"I am a Phenomenon Quite Out of the Ordinary"

Anthony Anemone (PhD University of California, Berkeley) is associate professor of Russian language and literary studies at the New School. He is the author of "The Anti-World of Daniil Kharms: On the Significance of the Absurd" and the editor of Just Assassins: The Culture of Terrorism in Russia.|Peter Scotto (PhD University of California, Berkeley) is professor of Russian language and literature at Mount Holyoke College. He is a contributor to Just Assassins: The Culture of Terrorism in Russia, the author of many articles on Russian poetry and prose, and the translator of Aleksandr Blok's The Twelve (forthcoming).

“[Kharms’s notebooks] are generously sampled and gracefully translated by Anemone (The New School) and Scotto (Mount Holyoke College). . . . Not only have they succeeded in producing a vivid, often poignant portrait of Kharms, they offer a host of new texts in English—many as funny, violent, and profoundly existential as any seen before. . . . Highly recommended.” —M. Kasper (emeritus, Amherst College) in CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, August 2013 “Gives the best sense of any book in English of Kharms both within his context and as a deeply fascinating individual whose work can’t be ... explained away by the circumstances of its creation. . . . A huge addition to the Kharms canon in English. . . . Dozens of entries translated here for the first time that are just as great, as weird and delightful and     mysterious, as his better-known works.” —Chris Cumming, review published on BOMBlog, August 1, 2013“Anemone and Scotto do an outstanding job in conveying the texture of Kharms’s writing. . . . The notebooks, diaries, and letters presented in ‘I am a Phenomenon’ show the breadth of Kharms’s interests, in literature, music, art, philosophy, psychology, mathematics, religion . . . the book documents Kharms’s hopes, doubts, frustrations, and physical and psychic pains about work and life. . . . Anemone and Scotto have done an excellent job. They state, ‘We believe that we have remained true to the spirit of the notebooks’ (p. 43). Absolutely!” —Ellen Chances, Princeton University. Review published in The Russian Review, January 2014 (Vol. 73, No. 1)