Let’s discuss The Street of Crocodiles, or if you prefer the original title, Cinnamon Shops. Does it deserve comparison to Kafka and Proust as I.B. Singer claims in the cover blurb? Did you know that Cynthia Ozick had written a novel centered on the manuscript Schulz was writing when he was killed during the war (a ms no one has ever seen, that he called The Messiah)? Did you feel as if you were reading short stories or a novel (Schulz called it a novel)?

I rather prefer the original title, Cinnamon Shops. I find that title, and the story it refers to, is breathtakingly fantastic, whereas Street of Crocodiles borders on grotesque. Of all the stories, or parts, in the book, I find these two to be the most extreme—Cinnamon is a feel-good tale and Crocodiles I found depressing.  I’m curious: why the title change? (I’ve been rather obsessed with this detail ever since I first started my hunt for a copy in Polish.) I think the book title has the power to set the tone, like mood lighting, for how the book as a whole will be viewed. Did you see is it as a book of wonder (Cinnamon) or of weird (Crocodiles), and do you think the title tinged your reading in any way?

Comparisons to Kafka and Proust are warranted in ways (though I’m not sure I’d ever compare Kafka to Proust). I found Schulz overwhelmingly visual—am in midst of composing post on this.

I prefer The Cinnamon Shops, too.  That was my favorite story as well.  The Crocodile Street was quite a dark story.  I read that the translator gave the book the new name, but I am not sure what his impetus was.  I sort of saw the book as a combination of weird and wonder.  I think a lot of the images for me seemed overwhelmingly dark--maybe a bit more on the weird side?  I really need to reread it now.

What sort of a relationship do you think Schulz must have had with his father.  He is very predominant in many of the stories.

I also preferred Cinnamon Shops to Street of Crocodiles. Where in Cinnamon Shops everything is a wonder, in Street everything seems tawdry and dark. Wasn’t there a line about the city being quite proud of its corruption?

To answer your question Susan, for me this didn’t read like a novel.

I didn’t feel like I was reading a novel, but I also didn’t feel like I was reading short stories, either.  I thought these were more like sketches—part story, part essay, part poem.  I guess I think Schulz is making up his own genre, or pushing familiar genres beyond their limits.  I felt all disoriented when I read this, mostly because of the elements of fantasy, and I resisted that feeling of disorientation in parts of the book, but in other parts, I was enjoying myself.  In looking back on the experience of reading it, I feel more positively, so for me, this isn’t a book I can really make sense of in one reading.  I think it takes time to understand what is going on and to figure out how to read it.

Schulz thought of it as a novel. It seems more like stories to me, a collection of stories and prose poems.

I also didn’t see it as a novel. The closest thing I can think of is Calvino (the pieces in Invisible Cities are really short, but maybe the Castle of Crossed Destinies, which I don’t remember very well), in the sense that they’re prose poems or related sketches.

I didn’t read the introduction until after I finished the book so I assumed the book was a novel. But it didn’t read like a novel. I couldn’t keep a thread of any kind of progession of time. So when I read the intro afterwards and it mentioned stories, I felt that stories suited it better as a description even though Schulz considered it a novel.

I agree with Isabella, Schulz reminded me of Calvino quite a lot. I’ve not read enough Kafka to make a comparison. But I don’t feel Proust at all.

I don’t know why the title was changed, I have no preference for either. I actually liked the bizareness of the Street of Crocodiles story, how at the end he says everything is so much more mundane and boring that he had actually imagined it. In fact I loved the bizareness of the entire book.

Stefanie you bring up a good point about time. I wondered if these were supposed to be recollections of one particular year or throughout his childhood.

I’m just reading the introduction now and Jerzy Ficowski says its an autobiographical novel, or rather, a genealogy of the spirit. I like that actually. I’ve never heard a book described that way. I guess that brings up a good point of memories and how we shape them as we grow older.

In regard to Bruno Schulz’s relationship to Franz Kafka, compare “Cockroaches” with Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”

In regard to whether The Street of Crocodiles is a collection of stories or a novel, I would suggest it’s a collection of related stories, much in the same way that Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is. For other examples of that genre, see James Joyce’s Dubliners and Dylan Thomas’ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.

I think, Iliana, the stories take place during one year, but the year is not gone through in a linear way. I like “genealogy of spirit” too.

Johnson 1740, I think related stories is a good way to describe the book.

One of the things I found so interesting is that the father is constantly associated with birds even to the point of the boy deciding at the end of “Cockroaches” that the stuffed condor is his father. I’ve been trying to sort out what it means but haven’t quite grasped it. Has anyone else thought about this?

I agree, the stories seem to cover a year. I thought maybe it was a story a month, but I’m no longer sure. Any ideas how old the narrator is supposed to be?

The comparison with Metamorphosis is pretty obvious, but Kafka’s other work deals with bureaucracy, being trapped in the system; there’s something labyrinthine and sinister at play. The Crocodiles story has a similar tone, but the rest are filled with awe and are more life-affirming than anything by Kafka.

It makes sense for father to be a bird. I keep thinking of the phoenix, regenerating, eternal return. Birds, unlike cockroaches, are quite mythic (as are all fathers). Cockroaches may be hardy, but there’s no sense of evolution, life; they’re survivors, not flourishers.

The comparison to Kafka doesn’t really work for me either; yes, the Metamorphosis is about a man turned into a bug, but isn’t it written in a fairly matter-of-fact way after that initial bizarre moment?  When nothing in Street of Crocodiles is matter-of-fact.  The question about birds is interesting, Stefanie, and I don’t really have an answer, but I AM curious what people thought of the father; I took him as literally insane (in moments, sane in others), but I think other people have different views?  The Cockroach chapter, where the boy and the mother have a conversation about the father, and the boy is upset at how quickly his mother has forgotten his father, is quite disturbing.

You are right, Isabella, birds are quite mythic.

But I wonder why the father is equated with a condor? Condors are huge birds built for soaring that eat carrion. I wonder, can the father match up since he takes off so to speak on flights of fancy? But the fact that he is a stuffed condor indicates that his flights go nowhere or are somehow useless or dead? Which might then work in with the father’s sanity/insanity that Dorothy mentions. The father seems most sane when he is allowed to be more bird-like and more insane when his wings are clipped. Am I stretching that too far?

I do think Dorothy that the father does have some loose marbles, but sometimes I also think he is playing it up and is as sane as any of them.

Given the father’s questionable sanity, what does everyone think of the son (is his name Joseph?) looking back and telling the story and saying that his father is a hero? Has anyone else thought the father a Don Quixote-like figure? I see similarities all over the place. But where I always see DQ as a fragile person, the father for me has more substance and solidity. In spite of Adela’s attempts to break him, he refuses to be broken.

Now that’s an interesting parallel, Stefanie—I didn’t think of it while I was reading, but it does make sense.  The father does have a real resilience and determination, even if he uses it in ways that aren’t logical or rational.