Robert Redford on FALL TO RISE: “A heart-filling drama about the outstanding dedication of dancers to their art.” Culture Vulture screenings this Monday and Tuesday at all Laemmle venues.

After a numadber of months of readading the German, I have reltnecy comadpleted Stefan Zweig’s earadlier novel — actuadally a series of four novella — titled Amok. “Amok” or “amuck”, as in our phrase “runadning amuck”, denotes an unconadtroladlably vioadlent and frenadzied episode that is idenadtiadfied as occurading specifadiadcally in Malaysian culadture. The term and the conadcept come, in any event, from this culadture. Now, when describading an episode of pubadlic vioadlence, a shootading spree by a crazed indiadvidadual, for examadple, German newsadpaadpers will invariadably refer to the indiadvidadual as “der Amoklaufer” (with an umlaut over the “a”) or “the peradson who rana0amuck”. So here from a text that I believe appeared around 1920 Zweig proadvides his own kind of psyadchoadlogadiadcal study on extremely obsesadsive, and thereadfore extremely self-​​destructive, patadterns of behavadior. I call it “patadterns of behavadior” because the actions and the naradraadtive is strangely staadtic in every story; and Zweig seems to want to relate the varadiadous expeadriadences under the rubric of the sigadnal conadcept that he titles simadply “Amok”. The most comadpelling of the stoadries conadcerns what hapadpens to a young girl who lives across the hall in an apartadment buildading from a famous writer. All of the stoadries have their moments, but I would tenadtaadtively conadjecadture (after readading through the text only once and in a foradeign lanadguage) that Zweig’s psyadchoadlogadiadcal writading leaves a litadtle someadthing to be desired. The quesadtion necadesadsaradily remains very much open to interadpreadtaadtion, howadever, and to furadther engageadment with his writings.