Should the translator of a book write a review? As long as one is reviewing the text itself (and not the translation), it should be acceptable, I thinShould the translator of a book write a review? As long as one is reviewing the text itself (and not the translation), it should be acceptable, I think. There are two novellas here (Rakkox is the length of a short story, actually). The first tells the tale of a billionaire who is tempted into erecting an immense stone tribute to himself. A fairly straight forward tale, it is veined with absurd humor---especially where it mocks militaristic thinking. In "The Great Race" millions of worm spirits mount up on dizzingly inventive conveyances (Scheerbart, who wrote an entire book about a perpetual motion machine, seems to have invented his own physics---one with affinities to both Buster Keaton and Raymond Roussel) and race to see who among them will become gods. Scheerbart's genius here lies in how he sets up a self-contained world of worm spirit-beings and hurtling machinery and has the participants engage in seriously thought-provoking discussions about the limits of perception, about evolution and the psychology of "becoming," and more---as if William James and Wittgenstein had been cast in "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World." The book won't be available for some six weeks, but you might keep it in mind. Gershom Scholem wrote that Scheerbart was "a second God. He too could have created a cosmos in six days," and that about sums it up.......more
One hopes an English translation of this is soon to come. Many of the letters here have been available in various places, but going through the extantOne hopes an English translation of this is soon to come. Many of the letters here have been available in various places, but going through the extant correspondence gives the reader a portrait of a very human friendship, of the harmonies and clashes of the decades long exchange between two brilliant minds, two very different sensibilities. As is well known, Arendt and Scholem encountered one another as mutual friends/admirers of Walter Benjamin. It was Arendt, very early on in their correspondence, who wrote Scholem about Benjamin's suicide. But Scholem and Arendt carried on as correspondents (they had very few face-to-face encounters) for decades. Intellectual gossip has made much of the clash of these two after Arendt published EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM. The crux of Scholem's at times very vehement disagreement with the book was that he felt Arendt had judged the victimized Jews too harshly, while she clearly felt she was only reporting what was factual and even obvious. Scholem, a Zionist since his teens, felt that Arendt should have kept the realities and needs of Jewish culture and the survival of Israel more in mind as she wrote. Arendt explicity rejected anything she felt might keep her from seeing things as clearly as she felt was possible. In the end it wasn't the offended, hurt Scholem who broke off the correspondence, but Arendt. (She had had more than her share of attacks and was impatient to move away from the debate.) In the last letters here, a few phrases tell us that Scholem truly didn't understand why she no longer responded when he wrote. Also included here are documents, a number of them in English, detailing how Jewish artifacts (books, etc.) were saved, fought over, and used as bargaining chips as the post WWII-world tried to find its new cultural order. These machinations are, in their way, fascinating to observe....more
This book of course comes at the end of a protracted music criticism chain---beginning with listening, going through thinking, speaking, transcribing,This book of course comes at the end of a protracted music criticism chain---beginning with listening, going through thinking, speaking, transcribing, and finally reading, a very mediated experience of music. But those interviewed here, for the most part, manage to get across the excitement of their original experience. Like most "well-meaning" anthologies this one tries to be all-encompassing, cliche-eluding, and succeeds in this rather well, within the limits of the enthusiasms of the particiopants. (No one chooses any piece of traditional folk or "indigenous" music, the received canon of classical music gets scant mention, etc.) Much of the music discussed here is progressive, and because these programs were recorded for a radio station in London, American listeners may be left clueless at times by the mention of some British bands. But the selections come from a number of frequencies across full specturm of musical possibility---from Steven Connor championing Tory Amos's "Blood Roses" (because it helped him overcome his nausea at harpsichords), to Eric Roth on Lygeti, to Esther Leslie choosing a piece that may not be music at all: she discusses Walter Ruttmann's 1930's sound collage "weekend." Others discuss works by Can and by Eno and by King Crimson. Some consider their selections guilty pleasures: John Parish seems rather sheepish about choosing Tom Petty's "American Girl." Others lovingly choose Louis Armstrong and Frank Zappa. I list these because simply looking at the book-with-blurb might give the impression that this is an academic exercise, where it is about the life of the mind as awakened by sound. The conversations range through musical specifics, to philosophy, linguistics, fandom, ethnography, the thrill of punk chords, catharses of various species, Allen Ginsberg's favorite musical instrument and more. . . .
I give this four stars rather than five because its sherbet collage visual presentation makes reading difficult while adding nothing. Next time,guys, trust your content to speak for itself.......more
Aphoristic, brilliant, ironic. The author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh was a keen, and sardonic, reader and observer. Besides skewering pretensAphoristic, brilliant, ironic. The author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh was a keen, and sardonic, reader and observer. Besides skewering pretense and selfishness in all its forms, he offers unusual takes on inantimate objects. Illustrative snippet: "[Such] a tool as a locomotive engine, apparently entirely separated from the body, must still from time to time, as it were, kiss the soil of the human body and be handled, and thus become incorporate with man, if it is to remain in working order." Butler was a bit of a misanthrope, but slectively so, justifiably so....more
Boyarin here looks further into the implications of his project to create a "Jewish ethnography." By he means not just that he wants to look into pre-Boyarin here looks further into the implications of his project to create a "Jewish ethnography." By he means not just that he wants to look into pre-Holocaust European Jewish village life (among other settings, including New York's Lower East Side), but that he is hoping to determine if there may be particularly Jewish ideas that could help shape an ethnography that differs at its core from the imperialist-centered norm. The gem among the essays here is "Jewish Ethnography and the Question of the Book." The major terms in the title--"Jewish" and "Book"---may suggest a narrowing, or yet another take on a cliched set of ideas, but this is not the case. Instead, Boyarin proceeds through a flys-eye-various viewing of the ideas of and links between the sequential and narrative; between simultaneity, space and argument, and the subtle implications the manipulation of these terms produce. He looks into the handling of these linkages by Levi-Strauss, Stephen Tyler and others. This book (originally published in 1991) is denser than Boyarin's more recent "Jewishness and the Human Dimension," but not to the point where it is choked with academic language. This is not a long book, but strong ideas rise from every page....more
Delany wrote The American Shore as he was absorbing the concepts and techniques of Structuralism (incl. its various Post- and De- derivatives)in the mDelany wrote The American Shore as he was absorbing the concepts and techniques of Structuralism (incl. its various Post- and De- derivatives)in the mid-1970s. Delany subjects Thomas Disch's short story "Angouleme" to a line-by-line analysis, drawing out literary connections, linguistic webbing, social implications, and much more---some of which, in the grand Structuralist Analysis tradition, Disch almost certainly did not intend. This reading is not cumulative---that is, it does not build to a tidy summation but remains granular, though not centerless: at the center is Delany's then high degree of interest in the philosophy/deliniation of science fiction as a genre. (His later thoughts on this subject are rather different.) As my long-time great enthusiasm for Delany's work has from the beginning been based in the fact of his great strengths as a thinker---not as any kind of stylist or storyteller---this book remains fascinating, however many of its ideas may have been supplanted by his later ones. Here Delany's formal decision to go through the entire text of Disch's story (not a particularly inspired piece of writing,though Delany seems to have found it so) in as-written order forces him at times to struggle with his own structure---some lines are not very fertile, idea-wise---and at other times he only lightly touches on Disch's text while responding with brilliant, tangential flights of thought. (An oxbow of an exposition on the uses of dashes---as in em dash---is a good example of this.) The primary rewards of this book come not just from the ideas Delany offers but in watching his mind at work. There is a short biographical note at the back, detailing the relationship of the two authors to that point (a realtionship which, decades later, was to end badly), but The American Shore is almost entirely a dense intellectual exercise---and fascinating for it....more
Not long ago I was trying to recall the name of the author of some oddly parodic science fiction stories I'd read some 30 years ago---but all I could Not long ago I was trying to recall the name of the author of some oddly parodic science fiction stories I'd read some 30 years ago---but all I could recall was that there was some kind of anthropomorphic platypus on the cover.... More recently, I was given a copy of Rob Reginald's XENOGRAFFITI, and in less than five minutes I chanced upon an essay titled "The Fat Man, the Consulting Detective, and the Seller of Speculations," which discusses THE PLATYPUS OF DOOM AND OTHER NIHILISTS, by Arthur Byron Cover. What was lost is found! Reginald is a science fiction, fantasy, horror and pulp fiction fan,writer and publisher. In these three dozen plus essys (with some misc. thrown in here and there) he exhibits enormous enthusiasm for forgotten, eccentric and retro authors--even the bad ones. (Speaking of which, Reginald's also published some of MY work.) There are a few more familiar names here, such as Margaret Atwood, Fritz Leiber, even John Norman---he of the Gor novels where a woman's deepest desire is shown to be to become a fur-wearing sex slave to many men. (This is one of the few attempts I've come across at an even-handed criticism of Norman's work. Samuel R Delany's NEVERYON series it ain't, but Norman's run of Gor novels, with their soft-core sex in furs and hard-ass men with swords, are strangely compelling....& Anybody else know Zappaologist Ben Watson's use of Norman in his amazing book ART, CLASS & CLEAVAGE?) But before XENOGRAFFITI, I had never heard of Vernon Knowles (he of the "Dunsanian Pastiches"...wha?), or Ward Moore, or many others considered here. As a long time science fiction (and to a much lesser degree, fantasy) fan, I find Reginald's excavations of these novels and writers---however cheesy-pulp-sounding many of the works might sound in synopsis---fascinating. Reginald clearly loves this kind of work, and knows it well. I enjoyed this book immensely, and if you have any interest in these genres, you likely will, too. A pulpy delight.... ...more
Just a note: This is ome kind of indexing error. "Drawn into the Circle..." is not a book by W. C. Bamberger ("me"). The cover picture is of my 43 VIEJust a note: This is ome kind of indexing error. "Drawn into the Circle..." is not a book by W. C. Bamberger ("me"). The cover picture is of my 43 VIEWS OF STEVE KATZ (which Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ doesn't list), but the info w/Auster is for another book entirely....more
Graham and Kantor take several interesting subjects--the development of set theory; religious strife in early 20th century Russia; and the persecutionGraham and Kantor take several interesting subjects--the development of set theory; religious strife in early 20th century Russia; and the persecution of mathematicians by the Soviets---and try to put them together. The connections are flimsy (two dissimilar meanings of "naming" treated as one, for example), and the book never coheres. It appears that they came by notes from a Russian archive and tried to figure out how to make a book out of odd pieces that interested them. Perhaps would have been better to write the three as independent parts of a trilogy...? Read the first sixty or so pages of this with the first half of Amir Aczel's THE MYSTERY OF THE ALEPH (an only slightly better-written book) and you'll get a fuller picture of set theory and those involved. There's a lot of info to be mined here, but the book itself is a shambles....more
This book looks into the history of the social effects of the gradual privitization of fresh water in the early Medieval period. Squatriti mines literThis book looks into the history of the social effects of the gradual privitization of fresh water in the early Medieval period. Squatriti mines literally hundreds of original sources and reconstructs the likely facts (the record is too fragmented for absolute certainty). There is much here about Medieval economics, about construction of mills, and even about why Millers became reviled characters in the literature of the period (think Chaucer). This is academic writing, not popularization, but if the period interests you you should get this....more
Grafton, who can be brilliant (his Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, with Megan Williams, is fascinating) here is unable to rise above Grafton, who can be brilliant (his Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, with Megan Williams, is fascinating) here is unable to rise above the academic nature of most of his subjects. Some are recycled NYRB-style book reviews. The introduction, the essay on "The Republic of Letters" and a couple other essays are good. But others seem like lists of references paraded out with not much engagement on Grafton's part---and that is the serious overall shortcoming here: Grafton just doesn't seem interested in much of what he's writing about. The most personal piece here, "The Public Intellectual and the Private Sphere: Arendt and Eichmann at the Dinner Table" is about his father trying to write a serious and thoughtful piece about Arednt's "Banality of evil" description in the midst of the firestorm that surrounded it. And this is the best of the 15 essays. Reviewers have tended to focus on the last essay, "Codex in Crisis: The Book Dematerializes," about the influence of mass media (espec. the internet) on books. But there is really nothing much here that Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ readers haven't either heard or thought before.
(As a footnote: The bookstore where I bought this book, Shaman Drum in Ann Arbor, run brilliantly by Karl Pohrt, the only bookstore in Ann Arbor that carried the book, went out of business as of June 30. You can still buy cute cat cards at Borders and Barnes & Noble, but books...?) ...more
For those who missed this when it was first published in 2006... The current visibilty of debate about radical strip mining (blowing the tops off mounFor those who missed this when it was first published in 2006... The current visibilty of debate about radical strip mining (blowing the tops off mountains to get coal)prompts me to point to Erik Reece's absorbing account of a year spent spying on such an oepration. Reece converys the human toll, the frightening power of the explosions, and the acidic devestation of the land --the mountian tops end up in valleys, and streams are blocked; clean-ups are half-hearted; the vegetation the companies plant on "restored" sites is disastrous to the botanical balance of the area, on and on... Reece isn't preachy; he's precise and cool-eyed, and I think this book brings the problem home much better than any accumulation of shrill articles in newspapers or on the web....more
I'm actually currently RE-reading this, having gone through it once already. Steiner's MY UNWRITTEN BOOKS from last year was unusually revealing of thI'm actually currently RE-reading this, having gone through it once already. Steiner's MY UNWRITTEN BOOKS from last year was unusually revealing of the man behind the opinions, but the writing lacked the ferocious precision and detailed argument of his best works. GEORGE STEINER AT THE NEW YORK gathers pieces written for that often-reviled instituion over a period of more than thirty years. And the intellectual ferocity, the perfect phrasing and insistence on the best of the best being the only true standard are all present here in force. This collection ranks with Steiner's ON DIFFICULTY and the best parts of NO PASSION SPENT. Still, I have quibbles: the chess piece was amde into a slim little book and so has been available (though not recently), two essays dealing with (at least in part) Solzhenitsyn are not justified by varied enough ideas included in them, and the last piece, "An Examined Life" is unnecessary after Steiner's autobio ERRATA: AN EXAMINED LIFE, although it fills in more information about Robert Hutchins, who was responsible for Steiner returning to the U of Chicago at a crucial moment. I would rather have seen included the essay on Raymond Roussel, or Glenn Gould, or Robert Musiil. The essays on Beckett and Guy Davenport, on the other hand, are especially welcome and fill in gaps I didn't know I had. The inclusion of a dismissal of John Barth's dreary beached whale, LETTERS, seems a waste of pages. But then, there's one of my mottos: I quibble, therefore I am. The best of these are the among best that thought can produce. If that sounds good to you, read this one....more
This collection suffers in comparison with Bringhurst's THE TREE OF MEANING. The same subjects are present---mythology, first nation oral literature, This collection suffers in comparison with Bringhurst's THE TREE OF MEANING. The same subjects are present---mythology, first nation oral literature, even Chinese writing---all of which are interests of mine. But the essays here don't catch fire like those in the other collection. Worth having and reading, but more pedestrian takes on these matter than the brilliant evrsions in the other book....more
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