oregon (2007)]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20120206025518/http://nietzschecircle.com/interview_olsen.html Interview (2006) with Lance Olsen about Nietzsche's Kisses, by The Nietzsche Circle]
- [http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/olsen-lance-060425 Interview (2006) with Lance Olsen about Nietzsche's Kisses, by Scott Esposito] at PopMatters
References
{{reflist}}
Category:Contemporary philosophical literature
Category:Novels about Friedrich Nietzsche
Category:Cultural depictions of Richard Wagner
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