kaganof’s aphorisibles
“Kaganof went to sleep thinking that he knew all the answers.
When he woke up he couldn’t even remember the questions.”
Kaganof is first and foremost an ironist who eschews what he calls the “heresy of didacticism.” To avoid piloting his audience he has created a new, often puzzling genre that he provisionally labeled as “aphorisibles”.
Since most of the pieces are short narratives, I prefer to call them postmortemist parables – whose meanings are not spelled out. They defy our stereotypes and wishful thinking for the purpose of engaging readers in dialogue. Kaganof assumes his readers to be hypocritical. Kaganof forces us to respond, to examine ourselves, and to scrutinize the narrator. We must remain vigilant. What I call “ethical irony” is the key to penetrating his poses and disguises: moral insensitivity, anger, or even crude misogyny should arouse self-reflection.
Kaganof parodies this Socratic method in the grotesquely comic story The Cockroach. Beneath his alienation the narrator proves to be attuned to his human environment. Still, these postmortemist fables undermine any reassuring interpretations.
Dismantling all forms of complacency and idealism, Kaganof’s “aphorisibles” amalgamate, in a dialogically open-ended literary unit, ambiguity and judgement, kindness and cruelty, anger and generosity, reverie and analysis. There are no definite lessons – only responses. In the end, we must judge for ourselves.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
could you repeat
it again..
October 15th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
the question is “que?”
October 16th, 2008 at 7:01 am
que..(repeat aloud again) que..