In Praise of the Whip

ktsimatics REVIEWS Niklaus Largier’s In Praise of the Whip.

And as for ktimastics’ remark: “Oh, and did I mention that this book was translated from the German by one Graham Harman?” Yes, I’m the translator. Largier was teaching in Philosophy at DePaul for a few years late in my time there, before he moved on to German at Berkeley, and he even sat on my dissertation committee at DePaul.

Fun guy, Niklaus. He’s Swiss but seems more like someone with the “European” nationality in general; you wouldn’t quite be able to guess his citizenship from appearance or voice or intellectual interests. I’d say that he’s a gourmand without being at all an aesthete, and he’s also very funny. Never met anyone quite like him. And that’s a fun book, too: though again, I’ve never read it in English. I’ve never read any of my three translations cover to cover in English after publication, because translation is mentally exhausting work and and I don’t want to relive