Summary
Aleksandar Tišma: The Use of a Man
Although the form of The Use of a Man is at first glance dispersive, bursting (with a large number of narrative branches, digressions that in one moment become the main flow, and in the end are lost, pour into another story, so that their ordinary mysteries are solved all at once, as if by the way, almost in half a sentence), nevertheless, in the end, the reader has the impression that he has finished a regular, geometrically precise, full circle, that he has just reversed a prison or camp walk, rode the wall of death, got off the dizzying merry-go-round, after which only a feeling of nausea and suffocating levitation remains. Tišma first supports such a structure in The Use of Man by occasionally introducing bitterly lyrical passages, with the first sentence being identified with the title and theme of the entire chapter and with all the characters united in a taxative, seemingly heartless, insensitive list of illnesses, passions, falls, incomprehensible signs. Many have already pointed out that these pictures are the anthological highlights of Tišma's storytelling skills.
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