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Title: Cryptic Portrait
Review: David Krell's avant-garde biography of the great philosopher is borderline incomprehensible as it is steeped in an impenetrable post-modern litany of obscurantist literary techniques. However, the novel is truly ambitious, as Krell attempts to tell the Nietzsche's story from the point of view of his late insanity. The result is extraordinarily unreadable and esoteric. Perhaps the one notable achievement of the work is that Krell has reproduced many of Nietzsche's original letters to friends and family and all of his medical documents recorded during his years in mental institutions. The reader is provided with a rich insight into the poor man's regression. Still, one is left with a broken storyline, undeveloped characters and scenarios, and prose that is entirely too derivative of Joyce's Ulysses.
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