Book Description
Forty years in the making, a new cultural canon that celebrates truth over hypocrisy, literature over totalitarianism.
Echoing Edward Said's belief that "Western humanism is not enough, we need a universal humanism," the renowned critic Clive James presents here his life's work. Containing over one hundred original essays, organized by quotations from A to Z, Cultural Amnesia illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century. In discussing, among others, Louis Armstrong, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, James writes, "If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive." Soaring to Montaigne-like heights, Cultural Amnesia is precisely the book to burnish these memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost. 110 photographs.
Customer Reviews:
A difficult read,but worth the time.......2007-10-01
Although this book has an intersting premise,it is a difficult book to read.It is written in essay form,and the author's style is not flowing or easy to read.However the content is interesting and does make you think about how we got where we are to-day:by losing sight of,and forgetting the past and important peope in it.
You can read this book a chapter at a time, and leave it for a while since each chapter is an essay on one person.it is not a novel,but a collection of essay/biographies, and includes some very intersting people
Absolutely Must Reading.......2007-09-15
In fairness, I had never heard of Clive James until he appeared on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. I was just blown away and ordered this book the next day. If you want to understand Western culture ... I mean truly understand the culture in which you live, you should read this book. What you learn here is that a whole lot of people you never heard of and a few you have made monumental contributions that you didn't know about. This is the kind of book every person should have in their library as a reference. You can read it at leisure and you should. You should savor it.
Read it at your own perill.......2007-09-11
If you never studied French, German, Italian or Spanish, you will be sorry you didn't. You will be made aware of all you are missing because you can not read the all those untranslated or untranslatable important writers that are fundamental to our civilization. If you know them you will see that for English speakers is very difficult not to be confused by Spanish and Italian. I have found misspelled Spanish words because the Italian spelling was used in the wrong place. Clive James is almost pushing me to start again with German, French and Italian.
convoluted writing.......2007-09-04
just found what I've read so far very digressive and convoluted. He is a much better speaker than writer. haven't given it a full read, but am daunted by the many digressions from the points I'm interested in. don't care about 10 other people whom I may or may not know who really don't have relevance to the person I'm reading about.
Unsurpassed both for content and style.......2007-09-01
This is an amazing book. Clive James was only a dim sound in my limited background before the book was presented to me as a present. When I finished this book, I made the unusual promise to myself to read it again, an unusual decision since I am not thoroughly committed to modern writing and have found nothing that quite measures up to it, either traditional or modern. The essays, it is made clear, were not written at the same time, but were the accumulation of some years of reading and study. The casual reader will be introduced to a number of people hitherto unknown or barely known, mixed in with giants like Tacitus, Keats, Proust, Kafka, the three Manns,and Camus. I cannot ignore James's prose style, which astonishes minute by minute. A must-read for anybody interested in history and the arts.
Book Description
Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace reflects the wisdom and clear authorial voice of Williams best-selling book, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, while streamlining every chapter to create a very brief, yet powerfully direct guide to writing with style. The brevity and clarity of this book make it a quick and ideal read for freshman composition courses, as well as for writing courses across the disciplines. Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace covers the elemental principles of writing that will help students diagnose their prose quickly and revise it effectively. The ten lessons feature principles of effective prose written in William's hallmark conversational style, offering reason-based approaches, rather than hard and fast rules, for successful, effective writing.
Customer Reviews:
very clear.......2006-08-14
I am a non native speaker, and even though my grammar is not too bad, my writing style has always been a source of frustration. At work, when comparing the texts I would write with the one of good native writers, I could see that theirs were better, but could not find why.
I bought this book based on the high reviews it got on amazon, and I was not disappointed. After reading a few pages, I scanned the research proposal I was writing at the time, and could already make significant improvements on it. The advices that the author give are sometimes quite simple, especially at the beginning of the book (for example : the main character should be the subjects of the verbs, which themselves should correspond to the main action). But surprisingly, I realized that I was rarely applying these simple rules of clarity. The author is never dogmatic, and insists that the only thing that matters is that the reader easily understands what we're writing. All throughout the book, numerous examples illustrate the concepts just introduced so that it is quite easy to test whether one has really got the point.
a gem.......2006-07-21
I found an used copy of " The Basics of Clarity and Grace" at bookstore. After reading 3/4 of the book I ordered two more copies. One copy for my son who is a journalist major and the other for my eldest son who writes good comedy. I liked its size and its no nonesense approach.
Better than Strunk & White, better than Turabian.......2005-12-19
The longer version of Joseph Williams "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" has been justly praised for many years. But as a director of writing programs at NYU, Princeton, and Yale, I never felt right adopting that text: it was too expensive, and more than the average student needed. This "Basics" Style is the perfect solution. All the brilliance of the longer book at 1/3 the price, "Style" perfectly balances explanations of style rules with practical examples. The rules that Strunk and White encourage are good ones, and American prose would be leaner if their precepts were universal. The problem with that book is that the advice is not explained systematically. You can use their suggestions when you face similar cases, but only Williams' text breaks down topics like elegance, coherence, and cohesion in ways that will let you carry the ideas into every text you write. I would not recommend this book for the casual 10th grader; although it's clearly written, its ideas are somewhat advanced. But for professionals, college writers, and any teenager who takes writing seriously, "Style" is an indispensable tool, a book you'll use for the rest of your life. For learning to write good college papers, I also highly recommend his "Craft of Research."
How Style Ought to Be Taught.......2005-07-13
Teaching style is not an easy task. Just look at the number of books on the market that portend to do this task, and it becomes obvious that not all authors succeed in their efforts. Some manuals attempt to teach by rules, others by persuasion, and still others by example. This book takes all three approaches and illustrates that the art of stylistic writing is a matter of know-how. Unlike most books in the field, I find this one generally successful.
The book's method is heuristic. It begins with causes of bad writing, and progresses to clarity, cohesion, emphasis, coherence, concision, length, and elegance. Each principle is given a bad examples compared to a good one. Direct, subject-verb-object writing is extolled, and certain anathemas of other texts are approved under the right circumstances. While I disagree with one its principles: That it is acceptable to begin a sentence with "There" and "It," these are minor quibbles in an otherwise strongly argued case.
Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" now has a major competitor, and this book is it. Whether one writes in fiction or non-fiction, the principles and examples given throughout this book are to be commended. I know of one author, a philosopher, who took these principles to heart. What once was ambiguous and contorted writing is now lucid, clear, and vivid. If this book can make this kind of progress, I certainly recommend it to all writers.
While on the subject of good writing, I also recommend Corbett's "Classical Rhetoric" for those authors who want to write convincing arguments. One on style, the other on substance. While William's book on style will make prose more readable, Corbett's book will make it more intelligible.
Truly great, smaller but updated version of his bigger book.......2004-01-24
This smallish book summarizes and updates "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace (7th Edition)." I rank both books at least a "5 out of 5" ranking. I bought the "Style: Ten Lessons" book first and after reading his previous book, I wanted more from this author. This new book is a fitting treat; it is destined to be a classic in the field of writing.
This smaller 150 page book presents many easy-to-apply principles and, for me, were easier to understand.
The principles that I liked most were:
+ How nominalizations can be very good or very bad, depending on their purpose, or lack of it.
+ How to re-arrange sentences putting the new and most important ideas on the end; thus sometimes flipping the sentence around and making good use of the passive tense.
+ The importance of aligning the characters of your story with the subjects of your sentences, and using active verbs to make "interesting subjects do interesting things."
+ Why and how to keep the distance between subject, verb and object short.
There are many, many other writing principles that you will find very useful. Although this book is written for someone with writing experience, a beginner will also find it MOST helpful.
I recommend any budding writer to buy both books. The bigger, older book has more discussion. But I found this smaller, newer book easier to read and understand. I'm now reading his Craft of Research book, and it looks like a winner too.
This is an author whose books you should collect. He has become a highly recommended expert in the field of writing. Look at the reviews of the bigger book to see what others are saying. I am so happy that I found his books.
John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX
Book Description
"A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world," writes Milan Kundera in The Curtain, his fascinating new book on the art of the novel. "Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight-errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose." For Kundera, that curtain represents a ready-made perception of the world that each of us has—a pre-interpreted world. The job of the novelist, he argues, is to rip through the curtain and reveal what it hides.
In this entertaining and always stimulating essay, Kundera cleverly sketches out his personal view of the history and value of the novel in Western civilization. Too often, he suggests, a novel is thought about only within the confines of the language and nation of its origin, when in fact the novel's development has always occurred across borders: Laurence Sterne learned from Rabelais, Henry Fielding from Cervantes, Joyce from Flaubert, García Márquez from Kafka. The real work of a novel is not bound up in the specifics of any one language: what makes a novel matter is its ability to reveal some previously unknown aspect of our existence. In The Curtain, Kundera skillfully describes how the best novels do just that.
Customer Reviews:
The genius behind 'The Curtain.'.......2007-08-08
It is unfortunate many readers of serious fiction will never read this book. Milan Kundera (1929) is a Czech-born writer who writes mostly in French these days. He is best known for his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics) (1984), a profound exploration of the fragile nature of the life of an individual. Following The Art of the Novel (1985) and Testaments Betrayed (1992), his seven-part essay, The Curtain, is part three in a trilogy of essays on the European novel. Translated by Linda Asher, it was originally published as "Le Rideau," in French in April 2005 by Gallimard. It should be considered required reading for anyone interested in knowing what the novel is all about.
Kundera believes that reading novels, from Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, to Kafka, Garcia Marquez, and Rushdie, offers a way of thinking that is essential to understanding human nature and our own lives. Reading allows us to tear down "the curtain" of pre-interpreted assumptions ingrained in our psyche, enabling us to have an unobstructed vision of the world we inhabit: "A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose" (p.92). For Kundera, "a novel that fails to reveal some unknown bit of existence is immoral" (p.61); its objective should be to reach into "the soul of things'" and the '"enigmas of existence." Understanding human life--that is "the raison d'etre of the art of the novel" (p.10). Anything less than that is mere "babble."
Although Kundera's subject is erudite, his writing is easy to follow--like sitting in a Paris cafe with a 78-year-old scholar, discussing why reading serious European literature matters.
G. Merritt
A Literary Charismatic.......2007-08-01
Kundera's book about the novel is not exactly as billed. These are not seven
essays. What we have is a set of notes, some speculations and assertions about
the past and future of the novel and its place in the world of literature and art.
Since these happen to be the spectulations of one of the most radically unsentimental
writers of our time, they are very valuable indeed. As the thoughts of a writer
whose work inspires other novelists (well, okay, this novelist) to keep writing,
they're especially precious.
Kundera urges us to see the novel in the context of its history. He suggests that its
reason for being is that the novel can tell a particular kind of truth, that it can
get to the heart of things and tear back the curtain of interpretation that veils
our realities.
The specifics of this arguement are as enlightening as the arguement itself:Cervantes'
humor as a reprise of what grownups know about the world, Rabelais' coinage of
a word for the humorless, Musil's irony, Stifter's prescience. Read Kundera to enlarge
your circle of acquaintance and turn literary acquaintances into teachers.
For all the inspiration that Kundera's work affords writers, this is a very pessimistic
book. With the death of historical awareness and appreciation for the moment comes
the death of the novel. Without 'the history of various arts, there's not much left
to works of art'. It's the pessimism of the true conservative-one whose heritage and
nation have vanished and being now incapable of growth can only be shored up
against the inevitable ravages of the new.
This perspective encourages-I think-an appreciation for the everyday, a Gestalt
shrink's awareness of the here and now. It's the kind of appreciation that rubs off on
the reader. If the reader is also a writer, this is the stuff that keeps you going.
Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG (a novel) and The New Short Course in Wine
You Must Read This Book.......2007-05-15
If you write literary fiction, you must read this book.
thought provoking.......2007-05-12
It's a pleasure to read a Milan Kundera essay. Even apart from the ideas involved, which are stimulating, I appreciate his style. And he touches on Musil, Broch, Cervantes, Rabelais, Kafka, Tolstoy, Proust, etc. Kundera makes a compelling case for a view of the novel as an art form with a specific history. This essay is so rich, it's worth returning to a number of times, like the classics by Montaigne, Emerson, and so on. This is a joy to read.
A lot of wisdom.......2007-05-12
I gleaned a great deal of wisdom from this book of essays. Occasionally I would read passages that would discuss stories I haven't read and my mind would drift but, overall, I came away with a lot to think about regarding my own writing. I have dog-eared many pages, something I am reluctant to do to a book.
Book Description
Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today’s scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world.
Found in the Bible and in writings from as far afield as Egypt, China, Indonesia, Greece, and Russia, ring composition is too widespread to have come from a single source. Does it perhaps derive from the way the brain works? What is its function in social contexts? The author examines ring composition, its principles and functions, in a cross-cultural way. She focuses on ring composition in Homer’s Iliad, the Bible’s book of Numbers, and, for a challenging modern example, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, developing a persuasive argument for reconstruing famous books and rereading neglected ones.
Book Description
From one of our most admired cultural critics (“A marvelous, canny writer”––Terry Castle, London Review of Books), thirty-one essays on some of the most influential artists of our time––writers, dancers, choreographers, sculptors––and two saints of all time, Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene. Among the people discussed: Italo Svevo, Stefan Zweig, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Yourcenar, Joseph Roth, Vaslav Nijinsky, Lincoln Kirstein, Jerome Robbins, Martha Graham, Bob Fosse, H. L. Mencken, Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, and Philip Roth.
What unites the book is Acocella’s interest in the making of art and in the courage, perseverance, and, sometimes, dumb luck that it requires.
Here is Acocella on Primo Levi, a chemist who, after the Nazis failed to kill him, wrote Survival in Auschwitz, the noblest of the camp memoirs, and followed it with twelve more books . . . Hilary Mantel, the aspiring young lawyer stuck on a couch with a chronic and debilitating illness, who asked herself, “What can one do on a couch?” (well, one could write) and went on to become one of England’s premier novelists . . . M. F. K. Fisher, who, numb with grief over her husband’s suicide, dictated to her sister the witty and classic How to Cook a Wolf . . . Marguerite Yourcenar, the victim of a ten-year writer’s block, who found in an old trunk a draft of a forgotten novel and finished the book: Memoirs of Hadrian . . . George Balanchine, who, after losing his family at age nine, survived the Russian Revolution, escaped from the Soviet Union at twenty, was for five years house choreographer for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, came to the United States with the promise that he could set up a ballet company, and had to wait another fifteen years before being able to establish his extraordinary New York City Ballet . . . And Acocella on Mary Magdalene and Joan of Arc reminds us that saints in the service of their visions–like artists in the creation of their art–draw power from the very blows of fortune that might be expected to defeat them.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful discovery.......2007-08-09
I have greatly enjoyed this selection of essays. Ms. Acocella brings forth what it takes to be an artist in this modern world. Not only that, but she rescues some obscure artists and makes the reader know more about them by providing a glimpse into their lives and work. Ms. Acocella's writing is fluent and makes for easy and entertaining reading as well.
Artistic Essays That Count.......2007-04-10
The essays on modern dance in America are particularly outstanding. Ms. Acocella writes with passion and knowledge. Many of her observations are succint yet sympathetic. They inform the book with a compassion for the individual artist's struggle to define his or her art; something not readily available in much of what passes for criticism these days. Her essay on Marguerite Yourcenar, the French writer who lived in Maine for much of her life, literally jumped off the page for me. No one who reads this book will be disappoited.
An inpiration to all creative people.......2007-03-22
Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays.
This book is an inspiration to all creative people who have struggled with themselves and consequently their work. Better than any creative-self-help book, this brilliantly accomplished collection of essays, gives wonderful insights with amusing anecdotes into the live of artists. It is a study in problems that all artists face, whether they are writers, dancers, artists or saints.
About writing this book, the author says:" My concern is the pain that comes with the art-making, interfering with it, and how the artist deals with this......What allows the genius to flower is not neurosis, but its opposite, "ego strength", meaning amongst other things, ordinary Sunday- school virtues, such as tenacity, and above all the ability to survive disappointment."
Amongst the artists she discusses are; Stefan Zweig, Primo Levi, Vaslav Nijinsky, Bob Fosse, Susan Sontag, Louise Bourgeois, Philip Roth, and Joan of Arc -an eclectic selection of gifted and talented people, who through their work, and our contact with them, have contributed in some way, to inspiring our lives.
The creative life sympathetically examined .......2007-02-18
I have read a number of the essays in this collection and found them to be informative, insightful and at times, eye- opening. Acocella often chooses subjects who are not that well known , and who she feels have been neglected. Two of the novelists she writes about here, Joseph Roth and Hilary Mantel were little known to an American audience. But the essays I have read and very much enjoyed are those she has written on Stefan Zweig, and Saul Bellow. I also read with great interest her critical review of a biography on James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, one which Acocella feels makes exaggerated claims for Lucia's influence on her father's work. Another outstanding essay here is the one on Primo Levi who Acocella clearly believes is one of the great moral heroes of the century. Acocella has a real feeling for the struggles involved in the literary and artistic, the creative life. She often reveals a special kind of sympathy with her subject. And this is one of the things which makes her writing, to me anyway, so likeable. One feels the writer herself is a very understanding and considerate person, one whose own creative effort is diligent, caring, and intuitively wise.
I have not read all this collection but from what I have and know of the work of this writer I would recommend it strongly.
Book Description
W. W. Norton & Company is proud to present the Sixth Edition of The Norton Sampler. As a rhetorically arranged collection of short essays for composition, our Sampler echoes the cloth samplers once done in colonial America, presenting the basic patterns of writing for students to practice just as schoolchildren once practiced their stitches and ABCs on needlework samplers. This new edition shows students that description, narration, and the other patterns of exposition are not just abstract concepts used in composition classrooms but are in fact the way we think—and write. The Norton Sampler contains 63 carefully chosen readings—classics as well as more recent pieces, essays along with a few real-world texts—all demonstrating how writers use the modes of discourse for many varied purposes.
Customer Reviews:
School Book.......2002-04-07
A collection of essays assembled by type and style of writing.
The book instruvts how to write common essay types by presenting the reader with a few examples of each kind. The cool part is the commentary by the authors of some of the essays as to what they were thinking when they wrote them and how they went about the writing process.
Good use for an Intro to Writing college level class.
The essay is alive and well written.......2001-04-22
Norton Readers have long been a staple of university literature and composition courses, which is no doubt the original purpose of this volume (hence the extended title, "Short Essays for Composition"). If you don't let this deter you, you will be rewarded with a collection of some of the best of American essays with a plus. This is not only a collection of well written essays spanning early and modern nonfiction, but you have the bonus of modern prose stylists such as Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez talking about the pieces that are included: how they get ideas, how they craft their work, why they write in nonfiction. A satisfying and interesting collection, well worth reading and passing along to others. Great for teachers and students interested in learning about nonfiction as well, as nonfiction as a genre is the organizing schema of this volume.
Average customer rating:
- Vonnegut at the end
- Beautiful
- A banal book from a great writer
- Not Kurt's best
- A Few Last Jabs . . .
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A Man Without a Country
Kurt Vonnegut
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ASIN: 081297736X
Release Date: 2007-01-16 |
Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“[This] may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.”
–Los Angeles Times
“Like [that of] his literary ancestor Mark Twain, [Kurt Vonnegut’s] crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted. . . . [Reading A Man Without a Country is] like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.”
–The New York Times Book Review
In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this age–or any age–holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America’s soul. From his coming of age in America, to his formative war experiences, to his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: Being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a Country is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions.
“For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person.”
–USA Today
“Filled with [Vonnegut’s] usual contradictory mix of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, humor and gravity.”
–Chicago Tribune
“Fans will linger on every word . . . as once again [Vonnegut] captures the complexity of the human condition with stunning calligraphic simplicity.”
–The Australian
“Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book. In this wondrous assemblage of mini-memoirs, we discover his family’s legacy and his obstinate, unfashionable humanism.”
–Studs Terkel
Customer Reviews:
Vonnegut at the end.......2007-09-27
It occurred to me while reading "A Man Without a Country", Kurt Vonnegut's last offering, that we all have it in us to write a comparable book regarding our own lives. However, few of us could write in the style of Vonnegut, and his short but pointed book is well worth the hour or so it takes to read.
"A Man Without a Country" blends humor, fact, sarcasm, wit and a lifetime of observation. It is Andy Rooney, Garrison Keillor and George Carlin wrapped into a small package of good writing, Vonnegut-style, of course. Age brings perspective and with that Vonnegut has plenty on which to comment. As one who survived the bombing of Dresden in 1945, the author has an earned platform to speak about war and he does so quite often in this book. But it's his humor, often black but always funny, that propels things along. Vonnegut, a humanist, addressed a group of fellow humanists upon the death of Isaac Asimov. He told the assemblage, "Isaac is up in heaven now". Vonnegut goes on to say, "it was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored." Lines like that give a warmth to the book, yet he saves his best line for "W". Vonnegut says, "...do you know why I think George W. Bush is so pissed off at Arabs? They brought us algebra". With that comment I had to take a minute or so away from the book to wipe the tears from my eyes.
I highly recommend "A Man Without a Country" for its appealing nature and visionary comment. Kurt Vonnegut departed this life with just the right things left to say. I could add that "Kurt is up in heaven now", but I wouldn't want to get my fellow humanists going. The book is a pleasure.
Beautiful.......2007-09-06
A conversation with America's greatest writer about the same things everyone in the country had had on their minds that year, this work by the late Kurt Vonnegut was just what I was waiting for and it delivered a kind of comedy and editorial that people all over the country were holding just on the tips of their tongues. Vonnegut is suing PALL MALL cigarettes for keeping him alive in a time when the three most powerful people in the world are named Dick Bush and Colin. He puts himself out there and tells the truth like he always did.
peaCE,
Jacques Paisner, Author of Albuquerque Blues
A banal book from a great writer.......2007-08-14
Another Amazon reviewer, commenting on Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions", wrote (quote) "You know that anything goes once you pick up a work by the zany and terrific Kurt Vonnegut. The man knows how to dish up satire like none other. He'll spew out his complaints about the government, the world, people, etc., and instead of making it sound like a bunch of inane ranting he uses all of that to create a crazy world filled with outrageous characters and situations."
Very nicely said. It is too bad that, at some point, Vonnegut did decide to write up "a bunch of inane ranting", which he then condensed into this booklet. I do love the two books of Vonnegut I have read, and I do think that there is much to be ranted about the government, the world etc etc, but the rants in this book are not mush more valuable than mine or yours, or those of a random guy you hear ranting on your way home on the subway.
It is unfortunate that sometimes great artists feel compelled to stray into areas which are not their own. Even sadder than their beliefs and views end up being listened to just because they come from someone accomplished in something. Unfortunately, being a great writer (and I do think he is), or a great actor or director, does not necessarily make you a very deep political thinker.
To feed any "anti-establishment" feelings, give me any day one of the outstanding investigative reporters out there. There is way too much well documented, well written, honest anti-establishment work out there (Seymour Hersh's "Chain of Command", just to mention one example) to waste time on this sort of booklet. I received it as a gift, and I gave up after a few pages, because I was really getting nothing out of it. Booklets like this one, in my opinion, do more harm than good to the ideas they want to represent.
Not Kurt's best.......2007-08-08
Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors, and I really wanted to read some new material and get his take on the present. We're at a major crossroads in history where a new paradigm is emerging. And yet, there seems few author's worth reading anymore -- not like the Vonnegut's who gave us new and interesting perspectives on decades' past.
Unfortunately, his views on the present are tired and cliche. I almost wish I didn't read this book as it diminishes my respect for the author.
Example: he wrote something about a child being better off in an enlightened country, not the US, which had universal health care and better schools. He blames conservatives/republicans. I felt like throwing the book away! Forget politics (if possible). This is tripe. I thought aloud... we spend a _fortune_ on education and healthcare. The new perspective I was hoping for? ... Euro-socialism I suppose.
What I'm saying is, I didn't want to read tired old left-right, conservative-liberal gibberish. I was hoping for some FRESH ideas from an original, free thinker. I was looking for a new paradigm -- not liberal-lite, shallowness.
A Few Last Jabs . . . .......2007-07-27
Kurt, Kurt, Kurt . . . A few last jabs before you went down for the count. No, this can't be compared to his earlier novels, or his later novels. It is not meant to be---it is a memoir of sorts---his last parting thoughts on the way things are. A Man Without A Country is a concise, simple little ditty, with a few quick jabs to once again jolt the minds of the choir. Like Mark Twain before him, life just plain got to him. I know the feeling. At 57, I am feeling much the same way. After spending some hard-time on earth, dealing with the workings of this world and man's never changing habits, any thinking, caring person would have to throw their hands in the air and say, "When will we ever learn!" And it seems, from Twain's time on---and from way before---back to the first primates to utter a sound and drop from the trees in search of something to kill, man hasn't changed a spit. A Man Without A Country is a dang good little book, and an enjoyable read from a man who will be sorely missed. Hi Ho! Mr. Vonnegut, Hi Ho!
Bewick Cory
Book Description
Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. These essays, keynoted by an extraordinary report on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, all reflect that, in one way or another, things are falling apart, "the center cannot hold." An incisive look at contemporary American life, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for several decades as a stylistic masterpiece.
Contents:
I. LIFE STYLES IN THE GOLDEN LAND
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
John Wayne: A Love Song
Where the Kissing Never Stops
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
II. PERSONALS
On Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind
On Morality
On Going Home
III. SEVEN PLACES OF THE MIND
Notes from a Native Daughter
Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All That
Customer Reviews:
Yeats, The Grateful Dead, and All That.......2007-05-17
This book starts out citing W.B. Yeats and Peggy Lee, co-equals in esteem and regard. Yeats and his slouching towards Bethlehem, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...And What rough best, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" and this lovely gem from Miss Peggy, "I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein, and Cary Grant." And what a unique dichotomy to start out a unique collection of essays uniquely told, from a voice risen above voices of that time--Joan Didion.
This book has a little story to it worth telling. I found myself in Boston of all places in the Harvard Book Store (no affiliation I guess to the better known little school near by). A bookstore staff member points out her recommendations from the staff recommendations section. It turns out she grew up in California parents of some freerer spirited, macrobiotic, driven by the very power of flowers types. This book store maven also goes to the little Harvard school and she recommends Joan Didion as one of her very fave reads of all fave reads. I having spent time in Cali myself and thinking that San Francisco is America's greatest city and having always been vexed, perplexed, and intrigued by that 60's counter-culture period in our country couldn't resist picking up the book...well picking it up from Amazon. Where else would one in their right mind buy books after all?
Joan Didion, as it turns out, is a phenomenal writer. She hails from Sacramento and wasn't in the thick of experiencing the 60's (aka Hunter Thompson) but a passionate 3rd person observer. She writes as if she is reporting on the age, place, and times but between the lines you pick up the pathos of these words, "Michael (a three-year old) burned his arm though, which is probably why Sue Ann was so jumpy when she happened to see him chewing on an electric cord. 'You'll fry like rice,' she screamed...they didn't notice Sue Ann screaming at Michael because they were in the kitchen trying to retrieve some very good Moroccan hash which had dropped down through a floorboard damaged in the fire." And things fell apart.
But "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," isn't about the Haight-Ashbury district scene alone. Didion's writing extends to a love letter for John Wayne, personal reflections (which are far from self-absorbent as personal reflections can trend), and a witty eye that takes it all in unflinchingly, bracingly, and honest. Here's a little nugget from "On Self Respect," "...it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one's head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower."
I'll be a faithful reader of Didion for many moons to come. Thank you Harvard Book Store girl...thank you Amazon. Don't miss out on Didion dear readers. ...mmw
Joan Didion A Voice for the Sixties.......2007-03-29
I had read Joan Didion's essays written in the sixties and covering a variety of topics when they were first published. I was pleased to see that this book was still available at a reasonable cost. Having just finished rereading it, I found that her views were insightful, honest and often humorous, and the one written about he 'flower children' in the Haight with the same title as the book was even prophetic. I was inspired to share it with my blog readers, most of whom were children in the sixties. Her comment that stands out "The center is not holding" aptly describes the restlessness of the time.
Great Collection.......2007-01-11
This is a great group of essays by one of the century's premier American essayists. I suppose reading her latest book, The Year of Magical Thinking, before reading her older material--which is what I did--necessarily changes one's perspective on her early essays. While I wouldn't recommend this approach, it certainly makes things interesting.
Anyway, this is an excellent collection of essays of various topics. If you're anything like me, it'll make you want to be a traveling journalist. If you're smart, it'll make you want to read the rest of her considerable repertoire. If you're human, it'll make you want to write.
Didion doesn't slouch.......2006-04-26
I am relieved to have finally read Didion's much acclaimed book of essays, which was published in 1968--and so it's old. So what? Didion is old, too, and probably an even better writer because of it. But even back then her skills were blazingly and brilliantly sharp. Aesthetically the work is not beautiful--there's no poet in Didion, although the title of the book is from a fantastically riveting poem by Yeats, which she quotes prior to the preface. Beauty is no matter, however, because Didion's essays are the archetype, the Platonic Form; put simply: the way it should be done. The book is divided into 3 sections. The first section is comprised of essays on 1960s California. It is here that we find Didion's diamond, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", which is a quasi-insider's view of San Francisco's Haight-Ashberry drug culture circa 1967. Other memorable essays from this group include an elegy-esque piece for John Wayne titled, "John Wayne: A Love Song" and "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38", a portrait of California wealth painted in the image of Howard Hughs. The second group of essays is a collection of Didion's personal reflections on subjects such as self-respect, morality, and the poignant "On Going Home". Didion ends the book with a series of seven essays on places she has visited: Hawaii, Mexico, Alcatraz, Los Angeles, to name a few. Here her ruminations are vivid and blunt, but also exciting. The reader feels as though she has taken a trip of sorts to the places Didion portrays so clearly and persuasively. Clear and persuasive are Didion's hallmarks. Hers is a style whose fruit is a truly a masterful group of essays.
Interesting if not dated well written essays about CA and counterculture........2006-04-25
Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays that generally revolve around California and how counterculture is a reflection of society falling apart. Didion's style is a combination of investigative, reflective and informative writing techniques and it results in unique and entertaining prose. She is very concise and efficient which sets the tone for her messages. Finally she is the master of last sentence one-liners which end her essays and occasionally saves the work.
Most of these essays are from the 60's and while they probably opened up a lot of eyes back when they were first published, they sometimes seem dated in 2006. The title essay is a perfect example of this as it follows a community of young hippies in the Haight-Ashbury district though their drug filled anti-establishment existence. Novel at the time, but about as groundbreaking as crabgrass in Ohio. Other subjects include California lifestyles, and Joan Baez. Despite this, her prose was able to keep me interetested thoughout the book and I would consider reading something else of her's.
Bottom Line: This is one of those collections that is pretty straightforward and worth reading if you like strong writing or are particularly interested in California. As a native Californian I felt she did capture some of the magical essence that is the Golden State.
Book Description
"A writer is someone who pays attention to the world," Susan Sontag said in her 2003 acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and no one exemplified this definition more than she. Sontag’s incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer’s responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and addresses written in the last years of Sontag’s life, when her work was being honored on the international stage, that reflect on the personally liberating nature of literature, her deepest commitment, and on political activism and resistance to injustice as an ethical duty. She considers the works of writers from the little-known Soviet novelist Leonid Tsypkin, who struggled and eventually succeeded in publishing his only book days before his death; to the greats, such as Nadine Gordimer, who enlarge our capacity for moral judgment. Sontag also fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
At the Same Time, which includes a foreword by her son, David Rieff, is a passionate, compelling work from an American writer at the height of her powers, who always saw literature "as a passport to enter a larger life, the zone of freedom."
Customer Reviews:
Standard Sontag.......2007-04-24
Susan Sontag was one of the most insightful and intelligent essayists of the last century. Her death is a tremendous loss to American Arts and Letters. At the Same Time is a collection of postumously published essays and speeches from the last few years. The collection reads like much of her work: articulate, precise, and always intellectually and morally "serious." I particularly liked her essay on Dostoyevsky and on translation, her clarity and depth of thought are truly reminiscent of Walter Benjamin here. I found her speeches a bit dry and contrived, not the form she's most comfortable in clearly. As always, she champions a number of neglected works of literature, one Russian, one American. Additionally, you will find excellent essays on 9/11 and the horrible events that unfolded in Iraq. Sontag's indignation is appropriate and timely.
Not a collection that is likely to eclipse Against Interpretation or Under the Sign of Saturn, but definitely worthwhile for all readers.
A Unique Voice.......2007-03-16
Reading this collection of essays is an exhilarating experience for anyone who cares about the ethical value of literature, as Sontag herself would say, the "seriousness" of literature. For Sontag was nothing if not "serious". This is not to say humorless, but always fully engaged, grappling with issues that she would return to time and again if her views changed or to clarify a point.
These issues, exemplified by this sterling collection of essays, range from the political to the moral to the literary (she would probably say the latter encompasses the former two). While her outspokeness frequently won her enemies, and her bluntness can be seen at times as insensitive, she was always looking inward to create a public person that she could admire, a strenuous egotism.
Readers of this volume can find her championing writers she feels have been neglected, criticizing the United States foreign policies and most notoriously, evaluating the attacks of 9/11 in yet further clarifications of her opinions.
The loss of this woman is incalculable; even when one disagrees with her(and at some points I am sure you will) you will never fail to find her challenging you to define your own point of view. Her aphorisms expand in widening concentric circles of thought, broadening your vistas with clarity and compassion.
Book Description
This book is an exceptionally wide-ranging alphabetically arranged collection of stories spanning all genres of short fiction. It includes myth, fairy tale, humor, western, detective, Magic Realism, gothic, fantasy, folktale, and film. This edition presents a wide variety of selections by writers from diverse backgrounds that represent a true cross-section of the population and represent a broader, more current selection of contemporary fiction.
Features a variety of relatively
new writers and some older writers whose work is gaining new audiences: T. C. Boyle, Alice Carey, Oscar Cesares, Charles Chetnutt, E. M Forster, Nikolai Leskov, Mary McCarthy, Jonathan Nolan, Dorothy Parker, Banana Yoshimoto, and Anzia Yezierska. Includes
new works to the context readings essays or excerpts from non-fiction section: by Walter Benjamin, Raymond Carver, E.M. Forester, and Joyce Carol Oates, all great critics and theorists of narrative.
Stresses women writers, writers of color, and gay and lesbian writers:includes works by Isabel Allande, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Leslie Dick, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Mary Gaitskill, Susan Glaspell, Gish Jen, Mary Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Susan Sontag, Jeanette Winterson, Sherman Alexie, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Ernest J. Gaines, Dagoberto Gilb, Hanif Kureishi, Tomás Rivera, Salman Rushdie and more.
For literature and film enthusiasts.
Customer Reviews:
DISGRACEFUL number of typographical errors!.......2001-01-03
Although the selection of short stories in this anthology is excellent, presenting an array of some of the best classic and contemporary pieces of the genre, the number of typographical errors are INEXCUSABLE. This is the anthology I purchased for a short fiction class this past fall, and as a class we were increasingly astounded by each additional typo we confronted. In about half of the stories we read, we encountered at least one, and in some we noticed more than one, which was really distracting. In Conan Doyle's Red Headed League, for instance, Holmes "THOUGH as much" (as opposed to thought), and on the very next page, he "only wished to ask WHO he would get to the Strand" (as opposed to how). The fact that there was a misprint in my favorite story of those that we read - James Joyce's Araby--was the last straw for me. My professor encouraged us to write or e-mail the editors and complain, and one student did, only to receive an e-mail which defended them and declared that the errors don't really alter the content or overall effect of the stories. Ironically, instead of the monetary compensation my fellow student(unsurprisingly)requested, the person she contacted offered to send her a free book on English writing and usage. We all told her she should send an e-mail back to them, telling them to keep the book because the editors obviously needed it more than her.
It really is disgraceful, though. How could the editors possibly think that stupid errors like this don't crucially alter the story's effect on the reader? This is not the case. It is distracting and irritating, and destroys the effect for me. I can't imagine that James Joyce would have agreed with the comment that errors like this don't really damage the story. Every author whose story was massacred by these editors would shudder that their works of art were destroyed by carelessness. Isn't the editor's job to make positively sure these kinds of errors are not there? It's really hard to believe. I've never EVER encountered typographical errors in books I've read for school, and very few in the ones I have found mistakes in. Certainly no more than two! Don't buy this anthology...maybe wait for the next edition-- hopefully they will proofread a little more accurately. If the editors happen to read this-- please, this is one disappointed student who doesn't want monetary compensation--I just want another book, and I want it to be perfect!
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- Drama of the English Renaissance: Volume 1, The Tudor Period
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- Great American Stories: Ten Unabridged Classics
- Guess How Much I Love You
- Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer
- Help for Your Fearful Dog: A Step-by-Step Guide to Helping Your Dog Conquer His Fears
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