The Encyclopaedias of the Fall

In 2,580 alphabetically arranged entries, Marc Kregting treats the reader to a host of insights; facts and factoids; jokes, and pranks in which seriousness and profundity are organically integrated with irony and nonsense. The book’s common thread is the idea (and the image, word, and syllable) of the ‘fall’.

Kregting has a great deal to say about falls. Throughout this book the focus is on people who make the most diverse of downward movements. Almost everyone qualifies for his encylopedia: cyclists who crash (Isaac Galvéz) or knock over opponents (Steve Bauer), singers who jump to their deaths (Herman Brood), and previously worshipped heroes who fall from their pedestals (Jan Fabre, Diego Maradona).

This book is also about expressions that allude, in all kinds of ways, to the core concept of the book. The encyclopaedist also gives his own interpretations of  terms such as ‘black hole’, ‘cancel’, and ‘forced landing’.

In the blurb of the publisher it reads: No one can escape gravity. Planet earth is governed by laws which pull us down, ultimately into the grave. Desires meet with an equally inauspicious end. In the Bible, hunger for knowledge leads to the Fall, while Icarus’s urge to fly plunges him into the sea.

In this brimful book, farce and tragedy alternate at great speed. A journey through the encyclopaedia can begin anywhere. Or you can make your way from A to Z. Whichever route you take, you will come across entries that are lighthearted and entries that are rather dark. The jokes, the sorrow, and the miracles collected in this encyclopedia could provide material for countless novels.