An enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the AmAn enjoyable blend of biography, literary criticism, literary influence, and travelogue. I downloaded the sample after seeing it recommended by the Amazon algorithm, enjoyed it, and so read all of it.
Kafka is so impossible to place geographically, linguistically, ethnically. Is he Czech? Austro-Hungarian? German writer? Jewish? He was all of these and none of these. To learn more about him Karolina Watroba travels around to all of these places and more--including Oxford where many of his papers are and Korea. We learn a little more about Kafka's person, writing and impact in each of these places. She has a deeper discussion of a few of his works (Metamorphosis, The Judgment, The Trial) and also some discussion of a lot of works influenced by Kafka.
Most of all Watroba's relatively light and enthusiastic and curious tone shows through from beginning to end, making the book particularly enjoyable....more
I like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed mI like to read books by my friends. But Cass writes more quickly than I can read. I confess that I only read this one out of guilt because he handed me a copy that he had just purchased for me at full price in a bookstore. But I'm really glad I did.
In lieu of a review I'm pasting the email I sent to Cass after reading it (with a few names of friends and former classmates redacted to XX's, sorry you won't know the other great actors in Harvard's Class of 1992):
---- From: Jason Furman To: Cass Sunstein Subject: A few comments on your book Date: June 13, 2024 9:41am
1. It is outstanding. A lovely combination of social science, speculative thinking, literary appreciation, and being inside your strange mind.
2. In the paperback you should fix the only error in the book: deleting the words “still is” after talking about the importance of Scientific American. At least on gender issues it is deeply unscientific and an embarrassment.
3. You are reasonably objective about the Yesterday thought experiment, even managing to be objective about the role of chance in such world historical geniuses as The Beatles and Bob Dylan. But I found you lost all objectivity and reason in discussing Star Wars which came across as something that surpassed and transcended all contingency to be pure, unadulterated timeless fame.
4. You don’t appear to read enough foreign language fiction, just about the only foreign reference was to Tolstoy and you didn’t provide any evidence that you read past the first sentence of Anna Karenina. In my book about how to become famous there will be an entire chapter on Cervantes and the only element of luck will be that the bullet that hit him in the Battle of Lepanto missed his head/heart by a foot. Other than that his fame was inevitable and based on the fact that Don Quixote is even better than Star Wars. I would also have Pushkin, Gogol and Kafka. And more Dickens, but I was glad to see the enthusiasm for Great Expectations even if it is not as good as Bleak House.
5. I often do the “run history 100 times” thought experiment with various things. Like Obama’s effort to pass an immigration bill (it passed in 25 of the times), XX being successful (80 of the times, part of the evidence is the “independent draws” of his success in different context that were not just the Matthew Principle), or fame.
6. I’ve had this idea, possibly infeasible, that we might be able to get at some of the issues about “objectivity” vs. information cascade/polarization/chance with LLMs. The idea would be to train a model only on data through, say, 1860. And then give it all the books published in 1861 without telling it the authors and ask it to rank them. Would Great Expectations be first? If you’re worried that it already formed its views about what greatness was based on earlier Dickens novels and their reception then cut the training off in 1836.
7. I wish you had more on scientific genius and fame. You mostly deal with “subjective” greatness but there is something objective about how much more Newton got new and right than anyone else in his time. The big issue raised by scientific fame (and possibly is related to artistic fame, although a bit less obvious), is the issue of “inevitability’ and “simultaneous discovery”. If there was no Newton we would have had calculus (in fact was simultaneously discovered), would we have had everything else and in short order? Darwin is enormously famous but mostly because he accelerated publication and wrote a bit better, we would have basically had the same theory even without him. Most of quantum mechanics seems like simultaneous discovery where if this person didn’t do it then would that person. Is Einstein different? Special relativity comes straight out of Michelson-Morley, the Lorenz Transformations, etc., hard to believe it wouldn’t have been found soon after 1905. But general relativity? Is it possible that absent Einstein we still would not have it? I’ve had the same fantasy about the LLM experiment, but might need better AI, but train it on data through 1910 and see if it figures out general relativity.
8. Next time we’re together I have to tell you about my family’s friendship with the Dylan family when I was young. It is related to fame.
9. The example I use with people on fame, chance, hard work and ability is my freshman year roommate (and still friend) Matt Damon. Matt was one of the 4 best actors in my class (along with XX, XX and XX), I’m reasonably confident in the objectiveness of that assessment, ability to do different voices, characters, etc. He was one of the 2 most focused on being a movie star in my class (our first conversation was about how he would be a movie star), tied with XX. So relative to Harvard he was a 1 in 800 talent. Harvard recruits based on exceptional talent so I’m willing to stipulate, guessing here, he was a 1 in 4,000 talent for people born in 1970. But that means there were 1,000 people who were just as good at acting born in that year and luck was the reason he did better than the other 1,000 of them (including Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Rachel Weisz).
10. I’ve always meant to read Joyce Carol Oates. But I’m a bit of a completist which would be rather dangerous in her case (or yours for that matter).
11. I enjoyed the Houdini chapter but wasn’t sure I understood the point of it.
What’s your address, I want to reciprocate by sending you a great novel about how to become famous—and reversals of fame. [NOTE - Cass will be getting a copy of [book:The Fraud|66086834] which, in part, illustrates some of the reversals in fame that he discusses in the book--with William Harrison Ainsworth getting massively eclipsed by Charles Dickens over time, a reversal from their contemporaneous positions.]...more
An excellent short book about how George Eliot came to write Daniel Deronda, the broader philosophical and intellectual questions the book was engagedAn excellent short book about how George Eliot came to write Daniel Deronda, the broader philosophical and intellectual questions the book was engaged in, and some about its afterlife. It vividly portrays just how intellectually engaged George Eliot was, situating her novel in a broader set of political philosophical debates about the meaning of citizenship, nationality, rationality, and religion.
The book is well organized in six parts that cover: (1) the debates over the "Jewish question" in France, Germany and the UK--the big question being whether Jews could be citizens of countries, especially ones like England that were based on an official state religion, (2) George Eliot's initiation into this question, including through some of the work she did as a translator engaging with important texts that debated it, (3) a summary of Daniel Deronda, focusing on the ways it was in philosophical dialogue about this issue, (4) a discussion of an essay she wrote after Daniel Deronda expanding on the Jewish themes, and (5) a discussion of the changing reception to Daniel Deronda, from skepticism about the Jewish parts, to her falling out favor, to her regaining stature.
I learned both some interesting intellectual history and gained even greater appreciation for George Eliot....more
A scholarly book on the ways in which parts of Cervantes' work are him working through the trauma from his five years in captivity in Algiers.
What I pA scholarly book on the ways in which parts of Cervantes' work are him working through the trauma from his five years in captivity in Algiers.
What I particularly liked about the book was its in depth look at this five years of Cervantes' life along with the broader of context of captivity--including enslaved people and hostages held for ransom--in the Mediterranean struggle and mixture of Muslims (including ethnically different ones and different rules), Christians, and a few Jews as well. It then shows how he reworks this experience in several plays, the Captives Tale (an interpolated tale in Don Quixote that makes for excellent standalone reading), and a few other parts of works.
What I found interesting and novel was the comparison of this part of Cervantes literature to Holocaust literature, particularly by Primo Levi. That Cervantes went through horrors and was workin through his traumas through his writing.
What I disliked, or at least was not for me, was that it had a decent amount of Freud, Lacan, Derrida and the like. It wasn't overly heavy but it didn't add anything to me--and I'm not sure it would add much for a specialist (but I'm not competent to judge).
Finally what I wished the book addressed was whether any of this is relevant for the 90%+ of Cervantes work that does not address captivity. For Don Quixote, in particular, the book discusses the captives tale as well as the incident with the lion and Don Quixote being taken home in a cage. But it does not really relate to anything thematic, plot, character, or anything else beyond that. Does that mean the only the explicit captive bits of his work were really affected by his captivity? Or did it shape more of it? I wanted to know and this book never said....more
This was a reliable and helpful guide to Ulysses, complete with timetables and maps and context like the value of money then and now. It was one of twThis was a reliable and helpful guide to Ulysses, complete with timetables and maps and context like the value of money then and now. It was one of two guides I read (the other was Ulysses: A Reader's Odyssey). What guide and whether to use a guide at all depends on your taste. If I had to choose one it would be Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey for reasons I described in my review for that one. But this was really helpful too, just a bit too exhaustive at times in covering seemingly every aspect of every episode in the book. (I realize “exhaustive” is a relative term and there are guides that are much, much longer that go into every word, sentence and allusion in Ulysses.) On the other hand, this is a bit more grounded in scholarship—although that is a matter of degree not a dichotomous difference....more
This was a delightful guide to Ulysses. The author is an Irish diplomat (including the former Ambassador to the United States). Normally this would maThis was a delightful guide to Ulysses. The author is an Irish diplomat (including the former Ambassador to the United States). Normally this would make me concerned, I would rather read a book by a scholar or at least someone who was truly focused on Ulysses not someone who got attention and publication by virtue of their position. But that would wrong in this case. Daniel Mulhall begins with a discussion of the role that Ulysses has played in his cultural diplomacy that sets the stage for his perspective on the book—a certain unpretentious enthusiasm that it speaks to everyone, is grounded in a notion of what Ireland and the Irish are like, and also in Irish history and politics.
The bulk of the book is a chapter-by-chapter guide (or as people call them in Ulysses, “Episodes,” there are 18 of them) that gives you a combination of description, hand-holding and interpretation—many with some light and diverting/motivating descriptions of the roles that the episode played in Mulhall’s own life and the cultural aspects of his diplomacy.
This was one of two guides I read together with Ulysses, the other being The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses. I liked them both but if I had to choose one it would be this one, it is a little less detailed and nitty gritty and bit more Irish in its wild enthusiasm. But it is also less literary and aesthetic and more introductory.
By the end it helped me to love both Ulysses and also the author of this guide, who himself felt to me a little like Leopold Bloom....more
I came for Dickens but stayed for Prince. "Dickens and Prince" is an extended essay that is overflowing with enthusiasm and worship for two very diffeI came for Dickens but stayed for Prince. "Dickens and Prince" is an extended essay that is overflowing with enthusiasm and worship for two very different artists, modesty about his own role, and a paen to the genius that emerges from a combination of protean talent and relentless obsessive drive. I listened to the Audible version which is 2.5 hours (at 1.3X).
I'm a huge Dickens fan and have enjoyed the movie versions of Nick Hornby's books (have not read the books themselves). I know the most famous Prince songs and once saw him in a truly stunning concert, a late night jam session in the East Room of the White House, at one point joined by Stevie Wonder. But beyond that I knew absolutely nothing about Prince and was not particularly intrigued.
The Dickens parts of the books were very familiar, most of them coming from the excellent Claire Tomalin biography Charles Dickens. But they were still enjoyable, one professional craftsman admiring another.
But the Prince parts blew me away, mostly because of my own previous ignorance. Learning about how young he started, how sure of himself he was, performing all the instruments and backup vocals on his first five albums, his prolific recording and performing career, and the perhaps thousands of unreleased songs he left behind in his vault. All of this is presumably just as familiar to Prince fans as the Dickens parts were to me but also the way in which Hornby expresses his enthusiasm and appreciation is infectiously exciting.
The book alternates between the two, going through their youth, their twenties, thematic issues (e.g., women) and their deaths. There are a surprising number of parallels but Hornby does not push them in any sort of forced of awkward way. Instead his book is ultimately a meditation on what he sees as the most important parallel between them: "This book is about work. And nobody ever worked harder than these two or at a higher standard while connecting with so many people for so long."...more
"The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure" mostly lives up to its title. It begins with a mash-up of science fiction references and t"The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure" mostly lives up to its title. It begins with a mash-up of science fiction references and tropes as two robots go off to discover the history of science fiction. Then it starts the story going chronologically quickly through the ancient Greeks (The Odyssey as sci-fi?? and Aristophanes), some Renaissance (Thomas More's Utopia and Cyrano de Bergerac), but then the story really gets going with Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. Xavier Dollo and the illustrators tell the story of sci-fi by depicting bits of the major underlying stories, showing the authors conversing with each other and the reader--often across time (e.g., H.G. Wells is around to learn about 1960s British sci-fi), and across space.
After Mary Shelley it goes through Jules Verne (the book is translated from French, I believe some of the more French content was cut out which is a pity), H.G. Wells, the pulps, the Golden Age, and beyond. I particularly liked the treatment of British sci-fi and it's relationship and difference from American sci-fi in the 1950s and 1960s, something I probably should have focused on more before but did not.
For the first two thirds the story is reasonably coherent, there is ample space to explore the context of the stories, how they evolved, as well as the constraints and problems. But then the last third of the book suffers from two diametrically opposite problems. The first problem is way too many name checks as Dollo tries to make sure just about every author one can think of is at least mentioned (every time I was thinking "but he hasn't mentioned someone, e.g., Ian M. Bainks I would turn a few pages and there they would be). He does a decent job of bucketing them in different periods and currents but at times it can feel more like a superficial "to read" list than something that is either insightful or, like the first two thirds of the book, a real "graphic novel adventure."
The second, and diametrically opposed problem, is that it is missing too much. It does a good job of elevating women (and also being frank about their exclusion and depiction and its deleterious consequences for the genre), both through the history of the genre and up through the present, but has almost nothing outside the US or the UK. What about the Soviet Union and the Eastern European contributions (Karel Capek is briefly mentioned but Stanislaw Lem is not)? Going up to the present, Cixin Liu and Chinese science fiction? Afrofuturism? Other traditions?
I am not entirely sure how either of those two problems could have been addressed individually let alone simultaneously. Maybe it was impossible and I'm being unfair. And I don't want the big point to be lost in the criticism: the first two thirds really was a "graphic novel adventure" that was both fun and insightful. And I was glad with all the references and pointers in the last third as well. Now I have a lot more on my TBR....more
If you really like Charles Dickens or Massachusetts you should consider reading this book, if you absolutely love both then you should definitely readIf you really like Charles Dickens or Massachusetts you should consider reading this book, if you absolutely love both then you should definitely read at least the first half which is a mini-bio of Dickens and his two visits to Massachusetts. Fanatics, of which I number myself, should read much or all of the scholarly essays in the second half that concern aspects of Dickens' trip and its role in his works. (One essay laments "Dickens' visits to Springfield have been almost universally ignored.")
Charles Dickens made two trips to the United States, both of which played a major role towards the beginning and end of his professional life, and in both cases he arrived in Massachusetts first and his trips went downhill from there.
Dickens first trip was in 1842. He was the incredibly famous author of The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge. A few years earlier, legendarily, Americans had crammed the docks when the ships came in bringing the latest installment of The Old Curiosity Shop to find out the fate of Little Nell. Barnaby Rudge was not as popular as the previous books and there were some concerns Dickens was losing his mojo, part of the reason he agreed to make the uncomfortable, long and somewhat dangerous journey to America (he took an early steamship so make the trip in a relatively rapid 18 days).
He arrived in Massachusetts, met with all of the writers and luminaries of the time, gave lectures, was celebrated at dinners, etc. Everywhere Dickens went he was mobbed with admirers, letters, callers walked into his hotel room unannounced, people tried to take bits of his coat and hair as souvenirs.
Dickens made a visit to Lowell and then on his way to his way out of the state he went through Worcester and Springfield before crossing the border to get to Hartford. His trip went downhill from there when he started complaining about the new republic's lax copyright rules and in response got lambasted in the press. The result was a travelogue American Notes For General Circulation a lot of which got recycled into an extended interlude in America in Martin Chuzzlewit, an interlude that goes beyond humor and insight into more petty vindictiveness and lifeless mockery that is one of the only failed segments of a Dickens novel.
Dickens' second visit to America was in 1867-68. This time he was even more famous having produced all of his complete novels (the incomplete The Mystery of Edwin Drood was the only one left). Looking at it now we think of this as Dickens towards the end of his life, a valedictory trip, but he was only 55 and although he had some weaknesses and infirmity it must have seemed more like the middle. This time his motives were less curiosity and more profit--he had become a fabulously successful reader/performer of his own works and had an incredibly demanding tour of dozens of cities scheduled. The Massachusetts part went well but he got sicker as the tour went on and ended up having to cut it short. People treat it as contributing to his death two years later but I don't know how much that is narrative arc or actual scientific causation.
The first half of Dickens and Massachusetts tells the story of these two visits in some detail along with a brief biography of what came before, in between and after the trips. It was written as a guide to a museum exposition in Lowell Massachusetts for the two-hundredth anniversary of Dickens' birth. It does not aim for originality or depth, it has a lot of pictures, but it is easy writing and fills in some depth in some places.
The essays that follow are more scholarly with lots of footnotes, but relatively light on literary theory, with most of the authors publishing in places like Dickens Quarterly. Briefly on some of them:
"Dickens, the Lowell Mill Girls, and the Making of A Christmas Carol" argues that a publication Dickens read on his visit to Lowell helped inspire A Christmas Carol (which he wrote a year later). It is a fun thesis, I was not fully persuaded given some of the relatively high-level connections.
"Dickens, Longfellow, and the Village Blacksmith" is a fascinating account of Dickens and his friendship with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow along with another fun thesis that links Longfellow's poem to Joe Gargery in Great Expectations.
"Dickens's Visits to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1842 and 1868" is the sort of piece that makes you happy that there are people in the world who really dig into the archives to shed light on some mostly forgotten and not very important moment in Dickens's life without claiming any particularly great importance for it but just using it as a window into the life and time. Was enjoyable.
Finally, if you are looking for a regular Dickens biography, I would recommend Peter Ackroyd's Dickens as the most novelistic and Dickensian biography (in fact it has italicized parts between chapters which are actually fictional), Michael Slater's Charles Dickens is an all-around excellent biography with particularly vivid and detailed descriptions of the publication process, and Claire Tomalin's Charles Dickens: A Life is also excellent, particularly on Dickens' relationship with his wife and Nellie Ternen....more
Maybe the best book about how to read--and understanding how author's write--that I have ever read. This is a short version of a writing course GeorgeMaybe the best book about how to read--and understanding how author's write--that I have ever read. This is a short version of a writing course George Saunders have given for two decades that takes students (or in this case the reader) through the mechanics of seven Russian short stories. The first one is the most thrilling as Saunders prints one page at a time of Anton Chekhov's "In the Cart" interspersed with his commentary. The commentary is on how the story works, why Chekhov chooses a certain person, how it gets you to expect something, how it surprises or confirms those expectations, etc. At each point he gets you stop and think about what you've read, why you've read it, and what might be coming next. This type of active reading is then expected of you in the next six stories where his commentary follows.
The commentary does not read like literary criticism. Instead he takes you through paragraphs of Tolstoy, shows how they have a high ratio of facts to judgment/analysis, shows how Tolstoy shifts from a character's words to their thoughts which differ from their words to their conversation partner's thoughts and words and does all of that within the space of two pages.
I particularly loved his reading of Tolstoy's "Master and Man", Chekhov's "In the Cart" and Gogol's "The Nose." I found his reading of "Alyosha the Pot" to be thought provoking because it went against my own reading of it as valorizing the submission of peasants in this world because they will be rewarded in the next. The only one that fell short for me (as he reports it did for many of his students as well" was Turgenev's "The Singers."
One small note: Saunders does not seem to include the best translations of many/most/all of the stories, possibly just reprinting the ones he was able to for some sort of licensing reasons. For some of them I (re-)read them in different translations rather than stick with the ones in the book....more
This books is the lectures from Roberto González Echevarría's course on Don Quixote at Yale. Each chapter begins with assigned readings that take you This books is the lectures from Roberto González Echevarría's course on Don Quixote at Yale. Each chapter begins with assigned readings that take you through Don Quixote (the John Rutherford translation) in groups of about 10 to 20 chapters along with readings from the excellent Imperial Spain, 1469 - 1716 (which I read and reviewed), Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook (which I read a bunch of, skimmed a bunch, and skipped some so won't be reviewing), and Exemplary Novels (which I've read before and plan to re-read in the Edith Grossman translation). The lectures are not overly edited so they have a real conversational feel, an energy, joy and set of insights.
First and foremost Echevarría helps you understand Don Quixote, its internal dynamics, how the second part relates to the first, etc. While the book is not complicated and thoroughly enjoyable without a companion, Echevarría does a good job deepening the appreciation. He also has some links to Spanish history (I confess I never previously linked things like the role of the rise of the state, the role of the Holy Brotherhood, and they way they are pursuing Don Quixote for his various subversive actions, like the freeing of the convicts). And he has some literary context, both in terms of Spanish writing at the time, the relationship to Shakespeare, and a tiny bit about how the book was interpreted in subsequent literature, mostly Franz Kafka's wonderful parable about Sancho and Jorge Luis Borges's amazing story "Pierre Menard". Echevarría is relatively light on literary theory but he has some, like Eric Auerbach and the focus on the Enchanted Dulcinea.
Echevarría explains why Don Quixote is so often regarded as the first modern novel: it transports us into the psychology of two very different people, those people themselves are evolving and changing through their interactions with each other, it is a mixture of the high style and the low, where comedy and tragedy are intermingled without a clear division. Ultimately, it is about books, the way we see ourselves through books, and the way books can become a reality for us.
Overall, this was like taking an excellent course on a single book--but seeing much more through that book. For comparison to some other books on Don Quixote: Vladimir Nabokov also published his Lectures on Don Quixote which, in some ways, set me back in my appreciation of the book by dwelling on the alleged cruelty of some of characters in the Second Part (e.g., the Duke and Duchess who set up an elaborate set of pranks for Don Quixote and Sancho Panza) while missing the more important things happening at the same time (the amazing deepening of Sancho as a character). Ilan Stavans wrote a great book Quixote: The Novel and the World which is particularly strong on the afterlife of Don Quixote in subsequent adaptations, influences, etc., and William Egginton's The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World was also quite good if a bit hyperbolic. I have never read a biography of Cervantes and it appears that none of the ones in English are outstanding so maybe I'll just wait, unless someone has a suggestion for one....more
I saw this in the bookstore and thought it was essentially going to be "how Shakespeare shows us how terrible Donald Trump is" and since I already kneI saw this in the bookstore and thought it was essentially going to be "how Shakespeare shows us how terrible Donald Trump is" and since I already knew the terrible part I thought I didn't really need Shakespeare's help on the topic so I passed on reading the book. Then I was given it as a present and I generally try to read books given to me as presents and was happy to learn that the words "Trump" and 2016 were no where to be found in the book itself--although in the acknowledgments Stephen Greenblatt says it was (at least part) of what motivated him to write the book. Instead the book is a look at the many tyrants portrayed by Shakespeare (including Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, the King in Winter's Tale, and also King Lear--who I would not have classified in the group before reading this book) and the ways that Shakespeare used them to shine a light on questions ranging from the politics of Elizabethan England, how enablers help a tyrant, how people turn bad over time, or how their badness undoes them, etc. All of this in a series of chapters the cover different aspects, use different plays, and are generous in the quotations. All an enjoyable and insightful read, appropriately on the short and slightly breezy side. ...more
An inspired triad, Imraan Coovadia presents a hybrid of history, biography and literary analysis of Tolstoy, Gandhi and Mandela (plus a bit of Coetze An inspired triad, Imraan Coovadia presents a hybrid of history, biography and literary analysis of Tolstoy, Gandhi and Mandela (plus a bit of Coetze in the epilogue), the ways they learned from each other, built on each other, and brought about moral and practical change with a combination of radical philosophies and each of their unique life paths involving some combination of violence and peaceful non-resistance. Throughout the book Coovadia brilliantly draws on many strands of thoughts, combining and recombining them in novel ways, all of which help support a passionate argument about the present and future particularly of South Africa but also of the world more generally.
Tolstoy lurks a bit more in the background than the foreground of this book, existing more as an influence on Gandhi than a fully fledged character in his own right. Moreover, it is not just the late Tolstoy one might have expected in thinking about non-violence and moral influences, but War and Peace in particular that shows up again and again, particular the model of Field Marshal Kutuzov as a model for a combination of violence but also minimizing violence and doing it all while achieving victory.
Gandhi gets the most attention, particularly his time in South Africa, his interactions with Tolstoy, the formation of his philosophy, and how it worked in practice. Coovadia makes something of Gandhi’s role in organizing military units for the British, likening it to Tolstoy’s start in the military and Mandela’s role in the armed wing of the ANC. It seemed like a bit of a stretch but I could be wrong about that.
Mandela gets the most creative and sympathetic treatment of the trio, a robust defense of his vision and legacy against what Coovadia sees as the alternative presented by Winnie Mandela, a corrupt/criminal approach that justifies itself in language that rejects the nonviolence and accommodation of Mandela.
An insightful, enjoyable tour of the written word from Gilgamesh through Harry Potter that shows how the intersection of the evolution of the technoloAn insightful, enjoyable tour of the written word from Gilgamesh through Harry Potter that shows how the intersection of the evolution of the technology of writing and "foundational" texts have shaped the course of history.
Martin Puchner does not aim to be exhaustive and as a result is book is pleasant and not at all exhausting. (It is also written in a jargon-free manner that aims to instruct and entertain but not intimidate with unnecessary literary theory.) Rather than stuffing everything in, he picks key texts, moments, places and times that are both important in their own right but also illustrate the range of points he wants to make. Much is missing that would fit into his general story (from the Koran to Charles Dickens), but he clearly made the right choice. (I'm less sure of the choice he made about inserting himself and his own travels to the places where various books were written and set into the book, it made it feel more like a certain type of journalism and travelogue and did not add much, except maybe for his search for the village of Dauphin which was the subject of a one act play by Derek Walcott.)
Puchner starts with The Iliad and the influence it had on Alexander the Great who, he argues, was motivated in part by re-enacting the Iliad's conception of heroism and warfare. He then goes back to Gilgamesh and from there proceeds chronologically taking in a great variety of times, places, and genres--not just fiction but also Martin Luther, the Communist Manifesto, and other documents that have drawn on literature and technology to have widespread influence.
In the course of the book Puchner explains how cuneiform writing started, how alphabets involved, the process of making different types of writing mediums, the development of printing, how samizdat were produced and distributed in the Soviet Union, and ends with the online complements to literature today.
In some cases he tells a familiar story albeit one that fits right in with the book's general argument, for example how Martin Luther was much more influential than previous critics of the Catholic Church because he was able to take advantage of the printing press to distribute his criticisms widely. In other cases it is less familiar, like his argument that Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus were all partly rebelling against what they viewed as the tyranny of foundational texts in their societies so did not commit their own words to writing, but then their followers and disciples wrote them down and established new foundational texts. Puchner is also interested in how Goethe coined the term "world literature" and how we now look back on it, including text that had disappeared for millennia but now have their place in world literature back--like Gilgamesh.
I absolutely loved The Comic Book History of Comics. As the title says, it is in graphic novel (or comic book) format which works really well because I absolutely loved The Comic Book History of Comics. As the title says, it is in graphic novel (or comic book) format which works really well because the imagery shifts to gently mirror whatever subject the authors are talking on. The chapters are in thematic order that are roughly chronological but with lots of moving back and forth at is it covers the birth of the funnies, how they turned into comic strips, the first comic books, the golden age of superheroes, romance, horror, the legal battles over IP in the comic book industry, underground comics, graphic novels, French comics, and Japanese manga--among other topics.
All of this is grounded in a broader cultural history. For example, LA based Disney and a more gritty, Jewish/urban group based in New York are competing. The former ends up winning out by developing feature length animated film, driving the later out of business--and creating a supply of Jewish artists in New York for the emerging comic book industry. Much later, Stan Lee becomes like an "auteur" at a time when auter's are rising in cinema. Pop culture like Lichtenstein and Warhol ends up legitimating comic books. The Nazis didn't allow American comic books in occupied France and Belgium, leading them to miss out on superheroes and develop their own independent comic cultures. The comics code in the 1950s in the United States limited what could and could not be shown in comics, leading to stagnation in traditional forms but eventually to the underground comics and the liberation of regular comics.
I don't particularly like superhero comics but love graphic novels. Regardless of ones interest in these forms, this was an exciting literary and cultural history....more
A wonderful collection of essays about the love of books--what Anne Fadiman calls a carnal love, one that prefers used books to new, dog earing pages A wonderful collection of essays about the love of books--what Anne Fadiman calls a carnal love, one that prefers used books to new, dog earing pages to bookmarks, and--most importantly--write in books, inscribing them, in the margins, or just about anything else. Each essay is brilliantly written, witty, insightful, passionate, and charming. Much more about the love of reading than any particular book or author, Fadiman deliberately approaches the subject as a "common reader" but what emerges is an uncommon portrait of a reader, the family she grew up with, and the husband she shares her love of books with.
Every essay is worth calling out and all have many lines that you want to call up and read to people you know. A few examples:
An essay on combining her library with her husband's: "our record collections has long ago miscegenated without incident, my Josquin Desprez motets cozying up to George's Worst of Jefferson Airplane, to the enrichment, we believe, of both. But our libraries had remained separate... We agreed that it made no sense for my Billy Budd to languish forty feet from his Moby-Dick, yet neither of us had lifted a finger to bring them together."
An essay entitled "The Joy of Sesquipedalians" about difficult words in books and whether we have more or less of them now and what that means is in the same volume as "The Catalogical Imperative" about her love of reading catalogues (but not actually ordering from them).
An essay about treating books that contrasts "courtly love" and "carnal love" of books, based on how their readers treat them. (Although most of the other essays in the book contradict Fadiman's claim that "a book's words were holy, but the paper, cardboard, glue, thread and ink that contained them were a mere vessel.")
An essay on plagiarism and borrowing is largely plagiarized and borrowed from other sources--all of them elaborately footnoted.
The last essay ends with the sad note about selling off the books of a historian who had passed away: "Dispersing his books was like cremating a body and scattering it to the winds. I felt very sad. And I realized that books get their value from the way they coexist with other books a person owns, and that when they lose their context, they lose their meaning." ...more
Loading...
