Prose Books

It's amazing how soothing just reading William Blake's poetry is on the troubled soul. I always look for his work to ease my mind and lift my spirit. Everyone should treat themselves to his work. Peace be with you.

A wonderful paperback edition, containing all the works of
William Blake, with a excellent introduction
of Harold Bloom. An priceless tool for students
and teachers

This is an outstanding resource for anyone interested in the works of William Blake. It's well organized and easy to work with. I'm very pleased with it.

What to write for my last review? That was tough. Since I was a little boy I have always been one of those who had his face in a book. Books, books, books. When I began my jobs as a paperboy, and later at the grocery store, I began buying books. This hobby grew so large, that my father made our rumpus room a library for me. And it grew ever larger. By the time I enlisted in the Air Force, I had amassed quite a large number of volumes. While in Europe and the Middle East, I would scour book stores and began purchasing leather books. Some very old, and many in foreign languages. Since the Air Force only allowed for a 5,000 lb limit, I spent a fortune sending books home. When I left the service my house looked like a library. Running out of space, I began to make my garage a library. However, it grew ever larger. Therefore, I made use of my brothers garage, then my mothers, and eventually even had to make due with having to rent a few storage spaces.

Yes, it's that large. I was hoping to make a large home library some day. Books have been my life: Even though I write mostly about Asian films. And I was glad that VHS films came into vogue, as they afforded me the opportunity to begin amassing a large collection of Japanese films which I have a soft heart for. That got real big too! Anyway, back to the question as to what to write for my last review? Well, I just happened to stumble across this book last night, one of many. There is a poem by the gifted and enigmatic poet, engraver and painter William Blake. I do recommend the book by the way. Events in my life have gone in a very negative way, therefore, I have decided to impart a poem as my last review. Hope you like it. It's one I have remembered from my childhood. There are too many great things to write about, and I figured this would not be a bad goodbye. It is William Blake's "THE TYGER"

THE TIGER

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?


William Blake (1757-1827)

It has all his writings: letters, anotations scribbled in the margins of other people's books, everything. Only downside: it doesn't show his illuminated printing.

"Darkness at Noon" is one of those books that stays in your mind long after you put it down. I first read it more than 30 years ago when I was a high school student reading "serious" books for the first time. It just knocked me over. It raised questions about personal morality and the ends of politics that made other authors I was reading (such as Ayn Rand) seem incredibly shallow by comparison.

Recently I read the book again to see if it was as good as I remembered. I'm happy to say it's even better. "Darkness at Noon" is the story of an Old Bolshevik who is forced to re-examine his life's work in the communist party when he is caught up in the purge trials of the 1930s. As such, the book is a great analysis of the pathology and twisted logic that corrupted mid-20th century communism. But it is also a broader exploration of ends-justify-means morality, exposing the traps and contradictions we fall into whenever truth and common decency are thrown overboard in the name of social utility. "Darkness at Noon" easily transcends old controversies about communism. Indeed, in an age when the U.S. government has secret torture camps to fight terror, its message has lost none of its power or relevance.

The story is gripping. The writing is superb. The characters are vivid. Dialogues of near-Dostoyevskian intensity alternate with passages of sad introspection and guilty memory. Read it. It may even make you feel 17 again -- and wide open to the impact of great literature. Six stars.

Heck, seven stars....

The brilliant and controversial writer Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon" may be looked upon as an incisive diatribe against Soviet Communism under Stalin, but it was influenced by Koestler's own experience as a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War. That experience gives Rubashov's incarceration the ring of authenticity and we read about his plight with confidence in it's truth. This veracity is what gives the novel it's strength. You also have the feeling that although it is written in 3rd person narrative, it could have been based on a written diary or journal of an actual prominent victim of the Stalinist purges.

Rubashov is a victim, but not an innocent victim. He was an architect of the repressive regime that has turned to devouring it's creators and enablers. His own ruthlessness and duplicity in support of the Communist ideal has destroyed any sympathy we can have for him, but what Koestler is aiming for is understanding, not sympathy. We can empathize with Rubashov without feeling pity. We are not shown monsters, but people whose morals and ethics are weakened by fear and ambition, and who make critical decisions at the intersection of hopeful idealism and grim reality.

After reading this sobering book, you can almost understand why this great mind (Koestler), who observed first hand, the atrocities perpetrated by regimes under Hitler and Stalin, would take a decidedly dark and pessimistic view of society, especially in it's political concerns, and would turn to metaphysics and parapsychology to find a reason for prospective hope in the human condition.

Set during the Stalinist purges and show trials, `Darkness at Noon' presents a fictionalized account of the interrogation and breaking of a (former) communist leader `Rubashov'. Under Stalin, 'former communists' were limited to those persons about to be executed, already executed, or waiting to be uncovered. As an original Bolshevik, a leader of the 1917 revolution, Rubashov's disillusionment was simply inadmissible to Number One (as Stalin is referred to by Koestler).

Koestler explores the journey of Rubashov from the knock at the door through the final denouement. The reader observes Rubashov, who plays the role of narrator, as he undergoes the psychological change from a determination to resist to nearly total capitulation. Rubashov manages to hold to some crumbs of self-respect, but yields to the logic of the revolution as more important than any individual even when the accusations are complete fabrications.

`Darkness at Noon' is precisely imagined with its details of Rubashov pacing the floor of his small isolation cell, the coded tapping between adjacent cells, and the deprivation of physical comforts that make the subsequent small graces, such as limited outdoor exercise, become precious by comparison. This much of the tale was informed by Rubashov's experiences as a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War. Koestler's examination of the psychological destruction of the prisoner is fascinating, although at times it briefly lapses into stultifying disquisitions on the distorted Stalinist political philosophy.

Koestler himself was a German communist through much of the 1930's before immigrating to Britain, leaving the party and becoming an influential ex-communist. George Orwell's excellent essay about Koestler is readily available on the Internet (google `arthur koestler orwell').

Darkness at Noon was the middle book of an unusual trilogy of loosely related subjects: Gladiators and Arrival and Departure (20th Century Classics). Readers may also wish examine Victor's Serge's The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics).

Highly recommended for anyone interested in the era of communism in its Stalinist form or more broadly in the perverse ability of humans to place greater meaning in abstract and abstruse ideology than in the actual lives of other humans.

I'm afraid to read anything else by Arthur Koestler.

"Darkness at Noon," his excellent novel about an aging revolutionary awaiting a show-trial and execution in Stalin's Soviet Union, is so thoroughly compelling and readable, alive with ideas and general brilliance, and so widely recognized as Koestler's masterpiece, that I fear his other books will be disappointing by comparison.

This, on the other hand, may well be my favorite book. Ever. Despite the fact that my "to-read" pile is a paper stalagmite that grows faster than I can chip away at it, I ripped through this one twice in under six months, and if I were somehow locked in the bathroom with only this on the toilet tank, and forced to start it a third time--I can't imagine this actually happening, but bear with me here--I can't say I'd be all that disappointed.

This reads like "1984," but it preceded Orwell's book, and presumably greatly influenced it. More importantly, although the real 1984 eventually rolled around to make Orwell's dystopia seem at least somewhat absurd (in execution, if not idea and desire), this still feels incredibly realistic.

And scarily, this is more relevant to today's America. While our level of freedom and political discourse may be completely different than that of Stalin's Soviet Union, the methods they used would not be unfamiliar in Guantanamo or Abu Grahib--or in some police precincts. Not the shrill and scary tactics of "1984," but the soft and simple: psychological games, sleep deprivation, and the like. Sleep deprivation may seem downright kind in the pantheon of torture, and I'm sure it starts off relatively innocuously--"They're terrorists, they're criminals, so why should we coddle them? Why should they get a good night's sleep?"--but any tactic whereby one compels the body to betray the mind is torture. And the sad thing is that torture doesn't work. Forget all the crazy ticking time-bomb scenarios, the fact is simple. Torture. Doesn't. Work. It does not provide reliable information or accurate confessions. And this book shows why. Rubashov, kept up for days on end, becomes willing to say or do anything for a few blessed moments of sleep. He will sell himself out. He will say anything. He will lie.

The strange peculiarity of Soviet Russia is that the victim and the torturers both know these lies are lies. But he says them, and they listen, because they both have their roles to play. The show trial is not really a trial. It is only a show.

But the great thing about "Darkness at Noon" is that it isn't just a polemic about tactics or a lesson about history; it is a powerful meditation on good and evil, and the extent to which we allow the latter in the short term because we believe it will somehow help us get the former in the long term. One reads this and feels sympathy not just for Rubashov, but for his interrogators, because they grapple with a timeless question: can we, and should we, make today difficult and imperfect and unjust for the sake of a better tomorrow?

This is a weighty question, and the book abounds with such meditations: like Dostoyevsky's works--to which it is clearly in debt--it is a philosophical novel with true weight and depth. In "The Grand Inquisitor", one of the most famous chapters in literature, Dostoyevsky concocts a prison scene in which the head of the Spanish Inquisition discourses to Jesus on why the Church felt it necessary to behave in ways contrary to Jesus' teachings. And this book feels like "The Grand Inquisitor" writ large. Though it revolves around ideology instead of religion, the effect is similar--disciples explaining to the master why they needed to stray, why they needed to corrupt and pervert their beliefs in order to save them from external enemies, why they needed to destroy the movement in order to save it.

On this and many other issues, Rubashov ponders but--importantly--does not always come up with clear answers. "How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?" he muses early on, then asks, "How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives--where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?" I don't think Koestler wants to give us answers. Like the best artists, he's not so much interested in telling us what to think as he is in making us think. It's not always about finding answers; it's about remembering to ask questions. And that's something we need to remember today.

The phrase Orwellian only deserves to be classified as a derivative of the work of Koestler whose slightly-earlier reflections are a telling reflection on the spirit of Marxism with greater poignancy since they come from one who formerly professed Marxism as a positive doctrine. While some of the narrative aspects of Darkness at Noon are slow-moving, they add to the ponderous nature of the subject at hand as the character of Rubashov questions his adherence to an ideology which has seemingly stripped the skin off humanity without the ability to graft a glorious replacement on the exposed internal organs. The doubts of a noble, high-minded reformer are poignant to any reader who has ever considered the interplay between the individual and the whole of society.

This perennially question of all philosophy, the question of the One and the Many touches the core of our questing for the Truth and easily makes one sympathetic to the trials of the reformer who desires both to enact the noble goals of the revolution but also realizes that so much has been lost on the way that it is quite possible to question the result. In the face of cold, hard, systematic logic which easily leads one to believe with certainty in the questionable fate of the future, Rubashov quavers both against his own questioning as well as against his own self-assured innocence in the face of charges against his devotion to the Party's cause. Such a duality of confidence is naturally found in all of humanity and retains a poignancy for all readers who have considered the noble weight of the Truth against the dangers of liberty-destroying force. The story of a confused Marxist is not that different from the story of any person, even the most devout of Christians who desires for adherence to the Truth of Faith while dually acknowledging the necessity of freedom, an acknowledgement which leads to difficult choices and seemingly-insurmountable contradictions. For this reason, Darkness at Noon is a read of great importance today, even for those who are furthest from the philosophical social materialism of Marxism.

This has been my favorite book ever since I read it in 1994. Its perfection is other-worldly. If you are a Dillard novice, better to start with "An American Childhood," to get a sense of the author and her style. It is about growing up, experiencing wonder, becoming fully alive. "Holy the Firm" borders on a spiritual meditation; some of my friends have found it too abstract. Whatever you do, steer clear of "The Maytrees," Dillard's most recent book--it doesn't measure up.

Annie Dillard is a creator of writing that frequently works like poetry trapped in prose's body. This little offering, in three jewel-like parts, is rather like her more extended "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek": a gorgeous and unflinching experience of the natural world, an angry wrestling with the problem of suffering and a theological discussion in light of these two other preoccupations. The theology in "Holy the Firm" is thus grounded in trauma and reality but expressed in heady, spinning, sometimes impenetrable language that highlights the mysteries within her subject but at the same time obscured for me what attitudes of the heart or mind she had come to at the end of her struggles. I finished the book still feeling rather angry myself and, perhaps unsurprisingly, unsatisfied.

Recommended (especially the hilarious description of Sunday in a small Episcopalian Church).

This is a gift from Annie Dillard. She share her struggle with the question of "What kind of God would let --- happen?" Whose responsibility is it? Do we matter one whit to God? Dillard shares her pain, her longing for truth, her disappointment, her faith with grace and soaring language. It is a short book but is definitely not an easy read.

Ponder the definition of Holy the Firm, as believed by esoteric Christianity. "It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a 'spiritual scale,' and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base."

"Does something that touched something that touched Holy the Firm in touch with the Absolute at base seep into ground water, into grain; are islands rooted in it, and trees? Of course."

Then there is Dillard's description of the risk of losing someone you love.
"And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother's body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love's long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting."

In Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard certainly can not be accused for excess verbiage. Her little book, consisting of less than eighty pages, is a thoughtful and sometimes intense investigation into the soul. One can almost imagine her staring deeply at a flowing river or a particular kind of tree and genuinely seeing Divinity in and around it, authentically feeling it and being transportated to the nether reaches of the unexplained. Yet, it is a good place or moment where nothing can touch you or hurt you. It is the zone where you have that elongated, never ending epihany. However, in Holy the Firm, she has that exact moment or moments, citing a couple of specific occasions and or happenings: a moth engulfed in a candle flame, a child severely burned in an airplane mishap and lastly, a baptism on a chilly day on a beach. Her stabbing gaze and visual processing is an inherent endowment for us all but very seldom used, sad to say. Each example that she bethinks, on the surface, looks violent and harsh and horrible. But behind that mask of the unpleasant, there is profound cheer at the transformation of the perception, of soul development, and yes, of course, of the logical, humanistic and psychological plain of thought processing, filtering and transforming. The essay, in no uncertain terms, conveys a kind of WOW factor that says, I don't really know how this whole thing operates, but isn't it amazing nonetheless? The deity of God has to be here, right in front of our very eyes, every moment, every instance, every half second. Holiness is under a rock, in people, in nature, in moments (good and bad), one giant gelatinous glob with so many tags and definitions attached to it. But only the Holy makes it cohesive and function. This work is not so little in its implications and gratitude. There is a majesty here, an august celebration. And we're all in it together, a gem of a book!

While attending Western Washington University I had the great good fortune to take a poetry class from Annie Dillard. My own poetry was abysmal and she gave me this advice, "writing is like prayer; you sit and listen for the still small voice." She had won the Pulitzer prize for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and was in the process of writing Holy the Firm while at Fairhaven College at Western. She read us the bits about the moth and the flame. This is her slenderest book, but the one in which she most takes her own advice. It's prose that reads like poetry.

This is a book that makes me think that everything else I've ever read was only approximate use of language to convey some idea. In this book it seems like every word is carefully chosen, as if it comes from some place of meditation, of listening to a still small voice. It's a very human book, for all the sparks of the divine. By another accident I heard her read from it at the University of Washington. The final passage seemed to rise to a climax and hang in the air. No one spoke, no one left. It was one of those magical moments. Holy the Firm is all one piece and can be read through in one sitting as one experience. It's very much a writer's book, and I see most of the reviews are by writers finding some echo in a fellow writer. Some reviewers have put much better than I what it's about. I merely suggest that Dillardians (and other readers) may enjoy this oft-overlooked book.

this is the best book i've ever read and by far the best translation of it. i can't really say anything more.

Lushly, sensuously, decadently overwritten, a fatal literary intersection where Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Poe, and Sade collide and out of the spectacular wreckage something lopes off into the surrounding woods declaiming like Nietzsche's Zarathustra with head trauma--Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is one of those ten or twelve books that aren't like any other. Part hallucination, part philosophy, part prose-poem, part prophecy, it's a bizarre stitched-together Frankenstein's monster of a text, a virtuoso improvisation animated by an electrifying genius who appears--and disappears--on the literary stage like a bolt out of the blue.

Here is a work where the first-person protagonist is an arrogant, cruel, disdainful superhuman egoist--sometimes seeming to be Satan; other times, something considerably less, but at all times evil incarnate. Dramatic and arbitrary shifts of narrative perspective and authorial points-of-view, a fractured, nonlinear plot-line, similes and metaphors of Homeric proportion that bring together the most disparate items in absurd conjunctions virtually without meaning. Was it all a joke? A parody of Romantic literature and the self-indulgent, self-pitying, overheated imagination of those who struck the Romantic stance of poetic revolt and existential defiance? What must the French public have thought of this black mass "celebrating" vice, blasphemy, pederasty, and murder--a work that held nothing--including itself--above disgust?

Predictably enough, *Maldoror* caused barely a ripple in the bourgeoisie calm when it was first published--by Ducasse himself incidentally--and remained unread by the general public who continues to not read it today. It remains a text ahead of its time--or perhaps more accurately--outside of time altogether. And yet it's had a huge influence on the writers, artists, and intellectuals of our time, from the Surrealists to the Situationists to literature in theory and practice to this day. *Maldoror* is a quintessentially postmodern text--a pastiche of genres with its penchant for self-parody and its direct address of the reader, breaking the illusion of "fictive reality" and authorial authority.

The translator argues forcefully that this is the edition of *Maldoror* to read--that other editions, most egregiously the Penguin--are rife with errors that stumble along the borderline of sheer incompetence. I've got no good reason to doubt this is the truth--and why not read this edition? It's attractively formatted, fully annotated, and contains all the known works of Lautreamont ((Ducasse)) including a few apocryphal tidbits, a chronology, biographical notes, and even a reminiscence by an old dude who once went to school with the Dark Prince of Letters. If there's a better edition, I'm unaware of it.

As for the heavily annotated *Poesies* that round out the main bulk of this volume--I had far less enthusiasm for them than for *Maldoror.* A series of gnomic axioms and aphorisms ala Pascal, indeed, many apparently in direct reply to Pascal, I didn't find them very interesting, often barely intelligible, even with the help of the comprehensive annotations--much of it in French which was unfortunately of no use to someone monolingual like me. What I did understand of the *Poesies,* the opinion of enthusiasts to the contrary, I found, for the most part, bombastic or banal, and very often both. A young man's ((Ducasse died in his early twenties)) bold, world-shattering, and consequently somewhat naïve proclamations on life and literature, any and all of which were likely to change if he'd lived to see even five more years of either. At twenty-three, you can be a genius and produce a literary masterpiece, but you still don't know much--certainly not even most--about life.

Indeed, even in the *Poesies,* Ducasse radically reverses field, mercilessly ridiculing Romanticism and its heroes, mocking the Satanic defiance that inspired such works as...*Maldoror!*

So was *Maldoror* all a goof then--a black spoof, a devastating satire? Had Ducasse turned a new leaf as he claimed in the *Poesies* and now dedicated himself to composing uplifting works of classical order and clarity? Was he pulling our leg then...or again? Was it all a joke--on us, on him? Was he simply insane, or just young, or both? Are we reading too much into all this--and is *that* the point?

These are some of the very potent post-contemporary questions that Ducasse has left us to contemplate in the wake of his great literary disappearing act--questions that remain in addition to, and beyond, those raised by the actual content of his enigmatic, and abbreviated, corpus of work.

An author--and a book--as important for being important as for the substance and merit of what he wrote, Ducasse and *Maldoror* is essential reading for the serious student of post-19th century literature. Ducasse/Lautreamont/Maldoror is a major signpost on the way to a new kind of writing, some of which we see today, more of which we'll see tomorrow.

What to say about Maldoror that hasn't been said yet? What to say about the mysterious son of a diplomat who appeared in France, wrote this book and died, vanishing from the world, yet leaving his mark for decades and centuries yet to come?
The first time I had the pleasure of reading this exceptional work, I was taken aback. Barely seventeen, I hungrily swallowed the disturbing images leaping at me from the pages, not to fully comprehend them until years later. This work, over a century old, is believed to be the first work, the foundation stone of the surrealist movement, a movement that penetrated into every aspect of art, life, being; whether we are willing to admit it or not, this work is as important today as it was when originally published in 1868 (well, at least a part of it was). The world was not ready to receive the complete self-awarness of evil Maldoror so fully comprehends, and the world is still not ready. This work is certainly not to be read by a "closed" mind. It is said that to be creative, one must borderline insanity, yet, Lautreamont was playing with genius; a genius of a caliber capable of scaring away even the most immodest of us. But get deeper into his work, walk past the disturbed images, surpass your fears and you shall see the light. This work cannot be ignored, cannot be left to collect dust. I have owned several copies over the past 14 years, and I am still finding new meanings, new passages and new understanding in this wonderful work. This trully is the one book that will never get old, that will always keep on giving, as long as one is ready to listen.

This review is of *Maldoror*, alone.

Lautreamont's *Maldoror* is legendary for its bold and complex phrasing and imagery, for its reputation of embodying Surrealism *avant la lettre*, and for its remarkably extreme, savage imagery. Less frequently remarked is its obvious debt to the earlier literature of the *Frenetiques*, such as Petrus Borel. Given the very few English translations of the latter, one may pardon those who do not read French for overestimating the originality of *Maldoror*. Francophones such as the Surrealists and Lykiard, however, have no such excuse.

The descriptions of *Maldoror* in the various reviews here describe the content and style of the work perfectly well, so I shall neither repeat them nor try to outdo them. Instead, I shall offer a slightly less breathlessly adoring view of the work, in general, and of Lykiard's translation of it, in particular.

My view of *Maldoror* is that it is primarily a parody of the extreme tendencies of the "dark side" of Romanticism, in general, and of Byron, in particular. Although Lykiard dismisses Mario Praz's view of Lautreamont and *Maldoror* rather abruptly, Praz's observations seem quite germane, to me:

"[Lautreamont/Ducasse is] a macabre humorist in whom it is impossible to distinguish where sincerity ends and mystification begins".

Those who doubt this observation should have a look at Ducasse's extant letters, many of which bear witness to his desire merely to be a successful writer, and to be judged by the literary critics of the day. In a word, Ducasse/Lautreamont appears to have been precisely the sort of careerist *litterateur* whom the Surrealists excoriated and excommunicated from their ranks with tedious regularity!

As for Lykiard's translation, it is adequate, but far from inspired. Although, as he trumpets *ad nauseam*, his version of *Maldoror* may be in the main less error-riddled than those of his competitors, it is frequently leaden and awkward. Compare, for instance, the following tin-eared rendition to the original, and then to Paul Knight's rendering of the same passage:

The original: "[...] car, à moins qu'il n'apporte dans sa lecture une logique rigoureuse et une tension d'esprit égale au moins à sa défiance, les émanations mortelles de ce livre imbiberont son âme comme l'eau le sucre".

Lykiard: "For unless he bring to his reading a rigorous logic and mental application at least tough enough to balance his distrust, the deadly issues of this book will lap up his soul as water does sugar".

Knight: "[...] for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and tautness of mind equal at least to his wariness, the deadly emanations of this book will dissolve his soul as water does sugar".

Granted, such evaluations involve much subjectivity, but there's no doubt in my mind which version reads both more accurately and more elegantly in English. Lykiard does, however, deserve credit for demonstrating Knight's faults, as well.

Lykiard's notes are not necessarily much better than his translations. To take but one instance, Lykiard tells us that "God is here (and *passim*) ironically addressed as *tu* rather than the more formal *vous*". If Lykiard were as clever as he'd like to appear, then he'd know that the French *always* address God as *tu*, and not as *vous*. Therefore, there is nothing ironic on its face about Lautreamont's usage, at all.

In sum, *Maldoror* is a sometimes powerful, but often puerile, *reductio ad absurdum* of *Frenetique*-era late Romanticism. Enjoy it for its over-the-top style and its infrequent passages of genuine and sincere poetic power. Do not, however, take it too seriously, because, although we shall never know for certain, my bet is that Ducasse/Lautreamont was little more than a prodigiously gifted adolescent who sought, as most adolescents do, simultaneously to shock and to impress the grown-ups.

I like my writers drunk, blasphemous, decadent and French. If any of that list sounds even vaguely familiar then this is the book for you. Set the absinthe fountain to a slow drip, light some candles and prepare to tour an alchemical end-of-the-century underworld.

Gorky's childhood memories brush a very outspoken picture of `that close-knit, suffocating little world of pain and suffering, where the Russian man of the street used to live.'
It is a world full of brutal violence: husbands beating savagely their wives, severely and intensively flogging of children, gamblers becoming totally destitute, alcoholism, dangerous diseases (smallpox, ulcers) and cruel street games (cock and dog fighting, cat torturing, making fun of drunken beggars). Socially, there is a big chasm between the haves and have-nots: their children cannot play together. The poor cannot feed all their new born babies and expose them.
On the other hand, this bunch of `wild animals' is deeply, but primitively religious. They ask God constantly to forgive their sins.

Despite this barbarous environment, Gorky considers his childhood as `a beehive to which various single obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life; often their honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.'
There is also another reason why he put these painful memories on paper: `It is the truth and the truth must be known. The Russian man in the street is sufficiently healthy and young in spirit to overcome the horrors.'

Although he lost his love for his family and was thrown out of their home, he remains highly optimistic for mankind: `Life is always surprising us by the bright, healthy and creative human powers of goodness. It is those powers that awaken our indestructible hope that a better and more human life will once again be reborn.'

Gorky was received with open arms by the communists, but that love story ended in total personal disaster.

This brutal picture of the man in the street should remind us from where we all come from.
Not to be missed.

"Childhood" starts out like many Russian novels; we visit the funeral of a young man. In the midst of all the grief, the young widow suffers a miscarriage and the young orphan is sent to the rather disfunctional home of his grandparents. There the temperment of the patriarch is measured by the severity of the beatings he administers. In the midst of all of this, a young boy grows into adolescence.

Maxim Gorky earns our respect as a writer (and as a survivor). It is hard to fathom such a life but Gorky has used the genre of autobiography to paint as visual a portrait as any novel could create. There may not be action taking place on every page but there are always recollections by a man rediscovering who he is by recreating the influential events of his early life. In sharing this insight, Gorky gives us portraits of many interesting individuals. I hedged away from rating "Childhood" with 5 stars because I didn't mind setting it aside from time to time. It is very good but it is not compelling.

I first read this book as a college freshman and think it must be read by all young adults. Gorky is, after all, the "father of Russian literature" -- yet most people have never heard of this writer par excellence. His storytelling is smooth, intense, and warms the heart like a swig of vodka on a nippy night in Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky's birthplace). Wilk's translation is clear and quite excellent. Gorky's vivid memories of childhood will inspire one to recollect their own experiences growing up.

The finest memoir of chilhood that I have ever read. I never felt like I was reading a translation. Gorky captures the wonder of a remarkable and sensitive soul.

This is the 1st past of the trilogy of Maxim Gorky's autobiography. This is a really good and entertaining book, but contains at times morbid and depressing subject material, especially the unbelievable cruelty of some of the characters. There are some light moments though and if you enjoy realism and a brutal peek at what life was like in early 20th century Russian life for poor folks and enjoy Dostoevsky, you will like this book.

I personally think that Gorky belongs at the top of elite Russian writers.

Piers Anthony certainly has a way with words, and uses many of them in this "triology ran wild".

I would recommend this series to anyone from age 12 to 112. These books are wonderfully entertaining and amusing. Real page turners. When I was younger, I would read one in a sitting. I have recently introduced my 14 yr old step daughter to them, and she loves them.

This book is great! It is the first book I've read by Piers Anthony, and I plan to read many more. The first book,"Centure Aisle", introduces you to Dor the "young" magician, Smash the young Ogre, Princess Irene, who can grow plants imedietly on her command, Grundy the golem, he can talk to anything living. Their adventures take them all over Xanth and beyond. I was so into this book that I could not put it down for weekend,I have a tendency to read slow. Thanks to this book I look forward to reading instead of dreading it. The Charcters are colorful and well portrayed, I've recomended it to many and they love it and are hurrying to the book store to get more of the Xanth novels. Enjoy reading this as it will take you far into the reaches of Xanth and you will not want to come back to the real world.

I only enjoyed this book becaiuse my earlier copies of these three books were torn to sherds, and these had been more or less, some of my favorites in the series. The first half of the series is excellent,it droops after that. The first book(which isn't included in this collection)is by far the best. Although the stories and details make the books fun, most readers will find the stories dragged down by the literally hundreds of puns piled in them. If not for this, these books would be even more popular. If you're looking for good fantasy and can stomach the horrible puns, this is a great book series.

From the first time my best friend handed me Piers Anthony's "A Spell for Chameleon," I've been stuck in the land of Xanth quite happily. The characters are just so interesting, and reading through these is never more of a burden than eating candy or popcorn. They are completly delightful, and the stories don't wane, each is uniguely magnificent in it's own respect. I'm on book seven now, and haven't felt any mileage yet. Oh and by the way,...I'm not a baby! -I turn 21 this month!- It's not just for children; just those who like to like to randomly smile in solitude.

The Xanth series is a collection of Tongue-in-Cheek adventurous wanderings through a world where word-play is reality and reality is like a Dream World, from-which you cannot awake--yet, the stories are fantasy episodes comparable to the other great works of the genre, by your favorite Fantasy Writers...only, with a comedic twist and a perfectly placed punch-line (which, in his world, would probably be a running of the gauntlet, with burly men throwing wild swings at your head) now and then! Piers Anthony is a master of word usage and placement--just look at his other titles, even the book names he comes up with make you curious to see what's inside the artistic covers of his stories. "A Spell for Chameleon" is the place to embark upon the tour through Anthony's strange and exciting universe-- but, when the tour of Xanth is over, go visit the world of "The Blue Adept." Piers Anthony is a wonderful writer and one of the men who helped me survive High School. After reading some intense Terry Brooks, I'd kick-back with some Xanth novels and relax a little. I very-much recommend the "THE APPRENTICE ADEPT" series, which is unlike anything you have probably read, before.... You will thoroughly enjoy Stile's adventures and his attempts to live in Two Worlds, simultaneously.

An excellent edition of Graham Greene's The Quiet American because it combines this prescient novel with superb contextual documents about the Vietnam War, Greene's role in it, and a wide-range of critical essays about the novel. It's stunning how Greene in 1952 was able to see what would happen and why in Vietnam, but the novel speaks as well to us today about the dangers of imposing our own ideologies on other cultures and being blind to human suffering. It also shows the dangers of sterotyping and objectifying the "other."

To read The quiet American now, some thity years after the end of a sensless and disastrous war, gives us an unexpected vision of Vietnam, its people and the United States involvement in that war. Furthermore, it's inevitable to think of the present war in Iraq.
It's no news that Graham Green is a magnificent fiction writer, witty, sometimes funny, always capable of digging deep into historical situations and different people habits and values (The power and the glory and The comedians are very good examples)but in the qiet American he is also a cruel reporter and a skillful creator of full size human characters.
The Viking Critica Library edition has also an enormoues value for the inclusion of literary reviews from the first edition of the book and the opinons of experts both in literature and Vietnam history.
Javier Olmedo,
Mexico City, Mexico

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes a young, idealistic and quiet American called Pyle who is employed in the Economic Aid Mission. He is sent there to promote democracy through a mysterious Third Force. But his naïve optimism about democracy starts to cause deaths and his friend the cynical British foreign correspondent Thomas Fowler finds it hard to stand aside and watch. As Fowler intervenes, he wonders whether it is for the sake of politics or for his love for the young Phuong.
Commissioned during the 1950s to write an article on guerrilla warfare in Malaya, Graham Greene stopped off in Vietnam to visit a friend, and soon fell under the spell of Indo-China. This novel is a result of his love for the country, inspired by his experiences there. Although the political situation has changed dramatically, The Quiet American continues to reflect accurately and powerfully the problems of war and the people involved in it.

If you plan to buy this book by all means get this edition. The novel is very readable and Greene is a real wordsmith. The thing is this edition has news articles by the author about Indochina,
critical reviews (the good and the bad), interviews with Ho Chi Minh and American generals, a plot summary of the film and documents about the war. It also has topics for discussion or school papers. The text is less than 200 pages and readable so there is time to read the additional material. This book has the last chapter first such that you know the final result and the rest is leading up to the events in the first chapter. It is a gimmick but it works. I had to re-read the first chapter when I finished; couldn't help it. Find this edition, Viking Critical Library.

One of the most amazing things that jumped out at me about Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American," was the copyright date. 1955. How many years BEFORE America found itself mired in the nightmare of the Vietnam War?
Why didn't anyone in power or policy see the warning in this novel?

I'm still reading through all the extra material but I feel confident enough about the book itself and what I have read that I can definitely give this book five stars (the novel is over a third of this book).

Alden Pyle, Greene's "quiet American," clearly represents America in this cruel world. He's young, strong, sure of his beliefs and willing to act on his own convictions--but in this world of deceit and corruption, he doesn't have a chance. And quite a few people have said the same thing about America in Vietnam.

Beyond the deeper meaning of the setting and story (more powerful since it was written BEFORE the USA got stuck in Nam), the characters really make for some fiction. Pyle, the clear-eyed Yank looking to do good in Indo-China, runs into the narrator Fowler, an opium-smoking old Brit journalist who's seen too much and forgot how to care about anything--except the Vietnamese woman who comes between them.

At the end of the 1970s, "Apocalypse Now" got a lot of kudos for its dark humor ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning!") but Greene had written along those lines in the 1950s: Fowler rides along on a bomb run and, after a village is blown to bits, the pilot points out the beautiful sunset on a nearby river.

Up to this point, my favorite Greene novel had been "The End of the Affair," but now it's "The Quiet American." I also want to see the Michael Caine movie they made a couple years back.

Although the famous author's last years brought her much sorrow and depression, she continued to depict the world as it once more became plunged into yet another world war. In her famous journals, she described movies she saw, including GWTW, air conditioning, and the frustration involved with generational gaps. It is a must read for those who followed the previous books.

Obviously this is for fans of L M Montgomery - if you know and love her writing, you will recognise among the friends and acquaintances of her youth the characters that people Anne of Green Gable's turbulent world. But this wonderful journal is much more than that - it is a fascinating insight into a world which is long gone.

We read of Maud's complex family arrangements, her desire to be a good teacher and disappointment with some of her placements. Her small victories selling stories to publications, and the seemingly endless stream of suitors who proclaim love for her (my favourite is the hapless Mr Mustard). It is a tale of love found and not acted on (and the agonies that accompany it), familial obligations, frustrated talents and beautiful Canadian country side. It tells of heppiness, despair, joy and nostalgia, and is as engagingly written as any fabulous novel.

By all means read this if you wish to understand the creator of one of the world's most engaging literary characters, but also to have a glimpse of a world none of us will ever see the likes of.

Poor poor woman. I could scarcely put it down. But it brings up many questions. Why did she think that Mr. Leard, the Love of her life, was not worthy of her? Why did no one ask her husband Mr. McDonald what the heck was bothering him? Why did she not know in 5 years of courtship that something was terribly wrong with him? Poor, poor woman. The synthesis of this book is when she asks herself why a woman that she felt was mean and hateful was happy and she was not. Indeed, why?

IF YOU LOVE THE OTHER DIARIES YOU WILL ENJOY READING ABOUT HER FINAL DAYS. I ENJOYED ALL OF THE OTHER DIARIES BUT THIS ONE IS THE SADDEST. SHE HAS HER GOOD DAYS AND BAD, BUT SADLY SHE STOPPED WRITING IN THE LAST YEARS WHEN LIFE BECAME SO UNBEARABLE THAT SHE COUDLN'T EVEN WRITE ABOUT IT SO THIS DIARY IS INCOMPLETE. YOU WILL LOVE SEEING INSIDE THE LIFE AND MIND OF AN AUTHOR WHO ACHIEVED SUCCESS IN HER OWN LIFETIME AND LIVED TO WRITE ABOUT HER PERSONAL LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD TO HER LAST DAYS. THIS DIARY IS HER LAST, BUT LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY WILL CONTINUE TO LIVE ON IN HER WRITINGS. HER DIARY WAS A WAY TO SHARE HER INNERMOST THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS THAT SHE COULDN'T SHARE IN HER NOVELS. YOU TOO WILL FEEL LIKE A KINDRED SPIRIT.

These journals, are beautifully put together. I remember when I found the first one and then each suceeding volume. I knew this one was coming. I even called the author at Guelph University to ask her how much longer I would have to wait.

She said then that they had to wait for some of the people in the journals to die before they could publish them. I would guess Dr. Stuart Macdonald was one of them.

They thrill me and make me feel closer to thise amazing woman. I've read everything she's written now. The sad thing is that once this volume is finished there is nothing new to read.

My greatests thanks to L. M. Montgomery and to Drs. Rubio and Waterson for their great work.

S.C. Ringgenberg
(602) 621-6439 /sringgenberg1@cox.net



Sight Unseen Brings Terror to Light


Sight Unseen, a 2006 graphic novel from Image, written by Rob Tinnell, and illustrated by Bo Hampton is quite simply, one of the best graphic novels of the last two years, and at the same time, the scariest ghost story I couldn't put down. Tinnell and Hampton's collaboration has produced a genuinely scary and original fearfest, with one of the creepiest villains ever put on paper. Tinnell's script is atmospheric, crackles with believable dialog, and provides a number of good shocks along the way to its melancholy conclusion. Some of the protagonists survive, but this brush with supernatural forces scars them forever.
Bo Hampton eschews his usual realistic, cleanly rendered style (always reminiscent of Al Williamson and Michael Kaluta in good ways) for a moodier, computer drawn style that gives him a broader emotional palette to work with, especially in the darker range of the spectrum. Hampton captures the mood of Tinnell's script so well that I can't imagine another artist drawing this. I give Sight Unseen my highest recommendation. If you haven't read this book, don't waste any time tracking down your own copy! And while you're reading it, you'd better leave the lights on. Pleasant dreams, readers

It's disappointing how unreadable some comics and graphic novels are today. Pretentious, patronizing, overwrought, and often boring. It's a shame how art-driven the medium has become. That sounds a bit odd when you consider I'm talking about COMICS, but it's true nonetheless. If the book has a plodding script with flat characters, cheap lines and horrible pacing, then no artist of any caliber can save it from an inevitable demise. No artist worth his lead should have touched it in the first place, but unfortunately they do, and we the buyers often let ourselves be lured in by big names and lay down our hard-earned cash for worthless drivel.
But this gorgeous little book is worth every penny I laid down for it. Sight Unseen is everything I want my comics and graphic novels to be. Original without being pretentious. Intelligent without being patronizing. Thought-provoking without being overwrought. The characters are believable, likeable and thoroughly fleshed-out. The relationship dynamic between Frank, his daughter Molly, and his research partner Derek couldn't be more spot-on. Every page of this book is perfectly done, by both Bob and Bo. Speaking of which, Bo's artwork is really something to behold. Loose and organic at just the right moment, yet clean and tight right when it had to be. Not to take anything away from the guy, but a few of those panels gave me very Templesmith-esque shivers! That's definitely a compliment in my book. The complete lack of dialogue or narration in certain sequences is nothing short of brilliant...and terrifying!
Truth be told, I was hesitant at first about the glasses. While I'm familiar with some of the research done regarding the paranormal, I feared that the scientific aspects would be delved into far too much for the average reader, and would threaten to overtake the amazing ghost story that was evolving. I was quite relieved and very pleased to see that wasn't the case! Just enough information to keep the reader up to snuff, nothing more. The build-up and climax is a crash course in Horror How-To. My pulse hasn't pounded that hard in a long time.
Kudos to Bob and Bo on this amazing book. I'll be passing it on to everyone I know that loves a great ghost story. I truly hope that there is a script treatment in the works and a studio smart enough to pick it up!

When I originally found out about this book it was at the Philadelphia Comic convention in 2005. I met Bo Hampton who gladly shared some of the pages and concepts to Sight Unseen. I had the pleasure of meeting Bob Tinell and together they crafted a story that frankly scared the hell out of me. The art was riveting. The fact that there were so many panels with no dialouge left the reader to truly study the panel and after looking past the obvious, the minor nuansces are what left the reader frightened. Great concept! The writing is top notch. I could not put this book down. I am not a fan of horror but this ranks with 30 Days of Night as a book that will only fuel the flames of the horror comic book comeback. If this is not made into a film it would be a travesty. This is as chilling as the Sixth Sense and makes the Ring seem tame. I would recommend this book to anyone whether a fan of horror or not. My hope is that Bob and Bo will continue to spin tales of horror and suspense for many more years to come. Dare I say that if I had a few million dollars I would find a way to make this book into a movie. That's how good it is! Read Sight Unseen.

Not a bad book, but at the same time not as frightening as i was hoping for, but it still has quite an interesting premise and a pretty suspenseful climax.

I picked up this book solely to enjoy Bo Hampton's wonderful artwork, but I was surprised at how well written the story was. You don't think that you'll be spooked by a Graphic Novel, but I read this lengthy book before bed and I have to admit that when I turned the lights out I could have sworn I was hearing things. Incredibly creepy.

No doubt, what draws you to this story is the masterful artwork by Bo Hampton, but the entire book is a treasure. Even the format of the book and it's extra behind the scenes section at the end fit in perfectly. The only thing I have to say negative about it is that I found a few mispellings and grammatical errors in the book. Strange. Usually you don't see that in a Graphic Novel. But that really doesn't affect the intensity of this book. My highest recommendation.

Very comprehensive. Lots of photos, very good history. It did come out a while ago so doesn't have anything about Entwistle's death. But it's a great history of the Who!

The definitive book to have on The Who. Loaded & re-loaded with amazing photographs & anecdotes from a friend of the band who isn't afraid to point out the bad in addition to the good.

I bought this book on its original release back in the 1980's; the updated section to review the years 1983-96 is most welcome. Hopefully, Richard Barnes will release yet another edition that takes into account the years 1997 to the present.

If you're a Who junkie, this book is a must. If you're a new fan, this volume is a fantastic primer into the history of the greatest band there ever was.

This book is an excellent resource for all fans of the classic rock band, The Who. Telling the band's story from their earliest days, the reader will find plenty of detail, interviews, and wonderful photographs to enhance this "amazing journey". The author takes a relatively unbiased stance, leaving out personal opinion in favor of simply stating "the facts".

If you are a fan of The Who, this is certainly a book that deserves a place in your library.

This book is really a great overview of the WHO's career. Starting out when the band started to meet as teenagers and spannig all the way to a few years after Keith's death, this book covers every single recording the WHO did.

Aside from just following the WHO through their career, this book is also jam-packed with those crazy Keith Moon anecdotes and interesting picures.

I really enjoyed this book, and enjoyed seein what one of my favorite bands was really like. I would definately recommend it to anyone who loves the WHO.

As a HUGE Who fan, I first picked up "Maximum R&B" in the late 80's, and recently dug into the updated version.

Richard Barnes was an old art school friend of Pete Townshend's, and remained close to him and the band over the decades. His history of the Who is detailed, mixed with intimiate remembrances, especially of the early days of the band.

Barnes for the most part tells the story with a straight-forward, unbiased eye. He details the tulmultuous relationship between the band members, especially Townshend and Roger Daltrey, and draws on numerous interviews and press articles (the press materials are classic--some very early pix of a very young Detours lineup are among the entertaining bits).

Barnes also examines the Mod movement of the 60's, which was so critical to exposing the Who (for a while the High Numbers) to a hardcore audience.

For Who fans like myself, you may find some minor errors, and Barnes doesn't go too deep into some of the band member's personal lives, except where he seems to have an in. Among these would be Townshend's fascination with Meher Baba, his later drug and alcohol problems, and his later struggles with trying to deal with the Who while establishing himself as a solo artist.

In any case, a fantastic document of the history of one of rock's greatest and most talented bands.