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- There Is No One Like Alice Sebold
- great tragedy but lousy storytelling
- Every woman's worst nightmare
- A heartbreaking account of rape
- Gripping, unflinchingly honest account of rape
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Lucky
Alice Sebold
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The Lovely Bones
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Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution (Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters)
ASIN: 0684857820 |
Book Description
Enormously visceral, emotionally gripping, and imbued with the belief that justice is possible even after the most horrific of crimes, Alice Sebold's compelling memoir of her rape at the age of eighteen is a story that takes hold of you and won't let go.
Sebold fulfills a promise that she made to herself in the very tunnel where she was raped: someday she would write a book about her experience. With Lucky she delivers on that promise with mordant wit and an eye for life's absurdities, as she describes what she was like both as a young girl before the rape and how that rape changed but did not sink the woman she later became.
It is Alice's indomitable spirit that we come to know in these pages. The same young woman who sets her sights on becoming an Ethel Merman-style diva one day (despite her braces, bad complexion, and extra weight) encounters what is still thought of today as the crime from which no woman can ever really recover. In an account that is at once heartrending and hilarious, we see Alice's spirit prevail as she struggles to have a normal college experience in the aftermath of this harrowing, life-changing event.
No less gripping is the almost unbelievable role that coincidence plays in the unfolding of Sebold's narrative. Her case, placed in the inactive file, is miraculously opened again six months later when she sees her rapist on the street. This begins the long road to what dominates these pages: the struggle for triumph and understanding -- in the courtroom and outside in the world.
Lucky is, quite simply, a real-life thriller. In its literary style and narrative tension we never lose sight of why this life story is worth reading. At the end we are left standing in the wake of devastating violence, and, like the writer, we have come to know what it means to survive.
Customer Reviews:
There Is No One Like Alice Sebold.......2007-10-05
I have always told anyone I recommended Alice Sebold to that her books are like Saving Private Ryan: if you can make it through the first half hour, you can make it through the rest.
Sebold is very fond of putting her most brutal, hard content on the very first pages, in the first chapter, and in a way, it weeds out the people with the stomach for this sort of writing from the ones who do not. She lets you know immediately where she is coming from.
The details are so graphic, so real, that it is almost disturbing to the reader as you actually begin to place yourself into the pages, into the thick of the suffering that Sebold endured during and after her rape. One thing that always stayed with me was her talk of a pink hair tie, lying amongst the leaves and debris in the tunnel where she was raped, and her wondering if it had been the murdered girl before her's property. Those things, those moments, are so realistic and so intense that it makes me consider that there may never have been another writer of our time that captures the essence of a real thought process and the real world. Stream of conciousness, it is not, but it is just as alarming in its sincerity.
In short, I cannot WAIT for her next work, and I commend Sebold for being able to be blunt but vulnerable, making sure that she is not wilting underneath the cold reality of her experiences but she is not demeaning their power either.
A must-read for any woman.
great tragedy but lousy storytelling.......2007-09-09
When Imre Kertesz writes about Auschwitz, he does so in a way of mid-european intellectual, who knows his history, his philosophical predecessors, his native background and all that may be connected to it in some way. Kertesz survived notorious concentration camp, so none can say that he hasn't been there, and that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
When Alice Sebold writes about her raping, she does so in a journalistic manner. Almost transcribing line by line from official papers events that transpired in distant past. While doing this, she moves farther and farther from her experience, and text becomes monotonous and shallow speech about how horrible raping really is.
But, there really is no answer present in this book why raping is so horrible. Of course, to some this question may seem to be futile cause answer somehow imposes itself. Yet again, Sebold is a writer, and by definition writer should be able to tell her experience in a somewhat different manner than almost judicial speech. Of course, we are here for experience of reading, for answer to almost pervert question: "How does it feel to be raped?" And yet, we do not find it.
There are really brilliant passages about society lack of care for victims, and the need to "be normal again", but majority of the book is written in a way that pushes you back from the start. This changes by the end of the book, where Alice suddenly starts to be more personal, and more close that before. It almost feel as she is being more honest with herself. But few pages in the last chapter cannot save badly written piece of journalism (this can hardly be called autobiography, or a novel).
This book is easy enough to follow and it lulls you in a certain state of mind. If we presuppose the fact that raping is something awful (about which there never is any talk in the book) than what we can see and read in the book is a behavior of a insulted eleven-year old girl, and not of a older, intellectually more capable female writer. One should expect more from Sebold.
Every woman's worst nightmare.......2007-07-13
This book is awful. Really awful. Only because of what happened to her. The candid, detailed recollections she bravely shares with the world are appalling. This book made me much more aware of my surroundings and also made me realize that yes, your worst nightmare could come true. It could happen to anyone. I respect how open she was about what went through her mind during and after the rape and how she shares the horror she faced for many more years to come. Her memoir is breathless. It's like your best friend writing to you about what happened to her. She holds nothing back. I highly recommend this to all women.
A heartbreaking account of rape.......2007-07-08
Oh my god, this is an amazing book. It's a memoir of Alice Sebold's rape and her how she picked up the pieces of her life after it. It's a great read for rape survivors, friends/family members of rape survivors, and just the general public. Ms. Sebold is brutally honest and give a fully detailed account of what happened, which is difficult to read and I can only imagine how difficult it was for her to write. She is a brave, strong woman and this is a great book. It's heavy and sad at times but it is something that should be read. This book is one of my favorites because it means a great deal to me personally and it is a great addition to the literature out there.
Gripping, unflinchingly honest account of rape.......2007-07-07
I had read "The Lovely Bones" also by Sebold, and although I thought it was an interesting concept, I didn't see what all the fuss was about. So when an acquaintance suggested I read "Lucky," I didn't run right out and get it. But when I finally did read it, I literally couldn't put it down.
Sebold dives right to the heart of the matter-- her brutal rape as an 18 year old Syracuse co-ed by a stranger-- at the beginning of the book. Her account is a detailed retelling of what occured fact-wise with a running commentary on what she was feeling and thinking as it all happened. You cannot help but feel you are there with her. Only after she recounts the entire rape does she go back in time and let the reader know who she is, what kind of family she came from, etc. She is a stranger to us as much as she is a stranger to her rapist and to the police who ultimately have to decide if they believe her story or not. She is a rape victim first and foremost to us and first and foremost to herself for many, mnay years after the assault. Unlike Kathy Dobie's book, "The Only Girl In the Car" in which Dobie ineffectively details her life prior to the gang bang that ultimately defined her, Sebold only lets us get to know her as a rape victim, and only lets us know her past as juxtaposed by her present reality.
The unbelievable twists and turns of Sebold's life following her rape feel like they must have been fictionalized, but alas, they are true. She ends up running into her rapist on the street not once, but twice. (The first time resulting in his arrest.) Other things that happen lead Sebold into a life of despair, fearing she will always be a victim. Strangely (or not so strangely), within that paradigm, Sebold ultimately even victimizes herself.
Where Sebold's memoir shines the most is how amazingly honest she is about the effects of the rape on her life and psyche. Her life is forever changed and she candidly examines how friends, family and strangers react to her following her rape with the objectivity of a sociologist but also examines her reactions to how she is treated through the lenses of a keenly attuned rape survivor. She doesn't paint a picture in which we should pity her though; she lets it all hang out, warts and all. This book is not about throwing a pity party, it's about a woman who has been to hell and back and wrote a book about it. It's about a woman who learned that denial and repression are not the way to deal with trauma. It's about a woman who was raped and her struggle to not be defined by that rape.
This memoir is a must-read for anyone who has been sexually assaulted or raped or who knows someone who has. And it's a should-read for everyone else.
Amazon.com
"The words shut up are the most terrible words I know," writes Nancy Venable Raine. "The man who raped me spat these words out over and over during the hours of my attack--when I screamed, when I tried to talk him out of what he was doing, when I protested." It took Raine seven years before she could start to remove the chains those words had wrapped around her spirit by writing about how the anonymous assailant had transformed her forever. "I have noted what has come into my view as I go about my life," she says, "seeing the world through the eyes of a woman who remembers rape." Raine brings a poet's attention to language and imagery to her account, infusing After Silence with powerful immediacy. The reader is made to understand why an event as seemingly innocuous as a landlord asking for a spare set of keys to one's apartment can strike dread into one's heart. As Raine takes us through her personal journey of recovery, she also explores the shifting cultural consciousness toward rape, from the acknowledgement of posttraumatic stress suffered by rape victims to the portrayal of rape in movies. It's this willingness to interrogate the world around her, combined with an emotional honesty that portrays intimate drama without resorting to sensationalism, that makes After Silence one of the most important memoirs of the 1990s. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
"Silence has the rusty taste of shame. The words shut up are the most terrible words I know. . . . The man who raped me spat these words out over and over during the hours of my attack--when I screamed, when I tried to talk him out of what he was doing, when I protested. It seemed to me that for seven years--until at last I spoke--these words had sunk into my soul and become prophecy. And it seems to me now that these words, the brutish message of tyrants, preserve the darkness that still covers this pervasive crime. The real shame, as I have learned, is to consent to them."
After Silence is Nancy Venable Raine's eloquent, profoundly moving response to her rapist's command to "shut up," a command that is so often echoed by society and internalized by rape victims. Beginning with her assault by a stranger in her home in 1985, Raine's riveting narrative of the ten-year aftermath of her rape brings to light the truth that survivors of traumatic experiences know--a trauma does not end when you find yourself alive.
Just as devastating as the rape itself was the silence that shrouded it, a silence born of her own feelings of shame as well as the incomprehension of others. Raine gives shape, form, and voice to the "unspeakable" and exposes the misconceptions and cruelties that surround this prevalent though hidden crime. With formidable power and in intimate detail, she probes the long-term psychological and physiological aftereffects of rape, its tangled sexual confusions, the treatment of rape by the media and the legal and medical professions, and contemporary cultural views of victimhood.
For anyone, female or male, who has suffered from or witnessed the shattering effects of rape,
After Silence inspires and points the way to healing. This landmark book is a stunning literary achievement that is a testimony to the power of language to transform the worst sort of violation and suffering into meaning and into art.
Customer Reviews:
Profound and Courageous.......2007-04-14
A friend loaned this book to me but it is likely a book I will never forget. Nancy Venable Raine tells her important story in a very accessible way. As a nurse who took care of rape victims in the middle 80's and now a school nurse, I am aware that the secret of abuse and assault reverberates in too many lives. And while I would never say that my experiences as a young nurse were equivalent to those of my patients, I vividly remember hearing my victim-patients stories and identifying with them. Many of my victim-patients were not that different from me--young, single, living alone. During that time, I _usually_ slept with the lights on because I wanted to try to be able to identify my perpetrator, if that ever happened to me.
Raine shows us her story, how it echoes in her life. Coming back from and integrating the experience in life is not, cannot be easy but one cannot help but feel she is one of the minority of individuals who gets the needed help to do so.
Now, in year 2007, I was acutely aware that at times Raine paired the rape experience and the torture experience. It is a source of sadness to me that we, as a nation, are perpetuating that experience for so many. There is something profound about her description of the rape victim as a container for her perpetrator's anger. And that is far from the only profound idea.
Having also read "Lucky" by Alice Sebold, I would say they are both very important books but this book is a far better glimpse into the recovery aspect.
After Silence: Rape and MY Journy Back.......2006-11-11
I had to read this book for one of my Woman's Studies classes at Western Illinois University. I think this is a must read book for everyone (especially those who are in recovery or have been convicted of a violent crime of this nature). It is a bit graphic and I don't recomend that anyone under high school age read it. I had to set it down a couple of times due to that, but, it was nessessary to truely understand Ms. Raine's story. You don't truely understand what someone goes though after rape without going through it yourself.
Considering whether or not to hide.......2006-09-16
"Throw away the lights, the definitions
And say of what you see in the dark" - Wallace Stevens
"Speech is civilization itself. The word . . . preserves contact - it is silence which isolates." - Thomas Mann
Following her rape, this author became a completely different person, a person who lived "with sudden fear the way others live with cancer. The fear was always there." It took seven years before she could begin writing about her experience. She states that the anniversary of her rape "was more significant than my own birthday, and yet there was only silence . . . I had become, the one who marked her anniversaries in silence . . . Could I celebrate my survival in silence and alone? Not according to Webster's, which defines the verb "to celebrate" this way: "to perform (a sacrament or solemn ceremony) publicly and with appropriate rites" . . . It pained my family and friends to remember. To acknowledge my experience might bring up what they hoped I had forgotten . . . for me to remind them that I had not forgotten seemed unkind, even cruel, because I knew they needed to believe I had. Our rite was, therefore, silence."
"I thought about Wittgenstein's observation that the limits of language are the limits of reality. Was rape off limits to our most distinctly human attribute - language? . . . I could no longer consent to silence."
Another friend and rape victim asked her, "How do I tell people who don't know, people who might become close friends? If I don't tell them, it makes it a secret, like something to be ashamed of. When I do tell them, they make it worse. They never ask me about it. It'a a part of me, part of who I am now, but they don't want to know about it. It's no-win. Just no-win."
"But silence has the rusty taste of shame. The words 'shut up' are the most terrible words I know. I cannot hear them without feeling cold to the bone. The man who raped me spat those words out over and over during the hours of my attack - when I screamed when I tried to talk him out of what he was doing, when I protested . . . The real shame, as I have learned, is to consent to them."
So she wrote an essay "Returns of the Day" in The New York Times Magazine in 1994. In response "Without exception, all of the letters from survivors described the isolation of the aftermath of rape, its life-altering transfromations."
"The victims of rape must carry their memories with them for the rest of their lives. They must not also carry the burden of silence and shame."
If you have friend or family member dealing with these issues (and the odds are that you do), here are other books that are also excellent on this and related topics, "Lucky" & "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold, & "Siolence" edited by Susan McMaster - all written by women. Rape victims and victims of relationship violence and abuse often hide their experiences and the behaviors of their abusers, feeling ashamed for even being involved with the abusive patterns. All of these books suggest women become more free and mentally at ease when they realize there is nothing to be ashamed of about being victimized. And they suggest the causes of our silences and the things we hide probably deserve more attention, new perspectives, and reconsideration.
Great Timeing.......2005-09-30
It was shipped to me within 2 days, great service and great product.
Courageous, powerful, compassionate........2005-09-28
Ms. Raine describes the trauma and recovery of rape in clear and helpful terms and I appreciate the references to other works about rape recovery and feminism. Raine's AFTER SILENCE inspired me to read another landmark TRAUMA AND RECOVERY by Judith Herman, MD. It is hard to find books about rape recovery and people who can and will talk calmly, rationally, compassionately (or at all) about this subject. Raine's AFTER SILENCE should be required reading in high school for both boys and girls! Rape is so widespread that it should be addressed more often by family and friends; local, state, national, and world leaders; educators and news media. Raine also references I NEVER CALLED IT RAPE by Robin Morgan, another excellent source for raising awareness of the frequency and extent of rape in society. My own childhood incest and young adult rape were not known to my parents, siblings and doctors for decades even though the symptoms were so obvious that I was hospitalized for months. Can't praise Raine's work enough. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Raine and all those who made her work possible. Healing may be slow in coming, but it does come, after the silence, with the help of authors like Raine.
Book Description
KEY BENFIT: This book attempts to address the sources of violence and its effects on people and situations. Providing different perspectives on the causes of victimization, it also discusses how violence breeds. It examines the social and environmental factors that influence victimization, offender-victim relationships, and legal and behavioral responses to victims.
Includes domestic and international terrorism and addresses the violence of both. Discusses motives of terrorists, violence dissemination and ways to combat terrorism. Reviews early victimization theory ( Mendelshon’s Typologies, Hentig’s Victim Classification, Sellin and Wolfgang’s Typology of Victimization) and modern victimization theory ( Victim Precipitation Theory, Spatial Relations, etc.). Includes chapters on a broad range of topics such as: intimate violence, stranger violence, workplace violence, school violence, and terrorism. Covers responses such as community violence prevention strategies, personal defense measures, security measures, legislation to protect victims, sexual offender notification laws, anti-gang legislation, victim advocacy groups, etc.
Law Enforcement
Book Description
CRIME VICTIMS: AN INTRODUCTION TO VICTIMOLOGY is a innovative and comprehensive guide that offers balanced coverage on this controversial subject. A must-have for anyone interested in this field!
Customer Reviews:
Long Vehicle - Please Do NOT Pass.......1999-11-28
Unfortunately, Wadsworth editors allowed Andrew Karmen to turn what could have been a nippy little sports car into a 14-wheeler. The 370+ pages could have been edited to 200 had an editor removed the padding. Instead of zipping along, readers have to drag both themselves and an articulated truckful of words behind them. No verb is left without an adverb and synonym, no noun without an adjective and a thesaurus-full of alternatives, and no idea passes without a repetitive redundancy. Consider, just as an example, the "media." No, you are not smart enough to know what the media are; Andrew spells it all out - "The news media - newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations - deserve...." (page 25) Gee, thanks, Andrew, I really needed that pointed out to me! I won't bother with more.
All of this is a pity because the subject matter is important. But the book -in the way that it is written - suggests that this is a little subject being dressed up, padded and presented as more than it is. And that is the opposite of what I believe, and the opposite of what Andrew Karmen intends.
The book is worth reading, but prepare for heavy hauling. Wadsworth - you have done Andrew and Victimology a disservice.
Jerry Glover
Average customer rating:
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Rape Victimology
Manufacturer: Charles C Thomas Pub Ltd
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Customer Reviews:
Why the old examples?.......2002-12-01
This comes from William Doerner & Steve Lab's "Victimology" 3rd edition, published this year [2002]
from the third chapter, 'The Costs of Being a Victim.' Read it critically, because the casual reader is being
set up to accept history as contemporary fact. Look at the tense Doerner writes in, even though his
example is now thirty years old"
The Second Insult: System Participation
A victim's problems have only just begun if the case is processed through the criminal justice system. The
system extracts further costs as soon as people enter into the halls of justice. In fact, the plight of victims
and witnesses has led at least one prosecutor to chastise the system for victimizing its own patrons. Ash
(1972:390) describes typical system encounters in the following terms:
[T]he witness will several times be ordered to appear at some designated place, usually a courtroom
.... Several times he will be made to wait tedious, unconscionable long intervals of time in dingy
courthouse corridors or in other grim surroundings. Several times he will suffer the discomfort of
being ignored by busy officials and the bewilderment and painful anxiety of not knowing what is
going on around him or what is going to happen to him. On most of these occasions he will never be
asked to testify or to give anyone any information, often because of a last-minute adjournment
granted in a huddled conference at the judge's bench. He will miss many hours from work (or
school) and consequently will lose many hours of wages. In most jurisdictions he will receive at best
only token payment in the form of ridiculously low witness fees for his time and trouble.
Doerner & Lab use present tenses to describe something that happen thirty years ago, as if it happens
now. Karmen pulls the same stunt in his "Crime Victims" 4th edition (2001) by presenting a long article in
the present tense which comes from the 1982 President's Task Force Report, twenty years ago. My
problem is that these are respectable names in the victimology market, and they're trying to pull a fast one
by manipulating the reader's emotions. Of course what happened thirty years ago wasn't right, but we're
led in our outrage to presume this still happens. Why try to present past injustices as present problems?
Do the writers not have any more recent examples?
Book Description
Activists, lawyers, students, teachers, union members, government officials, and judges will welcome this thoroughly researched, comprehensive examination of human rights violations in the wake of 9/11. Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Executive Director Ann Fagan Ginger has created an accessible, well-organized reference work divided into six parts:
· Part I, "The Mobilization of Shame," describes executive orders and new laws violating basic rights, and citizen reactions, to add up the real score in the War on Terrorism. · Part II, "Where the People and their Lawyers Can Go to Redress Grievances," spells out the complaint process through the little known Office of Inspector General, and in U.S. federal and state courts. · Part III, "What the Government Is Committed and Required To Do in the United Nations and the Organization of American States," describes the reporting process and how it has brought about improvements in many countries, such as new treatments for AIDS. · Part IV, "Report on Human Rights Violations," forms the bulk of the book. It describes all the relevant facts in 184 reports on 30 types of violations. Activists will find all the facts they need and lawyers can reference the specific laws being violated by government officials, military personnel, agents, and contractors. · Part V, "Text of Petitions, Resolutions, Ordinances," spells out what has been proposed, and adopted, since 9/11 to stop violations. · Part VI, "Text of Laws Violated and Ignored," provides the language of the U.S. Constitution, Bill Of Rights, Articles in the UN Charter, the Convention Against Torture, the Geneva Conventions, and other human rights and international law treaties the U.S. has ratified or signed.
This is an indispensable tool for citizens and lawyers defending civil liberties in the era of the Patriot Act and the War on Terrorism.
Customer Reviews:
RE: A bad book on a good topic.......2006-02-09
Please take the review from Jill Malter with a ghrain of salt. If you review her reviews of other books it's important to note that they share a common, Pro Israeli point of view. Naturally, she has every right to hold this view. However, to defend the building of a "security wall" is beyond defensibility. If the goal was security, Israel would build the wall 1 mile within the, internationally accepted, 1967 border. That is a defensible action. The current wall is an act of imperialism at best and terror at worst. Read the Chomskey / Dershowitz debate for a more detailed discussion of this topic.
That issue aside. This is an extraordinary book that details some of the pressing issues confronting our current political situation in the US. I would also recommend Amy Goodman's book.
A bad book on a good topic.......2005-10-10
I'm very interested in human rights. And I support human rights for everyone. But I know that it is not always easy for those whose rights are violated to get a hearing. The powers that be may not be interesting in publicizing their complaints. What is to be done?
The answer is to find a way to speak out, and to get allies. And this book could be part of such an effort. Instead, it achieves the opposite effect. The wrong allies have been chosen. It is bad enough to choose tyrants as allies. It is catastrophic to choose liars.
It is a good idea to monitor our behavior. But that requires honesty and accuracy, not mere transmission of anti-American propaganda.
Since this book mentions American involvement in the Middle East, it would have been a good idea for it to find fault with our government's tolerance for and even support of opponents of human rights, including Arafat and his gang. However, this book chooses to ignore Arafat's transgressions and find fault with Arafat's Israeli victims for building a separation fence to defend the lives of Israeli citizens! And the book finds fault with the United States for supporting Israel's right to do this at the International Court of Justice.
A book about human rights that includes such a gross moral error simply can't be trusted. And those who wish to use such a book to air their grievances about transgressions of human rights thus lose an opportunity to be heard and taken seriously.
Book Description
How to step out of the emotional drama a work.
How to recognize repeated no-win scenarios.
How to build a workforce where the collective energy is spent on productivity instead of emotional gamesmanship.
It's for those that agree the workplace is overrun with a victim mentality.
For those that sometimes find themselves feeling that life at work "isn't fair."
For those that have fears about speaking up at work.
For that that are worn down from playing the hero role at work.
It's about how to avoid and deal with destructive emotional traps in the workplace.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent ideas from an original thinker.......2006-01-29
Attending one of Don's seminars made the decision to buy this book an easy one. As a business consultant who deals with how HR impacts a business' bottom line, I found this book a veritable treasure trove of gems and nuggets of practical wisdom. His metaphor of "the stage" is pure genius and has yielded the unexpected bonus of benefiting my personal life as much as my professional. I would stake my reputation on recommending this book to anyone who has to manage people at the workplace, and fully expect his ideas to become universally accepted in the years to come.
Amazon.com
In 1993, Yale computer science professor David Gelernter opened what he thought was an unsolicited doctoral dissertation. It exploded, destroying his right hand and eye and making his torso resemble a construction site. Gelernter, bleeding and "royally annoyed," walked to the local hospital, keeping his feet trudging along in time with "an old Zionist marching song with a good strong beat." When he got there, his blood pressure measured zero and surgeons barely saved his life. "Music is useful," Gelernter observes.
While doctors rebuilt Gelernter, he published three books. In this one, Gelernter talks about getting blown up and sewn up and vehemently argues that society is losing its lifeblood--its belief in moral authority. He blames this on the takeover of the national mindset by the liberal intellectual elite, whose anything-goes ethic has silenced the drumbeat of tradition that used to keep us all in line. Though he doesn't directly blame the intellectual liberals for the Unabomber's actions, he does locate the madman on a continuum of modern social degradation. Drawing Life is an impassioned, not tightly reasoned argument and will make few converts to Gelernter's brand of conservatism. It's interesting as all get out though, with lots of clever lines and quirky insights. It's a good thing the Unabomber didn't silence Gelernter--a stubborn mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Customer Reviews:
A survivor of the Unibomber speaks out.......2004-06-18
During the 1964 presidential campaign, the candidacy of Barry Goldwater was neatly summed up in a cheery song that boasted, in part, "We're the bright young men who want to go back to 1910 . . . We're Barry's Boys!"
It sums up the conservative mind set -- 50 years behind the times. Well, guess what? This book is the up-to-date version of Barry's Boys; Gelernter is a thoroughly modern 'Barry Boy' who carefully subtracted 54 from 1994 and came up with the ideal time period of 1940. He wrote this book as an attack against the Unibomber who almost killed him with a mail bomb in 1993; the result is more to be pitied than an expression of sadness.
Part of the fault, of course, is "The Media." He's very accurate in citing a 1996 report about the Dole campaign, "The crowd hates the reporters, the reporters hate the crowd . . . . . " True enough, except the same condition existed in 1964 when reporters covering the Republican convention feared for their lives at the hands of delegates. It not an isolated feeling. In 1968, my cousin was an actual casualty covering the Democratic convention in Chicago; in 1970, the police chief in Gallup ordered me not to attend a Democratic rally because he didn't have the manpower needed to protect me from the mob.
Welcome to the real world, Mr. Gelernter.
Despite this, modern America is a vast better than life in 1940, and in 1964. The great debate this year is whether 2004 is an improvement over 2000; anyone with an ounce of memory knows it is better than 1992, and 1988, and 1984.
Every social and material advance in society is always condemned by Luddites who are terrified of the future, disgusted by the present and barely tolerant of the past. They are personified by Ronald Reagan, who would have died in 1981 except for modern medical technology that didn't exist in 1964 when he praised Barry's Boys and their march to the past.
The future is a wonderful place. I'd like to see as much of it as possible; I don't have any desire to return to those barren yesteryears when the button shoes, spats and top hats of Bary's Boys were all in fashion.
Anyone who thinks the future means going back to the past will love this book. The writing quality is delightful, sparkling, all clever technique and devoid of intellect. If you want to go back to 1910, or even 1940, this book is a delight. But, if you wake up in the morning looking forward to an exciting new day and a bright new future, it's a waste of time.
Not very good........2001-12-04
This was an incredibly biased book written by an intelligent
man.
Enough with the kvetching already!.......2000-09-05
"Drawing Life" is by David Gelernter, a computer science professor who survived one of Ted Kaczynski's mail bombs.
The book is about a well educated, intelligent man who has descended into a fear of the future and a hatred of the society that nurtured him, who dreams of a glorious American past that never really existed, who has written a venomous yet pedestrian political tract that would never have been printed without the author's notoriety, and who has come to the conclusion that sometimes people must be deliberately killed to remake society.
This book is also about the Unabomber.
Gelernter has endured an awful lot, and for this one is prepared to grant him slack. If he's cranky, he's certainly earned the right to be this way.
Yet, I've come away disappointed, not just with "Drawing Life," but with Gelernter himself. He is a profoundly bitter man who believes modern society has been ruined not just by the Unabomber but by the likes of unwed mothers, liberals, lawyers, feminists, intellectuals, working mothers, left-wing journalists, Hillary Clinton, and the usual gang of suspects straight from Rush Limbaugh's enemies list.
Tiresome and unoriginal. Not worth reading.
And David, enough with the kvetching already!
It's difficult to convey how important this book is........1998-10-12
This is a really "heavy", shocking, frustrating, frightening, uplifting - overall important book that I highly recommend. Really important messages and ideas. Read it, it'll make you think.
Very good work.......1998-09-15
Mr. Gelerntner's book is very insightful and thought provoking. I highly reccommend it.
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- Principles of Criminal Law (with Built-in Study Guide) (3rd Edition)
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- Proactive Police Management (7th Edition)
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