Bodies in fact tend to stay in the ground, but stories return again and again. Words make us and unmake us. We can use them robustly to speak ourselves into existence, or to talk ourselves into realities that are as delicate as the pudding in our skulls, as sticky and elastic as our guts. What better incentives for reading Jelinek, whose words—brimming with life—demand that we stay alert and awake to what’s hurtling past us at an unthinkable speed.“We are just the drafts of the dead,” says Jelinek’s narrator, “and only when we are dead ourselves are we completed and others can get the picture of us.” And only then will the earth reclaim us and allow us all finally to rest. {read}