Literature in Art Books

Dear "Ironic" GenX and Yer:

Your very vocal manner puts air quotes in everything you say. Your ironic voice races for ever subtler shades of understatement in an effort to maximize your utility function of "cool." There is a barely audible "sniff" in each utterance.

You will be surprised to learn that your studied cynicism, hip-to-be-square manner, and moral detachment based on the vague snide comments you've grown up with and now ape transparently are not how it once was. Folks were once quite outwardly embracing of the world with a positive vision of missionary zeal, fuelled both by a love of God and a fear of Hell, both for themselves and you.

But that doesn't mean your weltanshauung has no history. And here it is: the intellectual history of irony.

This excellent work primarily is literary criticism (criticism as in truth-seeking, not the "modern" content of "finding fault with"), but serves as an archaeology of knowledge of the concept of irony (Kierkegaard and Nietzche, move over.....die Hegel, die!!!).

"Know thyself" and add this book to your seeking self understanding.

The question posed by Herman Rapaport, in the title of this book, is intended both seriously and ironically. It is not Rapaport's purpose to debate whether or not truth resides in art. The title points rather to his belief that truth needs to be reconceptualized in the light of continuing efforts to deconstruct and to discredit the notion of truthfulness in art. The question of art's truthfulness persists because truth in art is neither an entity or content that has been injected into the work, nor a transcendental concept or ground that exists outside it. Moreover, when used in relation to art, Rapaport says, truth means something quite different from conventional definitions of the term. Indeed, a central question that informs the book is the return of truth at the far side of its deconstruction. IS THERE TRUTH IN ART? includes chapters on atonal music, environmental art, modern German and French poetry, contemporary French fiction, experimental French film, and a photograph taken by the National Socialists during the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto. Determining how truth can be said to occur in these examples, Rapaport maintains, requires analysis in each instance. He draws chiefly on the thinkers who have radically reformulated questions about truth-Nietzsche, Heidegger,Derrida, and Lévinas-and uses their writings to explore the works under analysis. JOHN G.HANHARDT,director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, says about this book that it is "A superbly crafted collection of essays that link such works as Richard Long's installation pieces, Paul Celan's poems, and Marguerite Duras's films in an incisive assessment of modern and contemporary art's relevance to philosophy and our times". RAPAPORT has used the writings of MARTIN HEIDEGGER, JACQUES DERRIDA,and EMMANUEL LEVINAS as clues or guides that are expanded and developed in the context of intepreting various cultural works whose philosophical implications are at least as important as those of the philosophies from which RAPAPORT takes his bearings. This book is a rigorous philosophical inquiry and is necessary reading for every person interested in Literary Theory, Cultural Studies-Philosophy-Aesthetics. JAN A. MORTELMANS

Between the 2 great wars of the last century David Baron, and English Jew converted to christianism, wrote this study of the role that Israel plays in Bible prophecy. The book is scholarly written. It selects texts from Deuteronomy, Isaiah (mainly) to focus on the fulfilled, and yet to come, history of God's nation.

The book has the obvious advantage to the modern reader of seeing for himself how accurate his evaluation and commentary of the late historical events of Israel. The holocaust hadn't happened yet, though thousands of jews were being expelled and murdered in Russia at the time. Accuarate is the best word that defines Mr. Baron's analysis.

The impression of reading this book today, after all that we know that Israel has gone through (and is still going through) is just mind-blowing (for lack of a better word in my poor English vocabulary). If you dare to look to the future, to what is yet to pass according to unfulfilled biblical prophecy, you may want to get psychologically prepared.

It is not specifically a book about schatology (end-of-times), because its scope is wider, but it is a most relevant book for Christians and jews of today, and I ask everyone to check for himself the validity of Mr. Baron's impressions.

Read Isaiah 51:6; 42:4. And Jeremiah 30:7. And Psalm 83:4

I came upon this great author after reading Arthur Katz's autobiographical book "Ben Israel", which I heartily recommend.

May God bless all those who bless Israel; for He sure will spare none of those who hate them.

This fine book would appeal to anyone:artist, teacher, lover of sculpture. James Surls work breaks traditional rules, and he is one of the world's foremost living sculptors. This book was a great purchase for me.

This has the advantage of being a great browsing book for the pictures but is also an excellent reference.

This is more than just another biography of Austen (although it has a bit more background on the Austen and Leigh families than you would necessarily expect in a book of this length. It is well done. The family and their relatives are put into context well for their time and social millieu. What separates this book from many others is that it is very much about what Austen would have used for her eating, drinking, writing etc, and where she would have brought them from.

Susan Watkins has managed to dig up some excellent pictures, many of which I haven't seen before, and are well referenced through the text.

Watkins has a very easy and readable style of writing. This is really very much for the Jane Austen and Regency fan - those who enjoy reading Georgette Heyer will really get a lot out of this book as well.

As a novice in Japanese porcelain - this book was recommended to me by a Kutani and Satsuma collector. In doing so, I hummed and harh-ed over the price given that I am in Australia and the conversion currency rates left me breathless. Nonetheless, I took the plunge and brought the book, then waited 2 weeks for the book to arrive in Western Australia.

I opened the book and began to read. It took me approximately 20 seconds to fully realise I was looking at an academic approach towards japanese porcelain that disseminated the process and history of Japanese marks and seals. What was interesting was the fact that even though this book was academically focused - it read in simple terms. There was no complexities that often bogs down literature. This book reads well. To the point. Well illustrated. Clear. And furthermore, the author has included a very detailed historical account of the marks and seals found in the Meiji period.

Nonetheless, I awarded the book 5 stars out of 5 for its content, prose, approach and simplicity; however, there is a word of caution inserted here because I had to continually remind myself that this book was written in the Meiji (1800's) period. As a result of carelessness, the reader/collector could easily be lead into the belief that this book was written in the mid 20th century and not the 19th century as the content delves and examines the Meiji period in a simplistic manner. In other words, this is such a well written book - any one who is interested in Japanese marks and seals will appreciate this book and it will become a great asset to those people who are collecting Japanese porcelain in the Meiji period.

And so, if you don't have much money; but, you have a love of Japanese procelain - this book will give you the skills/tools/knowledge to read Japanese marks...

Kindest regards
Beverley McGhie
Australia

Ours is an age in which identity is constructed by and through texts. In this book we see the texts from which the Jewish people can construct their identity. Here is Dickens justifying his demonic portrayal of Fagin to a horrified British lady by saying that "Fagin in Oliver Twist is a Jew, because it was unfortunately true of the time in which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." Or how about this quote from the famous novel "The Butterfl": "The language of the Jew reveals the Jew's hidden character, no matter what language the Jew tries to speak." And here too is the association of the Jewess with eroticism, with the orient; and of the male Jew with capitalism and with exploitation. Here also is the image of Proust: a Jew, a Catholic, a homosexual, and a Dreyfussard struggling to also be French; and here is Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses.

These identities, these portraits emerge in a collection of essays by some of the most notable writers of our time; they ask us to think what it means to be a Jew in an European society today-not merely to answer the question "Why do they hate us" but to try to answer the question: "With such a rich tradition of anti-Semitism (for anti-Semitism is woven into the very fabric of European tradition) how can a Jew in a European country have a positive image of him/herself?"

Having grown up on the original versions of these fables (Shtaynbarg was often compared to Aesop, La Fontaine, and Krylov) I was looking for an English version for my grandchildren (I even attempted to translate some myself).
Professor Leviant's translations capture the spirit of the original and the volume is beautifully illustrated by Dana Craft.
The only thing missing (maybe because of copyrights) is the woodcut portrait of Shtaynbarg by Arthur Kolnik, which is the frontispiece to Yiddish editions of the "Mesholim.
Every library should have this book!

If you are interested in the origins of Jewish and Christian iconography, or in the way in which early Christians like Origen and Eusebius understood Jewish histories, then you will enjoy reading this richly illustrated book. I will quote from the jacket:

"The Jewish ancestry of Christianity is not merely a matter of religious sentiment but the object of scholarly research. One of the aims of this series is to analyse how Jewish cultural elements were assimilated by and adopted to the needs of the arising new religion. The present volume contains two seperate studies. Schrekenberg shows how successive Christian authors turned Josephus's description of the fall of Jerusalem into a confirmation of Christian superiority. Next he demonstartes how this view of the Jewish historian and his works appears in medieval Christian illustrations. In another contribution, Schubert discusses the existence of a Jewish pictoral tradition and its influence on early Christian art. Such influence was all the more likely where Christian artists were unaware of potential conflicts of the Jewish iconography with Christian doctrine. This volume is richly illustrated with reproductions of the pertinent works of art."

You may also enjoy "The Resurrection and the Icon" by Quenot.

This book really opened my eyes to how the "nationalist" Americans really treated the Japanese-Americans. This book totally blew my mind and made me angry. I was angry because we were just as bad as those nazi's. All in all i'd recommend this book if you want to learn the truth.