Peopling the World: Representing Human Mobility from Milton to Malthus by Charlotte Sussman (review)

Gombrowicz, with a tiny but pivotal detour through Lyotard (on Wittgenstein), to set up Beckett, Bartoszyńska stakes Form with a capital “F” as “a kind of fiction within reality, defined by language” (111), or “some kind of abstract realm [that] turns out to be an illumination of forces at work in reality itself” (113), “the sinister physical force of Form,” whereby “Józio increasingly submits to Form,” leading to “Józio’s entrapment in Form” (111). I had not known the Polish texts before reading this book, but I will read Ferdydurke now—not for its global formalism but definitely for its pupa Form.