Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf

Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
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Whorf is real linguistics

Real Linguistics

This book is worth it.

Lovers of language will love this book!

The Structure of the Language We Use

Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
Benjamin Lee Whorf
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech

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Course in General Linguistics (Open Court Classics)

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Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)

ASIN: 0262730065

Customer Reviews:

Whorf is real linguistics.......2006-04-19

The reviewer claiming that Whorf is out of favor in the field of linguistics has a skewed idea of the disipline. Plenty of first-class linguists, including John Lucy, Stephen Levinson, Eve Danziger, Michael Silverstein, Penny Lee, John Gumperz and others take direct inspiration in their cutting-edge research from Whorf.

It is important to understand that the term "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" is a misnomer, a misreading that developed in the positivistic 50s after Whorf was dead. He was too smart to refer to his "Principal of Linguistic Relativity" (his term) as a 'hypothesis'. It's closer to an axiom, not an empirically testable hypothesis. This book is not for beginners, but read it carefully and you will gain much insight into the connections between language and thought. If you want a discussion of language for total beginners, Edward Sapir's book _Language_, first published in 1921 has been in continuous print for good reason--it's still excellent and relevant.

Real Linguistics.......2005-03-08

It's an interesting topic, no doubt, but the Whorf Hypothesis has gone out of favor in the field of linguistics.
I recommend Pinker for not-too-technical linguistic reading.

This book is worth it........2002-12-10

This was the first time I had read a book about linguistics. For some time I had heard about Benjamin Lee Whorf and his seminal work on American Indian languages. This is his most famous book, a book of some of his papers during the 30's and 40's.

Unfortunately, given my lack of linguistic knowledge I did not understand much of the terminology throughout his more academic papers such as "Some Verbal Categories of Hopi" or "Gestalt Technique of Stem Composition in Shawnee". Nevertheless there is plenty to read which discusses languages without too much academic terminology, although there is always some. His most interesting reads are the more general ones such as "Language, Mind and Reality" or "Language and Logic".

Whorf makes the fascinating assertion, new for his time, that the language we speak, to some degree at least, forces us to orient our view of the world in a certain direction, for example the noun based structure of Indo-European languages forces it into considering the world as made up of interacting fixed parts whereas Hopi doesn't even have a tense system and doesn't consider the past or the future and sees events as either manifest or unmanifest. A completely different way of viewing the world and yet possessing its own internal logic and ability to express whatever is necessary. This is something Whorf stresses throughout and the so-called `primitive' languages of for example, the native Americans, is far from this western perspective. In fact Hopi stands out as being a language ideally suited to the new physics.

Whorf really lives in two worlds regarding his linguistic studies 1. the fascinating metaphysical world of language constructions throughout the world, i.e. the world view generated by these languages and 2. the strict linguistic approach to languages with its own very formal and structured method to analyse languages, see for example the formulaic approach for one-syllable English words in the paper entitled "Linguistics as an Exact Science".

This book is worth it as no doubt the one by Sapir as well.

Lovers of language will love this book!.......2001-11-05

This book was required reading when I was in college, and it made such an impression on me that 50 years later I sought it out, and re-read it. Anyone interested in communication, and the impact language has on society ( or how society impacts language!) will find the examples of words used (and not used)in various cultures fascinating.

The Structure of the Language We Use.......2001-10-16

Whorf (1899-1941), trained as a chemical engineer, worked as a fire prevention consultant and did original work in linguistic anthropology. He remains best know for advocating that the structure of language not only reflects but influences our world view and behavior. "We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it this way--an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language" (213). This has been called "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis," (acknowledging Whorf's mentor, linguistic anthropologist Edward Sapir) although it seems sufficiently general for many hypotheses to be derived from it. Alfred Korzybski independently developed similar notions, writing,"...we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use" (Science and Sanity 60). Students of Korzybski's General Semantics have a particular concern for the practical implications and applications of such views. Read This Book!

Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews

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Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews

Manufacturer: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Jeff Wall
Photography Theory (Art Seminar)
The Nature of Photographs
Jeff Wall: Catalogue Raisonne 1978-2004
Gerhard Richter: Atlas

ASIN: 0870707086
Release Date: 2007-02-01

Book Description

Throughout his career, the influential art photographer Jeff Wall has written periodically on a variety of subjects--from the work of his Vancouver colleagues, to the art of such diverse figures as Edouard Manet, On Kawara, and Dan Graham, to the important role of photography in Conceptual art. Wall's own work takes center stage in the many interviews he has granted over the past two decades. Both the essays and the interviews are indispensable to the study of Wall's work, which will be the subject of a major American traveling retrospective, with stops in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, throughout 2007. Thanks to Wall's wide-ranging curiosity, nimble mind, and articulate voice, the texts are also of considerable interest outside of the context of his own oeuvre. This generous selection of 14 essays and 23 interviews from the past 25 years is the first collection of Wall's texts to be published in English, and as such, is an instant collector's item. This affordable volume also includes 120 black-and-white illustrations for reference purposes.

The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library)

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Moving, Thought-Provoking, and Genius
Excellent
The Ultimate Albert Camus Anthology
Love, Exile, and Suffering Illuminated by Life around Death

The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Everyman's Library)
Albert Camus
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
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Binding: Hardcover

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The Stranger
The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Nausea
The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays

ASIN: 1400042550
Release Date: 2004-08-17

Book Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

From one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the twentieth century–two novels, six short stories, and a pair of essays in a single volume. In both his essays and his fiction, Albert Camus (1913—1960) de-ployed his lyric eloquence in defense against despair, providing an affirmation of the brave assertion of humanity in the face of a universe devoid of order or meaning.

The Plague–written in 1947 and still profoundly relevant–is a riveting tale of horror, survival, and resilience in the face of a devastating epidemic. The Fall (1956), which takes the form of an astonishing confession by a French lawyer in a seedy Amsterdam bar, is a haunting parable of modern conscience in the face of evil. The six stories of Exile and the Kingdom (1957) represent Camus at the height of his narrative powers, masterfully depicting his characters–from a renegade missionary to an adulterous wife –at decisive moments of revelation. Set beside their fictional counterparts, Camus’s famous essays “The Myth of Sisyphus” and “Reflections on the Guillotine” are all the more powerful and philosophically daring, confirming his towering place in twentieth-century thought.

Customer Reviews:

Moving, Thought-Provoking, and Genius.......2006-02-08

I had read Camus's "The Stranger" and was taken aback by the wonderful understanding he had of the human mind. I needed to read more, and in this handsome book was a great feast for the mind. It is not meant to be read all at once, I found it helpful to read another book inbetween the full-length novels within the collection.
There has been no singular work that has moved me as much as the "The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays", it goes beyond existentialism and his philosophy. It delves into the very mind, that which makes us human. The stories are not lost through their translation from French, the characters are the people you see in the streets, but they are put under the eye of a profound intellectual. It is more than worth the price, and the time spent reading the words is time well spent. His contribution to modern philosophy and existentialism is unchallenged, but he is also an amazing author and voice. The Plague may be the highlight of the book, but one will not lose enthusiasm reading that which follows.

Excellent.......2005-10-10

Albert Camus is one of my favorite authors. His stories are some of the greatest of the past century.

The Ultimate Albert Camus Anthology.......2005-02-27

If you're a fan of existentialism or just great literature then this is the book for you. Just by buying this set you're already saving money and the hardcover makes it great for book shelf eye candy. If you want to read what each section is about then just read the next review but if you're reading this, take into consideration that Camus wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for nothing. He was deeply involved in the struggles for Algerian freedom and you can tell from his novels that he is consciensly involved with the questions of the absurd and the freedom of man in a messed up world. These books and essays will make you think and start to ask yourself questions.

Love, Exile, and Suffering Illuminated by Life around Death.......2004-09-11

What is the meaning of life? For many, that question is an abstraction except in the context of being aware of losing some of the joys of life, or life itself. In The Plague, Camus creates a timeless tale of humans caught in the jaws of implacable death, in this case a huge outbreak of bubonic plague in Oran, Algeria on the north African coast. With the possibility of dying so close, each character comes to see his or her life differently. In a sense, we each get a glimpse of what we, too, may think about life in the last hours and days before our own deaths. The Plague will leave you with a sense of death as real rather than as an abstraction. Then by reflecting in the mirror of that death, you can see life more clearly.

For example, what role would you take if bubonic plague were to be unleashed in your community? Would you flee? Would you help relieve the suffering? Would you become a profiteer? Would you help maintain order? Would you withdraw or seek out others? These are all important questions for helping you understand yourself that this powerful novel will raise for you.

The book is described as objectively as possible by a narrator, who is one of the key figures in the drama. That literary device allows each of us to insert ourselves into the situation.

Let me explain the main themes. Love is expressed in many ways. There is the love of men and women for each other. Dr. Rieux's wife is ill, and has just left for treatment at a sanitarium. Rambert, a journalist on temporary assignment, is separated from his live-in girl friend in Paris. Dr. Rieux's mother comes to stay with him during his mother's absence, so there is also love of parent and child. The magistrate also loses his son to the plague after a desperate battle. Separations occur because of the quarantine on Oran, which causes love to be tested. What is love without the other person being present? The characters find that their memories soon become abstractions. But they reach out to establish new love with each other. Tarrou, who is also caught in Oran, decides or organize a volunteer corps to help with the sick and dead. Rambert decides to stay in Oran to help after having arranged to escape the quarantine. The survivors find succor in increasing closeness with each other. Rieux and Tarrou become close, almost like brothers. Even Rieux's patients become people with whom he develops an emotional bond, even though the waves of death become an abstraction as he can do little to avert them. The priest figure also helps to explore the notion of love for God and God's love for us. The exile theme is reinforced by the quarantine. People cannot leave Oran. The disease itself causes that exile to become worse. If someone in your household becomes ill, each well person has to be quarantined. So you may be living in a tent in the soccer stadium wondering what is happening to the rest of your family. Cottard is a criminal who is on the run from the authorities. He is in despair as the plague begins, and tries to kill himself. The distractions of the plague keep the authorities from troubling him, so the period of the plague is an exile from his criminal past.

Suffering is easy to explain. Bubonic plague came in two forms in the book. Both brought painful and rapid death, with few reprieves. There is high fever, painful swelling or difficulty in breathing, and enormous pain. Those who tend the suffering also suffer, from the enormous workloads, the sense of futility, and the fear that they, too, will be next.

Camus does a nice job of pointing out that these themes also recur in everyday life. We just don't see them very clearly. The people in Oran live in an ugly city that deliberately built itself away from the beauty of the ocean on a sun-scorched plateau plagued by winds. They take little time to enjoy each other or the ocean, because they are caught up with making money. Commerce is their passion. So they cut themselves off from love, in an exile of spirit, which causes them to shrivel and suffer emotionally even before the plague comes. Tarrou also describes is own sense of the plague in everyday life when he discovers that his father is a prosecuting attorney who helps bring criminals to the justice of a firing squad. Even that faint connection of not trying to stop the legal killing causes Tarrou to feel like he carries the plague within him.

The book is masterful in its use of metaphor. In the beginning, dying rats and small animals presage the plague attacking humans. At the end, their return presages the return of normal life to Oran. The scenes alternate between illuminating the main themes in the context of the physical plague and the emotional plague. Religion is used as a bridge between the two, raising the fundamental question about what God's purpose is in unleashing the plague. The priest is fully tested in his love of God through this development, which is one of the most moving parts of the book.

I have read the book both in French and in English, and found this translation to be a perfectly appropriate one. There are few nuances that you will miss by reading this in English. Obviously, if you read French well, you should read the book in its original form.

This book is an excellent example of why Albert Camus was named a Nobel Laureate in Literature.

After you read this great novel, I encourage you to consider the subject of complacency. That's the author's ultimate target. Where are you complacent in ways that cost you love, closeness with others, and happiness? What else is complacency costing you? How can you help others learn to overcome complacency in loving, happy ways without the spectre of death to help you?

American Constitutional Law: Introductory Essays and Selected Cases (14th Edition)

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A great update to a classic college text
Good Intro to Constitutional Law
Understanding the Constitution
American Constitutional Law
This book is the best basic text on U.S. Constitutional law.

American Constitutional Law: Introductory Essays and Selected Cases (14th Edition)
Alpheus Thomas Mason , and Donald Grier Stephenson
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0131174371

Book Description

This classic collection of carefully selected and edited Supreme Court case excerpts and comprehensive background essays explores constitutional law and the role of the Supreme Court in its development and interpretation. Well-grounded in both theory and politics, it displays the role of the U.S. Supreme Court as a legal and political institution and as a major player in American government. The volume examines and presents supporting cases regarding jurisdiction and organization of the federal courts, the constitution, the supreme court, and judicial review, congress and the president, federalism, the electoral process, the commerce clause, national taxing and spending power, property rights and the development of due process, nationalization of the bill of rights, criminal justice, freedom of expression, protest and symbolic speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, religious liberty, privacy, equal protection of the laws, and security and freedom in wartime. For those interested in American constitutional law.

Customer Reviews:

A great update to a classic college text.......2007-01-04

This book is *not* designed for casual readers of the law. However, it remains perhaps the most comprehensive review of American Constitutional history available in a single volume. This is still used on college campuses, and should be read by anyone who wants to peruse some of the central arguments that have shaped this country.

Good Intro to Constitutional Law.......2006-11-10

This a good book for undergraduates seeking to understand the Constitution and judicial decisions that shape the application of the Constitution. Very informative and easily read. But this is not a good book for pre-law or law students. The material is too cursory and there is no analysis of the cases.

Understanding the Constitution.......2005-09-14

I first used this text in the seventh edition (Mason, Beaney and Stephenson) in my undergraduate Constitutional Law class, and it has remained a constant resource for me. I have invested in two of the upgraded editions, including this latest 14th edition.

Mason et al. has a wonderful style of combining accessible and interesting narrative essays with case law summaries and texts from rulings. The authors state in the preface that they see constitutional law development as 'an intricate blend of history and politics.' The Supreme Court functions in the real world (indeed, has a long-standing tradition of not deciding 'moot' cases, but rather only adjudicating in real life situations).

The chapters rely heavily on case law and texts from decisions, but each chapter is introduced by an essay that sets tone, context, and highlights of particular interest. Where appropriate, the authors draw in texts from beyond case law - for example, in the chapter dealing with Congress, the Court and the Presidency, the authors bring in excerpts from the Federalist papers, and with the chapter on the development of due process, they excerpt Justice Cardozo's papers.

This is a broadly sweeping text that covers the whole Constitution, each article of the primary text, various amendments dealing with governmental and procedural issues, and many chapters dealing with rights and liberties contained in both the Bill of Rights (first ten amendments) and other amendments. It includes indexes of cases, a good chart of Justices of the Supreme Court, and the full text of the Constitution and amendments.

This is a book more intended for the student of political science or history who wishes to gain a better understanding of the processes and content of Constitutional Law at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. It may be useful as a secondary text in a law school's Constitutional Law class, also. It is not light reading, particularly in the case law sections, but the essays are worthwhile and can generally be read as stand-alone texts for those who want to get the broad overview without the case detail - however, beware of this approach, for the law and process is built on the details.

American Constitutional Law.......2002-07-11

American Constitutional Law: Introductory Essays and Selected Cases by Alpheus Thomas Mason and Donald Grier Stephenson is a book that when read you'll find an intricate blend of history and politics.

This is an excellent book for those studing constitutional law as there are plenty of case study with selected readings, queries, and key terms associated with each particular case. You'll get a real good dose of the constitution here and why decisions are the way they are at that time. Applying standards drawn from the constitution, the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbitor and guardian of individual privilege and governmental prerogative alike.

This book gives the reader a broad understanding of the present with respect to the past and includes relevant extrajudicial material. A very good introductory book on American Constitutional Law.

This book is the best basic text on U.S. Constitutional law........1998-03-08

For any student of American constitutional law, this book is the best exposition of the fundamentals of the U.S. Constitution and the Supreme Court. Further enquiry into the subject is not possible without an understanding of the ideas presented in this book.

Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

Outstanding in so many ways
Writing at its best - and it happens to be in detective noir
The best of Raymond Chandler
Classic American, cynical detective stories.
Priceless Solely for The Simple Art of Murder

Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback /Double Indemnity / Selected Essays and Letters (Library of America)
Raymond Chandler
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Crime Stories and Other Writings (Library of America)
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / Nightmare ... / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America)
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ASIN: 1883011086

Amazon.com

Raymond Chandler is arguably the best American pulp novelist. His prose is so acutely visual, his characters so raw and intense that it is small wonder that all but one of his books have been made into movies. And his hero Philip Marlowe has graduated into American legend. Together with its companion volume (Stories and Early Novels), Later Novels and Other Writings forms the most complete Chandler collection in print. In addition to his later novels, this collection contains selected essays and letters, biographical information, and textual as well as explanatory notes. As an added bonus, the editor has included Chandler's screenplay to Double Indemnity, the classic Billy Wilder film adapted from James M. Cain's novel. You're able to compare the script to the finished movie and have the rare opportunity to see how one major crime novelist altered and interpreted another.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding in so many ways.......2007-02-24

First, let me say that there's a separate volume of Chandler's early novels. As much as I liked this volume, I actually enjoyed the earlier novels just a little bit more and suggest starting there. I started reading one story and wound up going through all of them in both volumes in the space of a few months. I also wound up reading and enjoying all the Dashiell Hammett stories, but I give Chandler a slight edge.

I won't try to list all the ways these novels are great and entertaining, but here's one thought that hasn't been mentioned in other reviews. Chandler is excellent at presenting a hero-character who has to worry about money and making a living. Indeed, Chandler makes this issue integral to the character's persona and to the plot line. Yes, the books are escapist in so many ways. Yet, in this respect at least, they are far more realistic than almost all of the fiction, and much of the non-fiction, these days.

Writing at its best - and it happens to be in detective noir.......2006-06-20

C-L-A-S-S-I=C HIGH/low notes. These stories are like a deck cards, all aces...... but there are way too few left. I finished "Little Sisters" (GREAT), "Farewell, My Lovely"- is recommended in the other half (earlier edition). The hook is Marlow. In times where many take the easy/cheap way out, I ride hard with Marlow. Marlow does it with style, humor, wit, grit, and nothing less than an all american: get the job done. But in a way that is the opposite his nemesis: the monopolies of power & money. Of course they admire and hate him. But it just doesn't get any better than Chandler. Need an excuse? Then read it for the wrting alone. The best!

The best of Raymond Chandler.......2005-12-05

This book, contaning Chandlers later works, is perhaps the best collection of Chandler you can find. Sure, does not contain the better-known novels - The Big Sleep and Farewell my Lovely - but it does contain The Long Goodbye, which is not only Chandler's finest, but a great novel by any measure.

Chandler lived a tough, hard-drinking life, and these later works came out of his mind with difficulty. But the quality of The Lady in the Lake and The Long Goodbye (The Little Sister is less memorable) make this collection essential.

In addition, the book contains some essays and letters, including Chandler's writing on the mystery genre, which will interest any budding suspense author.

In short, read this book! Read The Long Goodbye, then read it again. This is not just a great mystery, but it is also great literature.

Classic American, cynical detective stories........2005-05-12

Chandler is arguably the best detective story writer out there. If you expand this genre to all mystery writers, he would still be one of the best.

Detective stories aren't as common as they once were, but if you look at the offspring of the Pulp magazine once so popular, television, they are still as popular as ever. Chandler was one author who defined what a detective story was. This book contains four novels:The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, and Playback. These are wonderfully entertaining stories that contain the archetypical hard-bitten detective, Philip Marlowe. After reading these stories you will forever see Marlowe in every detective story you see or read, from Magnum to the latest TV cop. How can you not love an author who sums up Modern American Capitalism with lines like these? "We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk." Or an author who in the early 50's, (50 years before the current 'Queers Dress Up' shows) so presciently wrote, "The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum." Or his comment on a speech by a politician, "He did not bore us with any facts."
These books are not just riveting, fun reading, but full of thoughtful quotes like the above.

Chandler also is must-reading for his understanding of criminality, venality, human nature, Southern California, Movies, American culture and American relationship dynamics. I hate to use the word "classic" to describe stories that are just so plain fun to read, but I find it hard not to.

This volume also contains a screenplay, Double Indemnity, and a few essays and letters. The essays "The Simple Art of Murder", and "Writers in Hollywood" should be required reading for anyone interested in 20th century culture, movies, and literature. Just a few tidbits more. Chandler on English Mystery Writers - "The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers." Chandler on boredom - "There are no dull subjects, only dull minds." Chandler on critics - "The average critic never recognizes an achievement when it happens. He explains it after it has become respectable."

My only criticism is that the plots are contrived and sometimes complicated. But such criticism is like complaining that the Mona Lisa would be a fine painting if only it were of a different size.

Chandler is simply wonderful, funny, cynical, and yes, - respectable.

Priceless Solely for The Simple Art of Murder.......2005-01-18

While Hammett may very well have carried the modern hard-boiled mystery forward into the light, Chandler defined it. Of the two, I think I prefer Chandler most. Chandler better than anyone else set the standard for the genre, and laid down the rules to which all the great mystery writers of today rigorously adhere. Here, in brief, is the mystery writer's credo:

'But down these mean streets must a man go who himself is neither tarnished nor afraid.'

As Chandler remarked in his classic essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Hammett rightly deserves the title of Founder of the modern mystery because he succeeded in giving murder back to the kind of people who commit it. So what kind of person goes up against the kind of people who committ murder? Chandler responds with Exhibit A: Philip Marlowe.

Chandler's Marlowe resonates in my favorite mystery romps, the Spenser series, and the archetype also finds its way into more than a few 'Good Cop' dramas.

I enjoy the escapades of Philip Marlowe simply because the wry cynicism, coupled with the tough moral fibre to get to the bottom of any affair and see justice (or at least some sort of closure) served, makes for truly fascinating escapist reading. Each of the books in this collection, as in the collection preceding it, amply deliver on this score.

If you happen to acquire this masterpiece, never let it go. These are classic books, and will never become dated. I personally prefer The Long Goodbye to The Big Sleep, and found the former a longer and more satisfying read. In every story of both collections, there is to be found a depraved tapestry of gilded greater Los Angeles society, quite literally ripped from the headline news of the day. Most mystery fans will love the idea of an honest man in a thoroughly dishonest world, on a righteous quest for justice.

Once you get this triumph of American literature in your hands, mix your favorite drink, disappear to a quiet place with a comfortable chair (with good lighting), and enjoy the Great Master at work. If only more writers could write like this, then I would not need cable TV...

Average customer rating:

A True Lover of Books
What a great and most interesting writer
Something for everyone and some things for no one
not for the weak of mind
Mandarin

Borges: Selected Non-Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges
Manufacturer: Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Ficciones (English Translation)

ASIN: 0140290117
Release Date: 2000-10-31

Amazon.com

Jorge Luis Borges was our century's greatest miniaturist, perpetually cramming entire universes onto the head of a pin. Yet his splendid economy, along the wafer-thin proportions of such classic volumes as Ficciones and Labyrinths, has given readers the impression that Borges was miserly with his prose. In fact, he was something of a verbal spendthrift. His collected stories alone run to nearly 1,000 pages. And his nonfiction output was even more staggering: the young Borges cranked out hundreds of essays, book notes, cultural polemics, and movie reviews, and even after he lost his sight in 1955, he continued to dictate short pieces by the dozens. Eliot Weinberger has assembled just a fraction of this outpouring in Selected Non-Fictions, and the result is a 559-page Borgesian blowout, in which the Argentinean fabulist takes on being and nothingness, James Joyce and Lana Turner, and (surprisingly) racial hatred and the rise of Nazism. So much for our image of the mandarin bookworm! The very engagé author of this book seems more like a subequatorial Camus, with a dash of Siskel and Ebert on the side.

Selected Non-Fictions demonstrates just how quickly Borges began wrestling with such brainteasers as identity, time, and infinity. Indeed, the very first piece in the collection, "The Nothingness of Personality" (1922), already finds him fiddling with the self: "I, as I write this, am only a certainty that seeks out the words that are most apt to compel your attention. That proposition and a few muscular sensations, and the sight of the limpid branches that the trees place outside my window, constitute my current I." There are many such meditations here, including "A History of Eternity" (in which Borges maps out his own, disarmingly empty version of the eternal, "without a God or even a co-proprietor, and entirely devoid of archetypes"). But it's more fun--and more revelatory--to see the author venturing beyond his metaphysical stomping grounds. Borges on King Kong is a hoot, and a cornball masterpiece such as The Petrified Forest elicits this terrific nugget: "Death works in this film like hypnosis or alcohol: it brings the recesses of the soul into the light of day." His capsule biographies are a delight, his critiques of Nazi propaganda are memorably stringent, and nobody should miss him on the tango. True, the sheer variety and mind-boggling erudition of Selected Non-Fictions can be a little forbidding. But, taken as a whole, the collection surely meets the specifications that Borges laid out in a 1927 essay on literary pleasure: "If only some eternal book existed, primed for our enjoyment and whims, no less inventive in the populous morning as in the secluded night, oriented toward all hours of the world." Oh, but it does. --James Marcus

Book Description

This unique volume presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers: his extraordinary non--fiction prose. Borges' unlimited curiosity and almost superhuman erudition become, in his essays, reviews, lectures, and political and cultural notes, a vortex for seemingly the entire universe: Dante and Ellery Queen; Shakespeare and the Kabbalah; the history of angels and the history of the tango; the Buddha, Bette Davis, and the Dionne Quints.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism
Chosen International Book of the Year by George Steiner in the Times Literary Supplement

Customer Reviews:

A True Lover of Books.......2007-07-03

Borges claims in one of these articles that he was "more proud of the books he has read than the books he has written." I imagine I would feel the same way, had I written any books! And I think this statement captures the unifying theme of this compendium. Herein Borges will astonish and charm you with the breadth, variety, and whimsy of his literary taste.
The book is a compilation of critical essays, social commentary, reviews of the fledgling film art, and other oddities published in various media from throughout Borges's literary life. Each offers you new horizens for literary pursuit and further reading, and all are executed with Borges's renowned concision.
What I like most of all is that Borges is more interested the kinds of books people really enjoy reading, such as Bradbury, HG Wells, Lord Dunsany, and Kipling, rather than the fossilized academic "classics." One of my favorite features are the several recommended reading lists, in which Borges passes on his own most pleasurable reading experiences. There is also a refreshing eclecticism in Borges's taste--for example, this book lead me to Mathematics and the Imagination, a fun popular math book. Another personal highlight is the essay on Edward Fitzgerald.
This volume is not something one would read from cover to cover in several sittings, but rather a treasure trove to be mined from time to time, like the famous cave discovered by Ali Baba in that book so dear to Borges's heart!

What a great and most interesting writer .......2006-05-08

Eliot Weinberger has done a real service to the world of literature by selecting, and translating these pieces. They show the range of interest, the incredible ability to make inventive creative cross- connections of one of Modern Literature's true masters, Borges.
Borges covers worlds in his writing, worlds of Literature , worlds of the Argentinean society he and some of his ancestors grew up in, worlds given in a universal encycopediac reading, which seems to cover all continents and all cultures.
Borges greatest work is considered to be his ' Ficciones'. But his signature is present in all , in a single page of a book- review or a philosphical meditation.
For him worlds mingle and combine, and are retranslated in such a way as to reappear as Literature.
He also in this work reveals himself to be a decent and courageous opponent of Fascism.
He confounds and surprises us at times with these strange mixings of things, but the poetic and parable- like element is so strong in this work that it engages us, and forces us to question our own small pictures of reality.
What a great and interesting writer. What a pleasure to have this work to enrich our minds with.

Something for everyone and some things for no one.......2005-08-11

Because Borges lived and worked in Argentina, few have heard of him in the English-speaking world. Those that have are probably most familiar with his fiction stories. This book of non-fiction essays shows the vast knowledge and wide variation of interests of Borges. Therefore, this collection really does have something for everyone. Unfortunately, there are also many essays that are unreadable, some annoying repititions, and some essays are just plain dull.

So, what does Borges write about? He covers some metaphysical ground on the nature of time and infinity. He defines heaven as an infinite library, and then goes into the nature of infinity. On the more mundane end, he reviews movies and gives capsule biographies of authors - King Kong, Citizen Kane, and more obscure (and not necessarily Hollywood) films. He writes on contemporary (at the time) politics - Nazi Germany, the curators of the national library, etc. He gets intensely personal - there is one essay on the progression of his blindness. But if there is a main theme that permeates these pieces, it's his love of literature in all languages - Spanish, English (old and modern), German. He has an abiding love of the Greek classics (Homer, Virgil) and great admiration for Joyce, Poe, and Chesterton.

Unfortunately, those of us with a less classical education cannot keep up to everything that Borges says - I, for one, will never have the time to learn ancient Greek! - which makes certain essays difficult. There are other essays (especially early on) that are simply unintellegible (this may be the fault of the translators, especially since there are times when two or three essays cover the same ground with increasing degrees of murkiness). But it always happened that a real gem would appear just when I was getting frustrated with a series of uninteresting essays.

On the balance, about a third of the essays are not interesting (or badly translated, or repetitions), a third are interesting if not spectacular, and the final third have at least one moment of sheer brilliance. It's well worth buying, but it's unlikely you'll read it from cover to cover without taking a break - I took many breaks to read other things, and it took me over 1.5 years to complete the whole book. But you know what? - on the balance, I like his non-fiction better than his fiction

not for the weak of mind.......2005-07-20

I read first one of his books titled "Ficciones" which really struck me because I never imagined a writer such book. It was fantastic so I proceeded to read this one.
This book just blew me away. I wonder how came up with all these ideas. I never get tired of reading his books. Sometimes I get a little bit dizzy because his ideas and concepts are hard to comprehend.
This book is like to read math theorems. If you like theorems, get this book. It breaks all of them.

Mandarin.......2004-08-31

Kafka knew the pathetic result of procrastination. Resultantly he ordered Max Brod to destroy his work. Two ideas govern Kafka's work, Borges maintains, subordination and infinity. His works contain infinite hierarchies. Kipling and Nietzsche shadow both Jack London and Ernest Hemingway who were both men of action.

Borges blocks out a personal library wonderfully and amusingly. He compares Kierkegaard to Hamlet! Useful notes appear at the back of the book. The volume contains 161 pieces. The introduction of Eliot Weinberger notes that Borges was a master of concision. Borges characterizes James Joyce as a millionaire of words and styles.

As a young man he postulated that all literature is autobiographical. He charges the belief in the inferiority of translations is a superstition. For reason of causality, temporal succession, texts always seem right. Rereading makes them better, more inevitable. The English have an apetite for adventure and legality Borge asserts. A detective narrative encompasses both passions. Borges writes of Croce, Dreiser, S.S. VanDine, Spengler, V. Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and many other writers. He finds Aldous Huxley's fame excessive. He claims for Huxley an intolerable lucidity.

Novelists present a memory of reality. Borges casts MOBY DICK as the infinite novel. One of the pieces is called "The History of the Tango." Borges proclaims the tango is sexual and violent. It has a compensatory function. Swift and Flaubert were fascinated by madness. The concepts espoused by Carlyle are an obvious Presbyterian legacy. Emerson professed a fantastic philosophy, monism. The Germans were very moved by Defoe's ROBINSON CRUSOE and produced countless imitations.

Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE has been a recognized masterpiece for two hundred years. Swedenborg anticipated the nebular theory of Laplace and Kant. He would have liked to talk to Sir Isaac Newton. Borges describes his blindness, an hereditary affliction of his father and grandmother too. He explains that the blind live in a world that is inconvenient. Milton, the historian Prescott, and James Joyce were blind.

This is an appropriate selection of prose works of an incredibly bright mind.

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

Average customer rating:

THE TRUTH as told by malcolm
Essential
Words that demand a closer look inside
one of the top most important books ever
CORE READING

Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements

Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Activism | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X : As Told to Alex Haley
By Any Means Necessary (Malcolm X Speeches & Writings)
Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary
A Testament of Hope : The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Black Power : The Politics of Liberation

ASIN: 0802132138

Book Description

These are the major speeches made by Malcolm X during the last tumultuous eight months of his life. In this short period of time, his vision for abolishing racial inequality in the United States underwent a vast transformation. Breaking from the Black Muslims, he moved away from the black militarism prevalent in his earlier years only to be shot down by an assassin's bullet.

Customer Reviews:

THE TRUTH as told by malcolm.......2007-10-05

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH. NO ONE HAS BROUGHT THE TRUTH LIKE MALCOLM HAS "EVER" IN THIS COUNTRY. JUST NOT HERE BUT HE SPREAD IT ABROAD AS NATIONALISM. ALL OF WHAT MALCOLM SPOKE OF AS FAR AS A RACIST AMERICA AND RACIST POLITICS ARE STILL HERE TODAY. YET THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER SLOWLY, BUT YET ALL OF WHAT MALCOLM HAS SPOKE AS FAR AS RACIST POLITICS ARE STILL HERE AND A PROBLEM. ALTHOUGH MALCOLMS SPEECHES WERE WRITTEN OVER 40 YEARS AGO YOU CAN SAY THAT THEY ARE ALL STILL VALID IN TODAYS 2007. YOU CAN TAKE HE KNOWLEDGE AND OR TEACHINGS AND USE THEM TODAY.HE CAN STILL MAKE THOSE SAME ARGUEMENTS TODAY. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK FOR THE COLLECTION.

Essential.......2007-05-12

The strength of Malcolm X's vision bleeds through even the comparatively dull medium of paper print. Even if you can't watch the man speak now, you can feel the power of his words with this book. Best read after the biography of Malcolm X.

Words that demand a closer look inside.......2007-05-07

Though I believe that Malcolm X was sometimes too angry to be wise, I love that he makes me care about myself, makes me question any absences of self-respect that I may have, not just as a Black person, but as an individual. His words make me ask the less obvious questions of myself, and of others; and they force me to face the things in myself that foster any illusions I have about the world I live in.

one of the top most important books ever.......2006-06-23

While you'd be wise to approach this book with some background knowledge and context, no matter what you're background you have to feel the power of these speeches that still strike as strong today as anything you'll ever read and Malcolm's logic and sincerity hit hard. Don't think you know about what Malcolm stood for if you haven't truly read or heard and engaged his words.
I'd also highly recommend checking Breitman's The Last Year of Malcolm X along with if you have not already.

CORE READING.......2006-03-13

VERY VERY INTERESTING, I LOVE TO HEAR MALCOLM X'S THOUGHTS AND HIS WAYS OF SOLVING PROBLEMS WITHIN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY. THIS IS A MUST READ, WE ALL NEED TO READ HIS SPEECHES AND OPEN ARE MINDS UP.

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 1, 1927-1930 (Walter Benjamin)

Average customer rating:

Beware of the translation

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 1, 1927-1930 (Walter Benjamin)
Walter Benjamin
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Criticism | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books
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Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 2, 1931-1934 (Walter Benjamin)
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3, 1935-1938
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940
The Arcades Project
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926 (Walter Benjamin)

ASIN: 0674015886

Book Description

In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts.

In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, "Surrealism" and "On the Image of Proust," as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany's newspapers.

Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays, "Franz Kafka," "Karl Kraus," and "The Author as Producer," the extended autobiographical meditation "A Berlin Chronicle," and extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer, previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.

Customer Reviews:

Beware of the translation.......2006-05-14

Harvard is doing non-German speakers a great service by compiling all of these essential essays in chronological order. I am baffled, however, that some of the translations are so inaccurate. Non-German readers should know that there are egregious errors in some of these translations, especially those by Rodney Livingstone. I have compared one of his translations closely with the original German and was shocked to find so many inaccuracies. In one sentence Livingstone translates into English the *exact* opposite of what Benjamin actually writes. He doesn't just get the wrong word (as he does elsewhere); he composes a sentence that is the precise negation of what Benjamin wrote. This is very worrisome and does not bode well for the rest of the volume. I have not closely compared the majority of the volume to the original-- I don't have the time for that. But from the little evidence I found in just a few hours it looks bad indeed.

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The Purloined Clinic: Selected Writings
Janet Malcolm
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Latin American | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

In the Freud Archives (New York Review Books Classics)
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
The Journalist and the Murderer
Psychoanalysis
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ASIN: 0679412328
Release Date: 1992-10-20

Book Description

The Purloined Clinic is a retrospective of essays, reviews, and reports that reflect the range and depth of Janet Malcolm's engagement with psychology, criticism, art, and literature.

She examines aspects of "that absurdist collaboration," the psychoanalytic dialogue, from which come "small, stray sell recognitions that no other human relationship yields, brought forward under conditions...that no other human relationship could survive." She addresses such subjects as Tom Wolfe's vendetta against modern architecture, Milan Kundera's literary experiments, and Vaclav Havel's prison letters. She explores the somewhat deflated world of post-revolutionary Prague, guides us through the labyrinthine New York art world of the eighties, and takes us behind the one-way mirror of Salvador Minuchin's school of family therapy.And to each subject she brings the incisive skepticism and dazzling epigrammatic style that are her hallmarks.

“Why don’t more people write like [Malcolm]?... She is cast from the mold of the Eastern European intellectual: beholden to modernism. as familiar with Kundera’s exile as she is with Freud’s Vienna. This sensibility must grant her the detachment she sometimes so mercilessly employs, but it also gives her an unassailable passion for getting to the center of things.” —Boston Globe

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Achebe is a master of thought

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Chinua Achebe
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Home and Exile
Girls at War
Arrow of God
A Man of the People
No Longer at Ease

ASIN: 038541479X
Release Date: 1990-09-01

Book Description

One of the most provocative and original voices in contemporary literature, Chinua Achebe here considers the place of literature and art in our society in a collection of essays spanning his best writing and lectures from the last twenty-three years. For Achebe, overcoming goes hand in hand with eradicating the destructive effects of racism and injustice in Western society. He reveals the impediments that still stand in the way of open, equal dialogue between Africans and Europeans, between blacks and whites, but also instills us with hope that they will soon be overcome.

Customer Reviews:

Achebe is a master of thought.......1998-08-24

I read this as part of my required summer reading for my AP English class, and I have only previously encountered Achebe's work in Things Fall Apart. This collection of essays is often thought-provoking, quite debatable, and never dull. In his opening essay on racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it will certainly be more interesting if you have read the novel before reading Achebe's comments. Among his other essays, he reflects on the tremendous and underrated value of literature, while also fleshing out details of his Ibo ancestry. The whole of the collection is far greater than the sum of its parts.

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