Text Archives Reviews

Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive)

Published in Paperback by Exact Change (1998-11)

Author:

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Please read this review.

Helpful Votes: 13 out of 14 total.
Review Date: 2001-07-22

Before reading this book, I didn't know anything about Oulipo....do you? If not, here's the gist: Oulipo are a bunch of slightly crazy people who want to find new and fun ways to write stuff. So, they create all these interesting and zany techniques to generate their writing...to me, it seems similar to how modern composers generate notes and rhythms using tone rows and stuff like that. This book is a "compendium" of these techniques, Oulipo authors, their works, etc. I think it's great. I'd recommend it to writers who want to try something new (as opposed to just writing "from the heart", or whatever) and I'd also recommend it to people who like modern, formalist type stuff. Have fun.

Basic tool set for home, auto and brain repairs

Helpful Votes: 28 out of 30 total.
Review Date: 2000-07-26

Rather than individually buying a variety of basic tools, consider getting the Oulipo Compendium, which contains all the essentials: screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, detective-novel-plot-generation-cards, Raymond Queneau's sonnet matrix, etc. Part of the benefit of an oulipo compendium of this scope is that it comes with its own carrying case, includes just about everything you need for at-home brain surgery, and is organized alphabetically, in the form of a dictionary. Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie's home/auto/linguistic tool set meets all these needs and more. Fits both standard and metric sockets. Features basic Oulipo tool set, assorted sizes of screwdrivers and ice-picks, sestina modifiers, biographies of oulipo participants side-by-side with multiple permutations of the N+7 theorem, socket wrenches with 70 sockets and 5 fingers and toes, and an especially amusing photograph of Georges Perec wearing a saucy beard. Stores easily on bokshelf or in the trunk of your car for travel emergencies. Smite your enemy by inventing a law which turns "Y" into "A" whenever it is preceded by "ENEM". Recover language and see what it's like to not live as a slave to your mother's tongue.

The Escape Hatch

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2006-10-26

What can I say of the Compendium, except that I wish I had known about it years ago when I was slogging through many a boring creative writing class asking, always, "Is this all we have?" Truly, there is another side to writing, a playful, divergent, fascinating side that gives the reader and the writer a world of untold possibility.

Reading this book was very like being allowed into the fold of the Ultra Cool Kids, finding them to be an evolved form of human, and being welcomed just the same. The history, writing, and exercises held in this volume should be read by everyone thinking of exploring experimental writing. If you are bored with the status quo--and how could you not be?--then this book is for you.

zany literary fun

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2002-05-23

Oulipo is great! This book is just so full of STUFF. What they did was just spend a lot of time thinking of wild ways to inspire & direct writing, & what we're left with is this labyrinth of experimrents. For me, the one of the greatest things gleaned from Oulipo is just the general sense that therec are sooo many more conceptual & logistical systems out there that you haven't even touched upon yet but that are waiting.

The Book of Ways

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2001-10-03

If you ever come across Arthur Brand's little article on the Oulipo, cherish it. I read it back in the late 80s, in an anthology somewhere, and I've never been able to find it since. It whet my appetite for these crazy masters of restricted composition, who spend their time devising totally new ways to write. This isn't a book for the "poetry of everyday life" set, or writing workshop clones. It's a book, as Brand said, for "mad scientists, mathematicians, monster-makers and angels." It's a writer's encylopedia, stuffed with ideas, strategies, graphs, games, machines, etc for making poetry and fiction.

Ryder

Published in Paperback by Dalkey Archive Press (1995-09)

Author: Djuna Barnes

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an astonishing writer

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-09-23

It wasn't only T.S. Eliot who described Djuna Barnes's style as Elizabethan. (Though the poet Marie Ponsot has described her as Jacobean.) What period could encompass this twentieth century writer's talent for casting spells both psychological and atmospheric? I've never read anyone quite like her. If only James Joyce had been a little more talented, he might have been Barnesian--but few of us know this; join us!

A Great Achievement

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 1999-07-05

This is an amazing work. A mostly autobiographical parody, Barnes uses Ryder as sort of a twisted extended metaphor for the rest of the world. The beautiful and inventive prose, though often obscure, illustrates the life of the Ryder family poignantly and indignantly. Written in various styles, the book is bound to touch each and every reader.

Adoption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-Mesu-Lissur (Mesopotamian Civilizations, Vol 3) (Mesopotamian Civilizations, Vol 3) (Mesopotamian Civilizations, Vol 3)

Published in Hardcover by Eisenbrauns (1991-08-01)

Authors: Elizabeth Caecilia Stone, David I. Owen, and John R. Mitchell

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A Fascinating Look at Ancient Mesopotamian Adoption

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-01-06

This book is not an exhaustive study of ancient Mesopotamian adoptions; rather it is a study of a group of related texts many of which deal with adoption. The work contains photographs and hand drawn copies of the texts as well as transliterations and translations of the documents. The work is aimed at a scholarly, rather than a general, audience.

One fascianting fact that emerges from this study is that many adoptions are not adoptions as we would think of them. These adoptions were strictly economic transactions between adult adopters and adoptees and were not designed to add a child to a family.

This study is thorough, yet concise and comes highly recomended.

The Archive Of Hor (Texts from Excavations)

Published in Hardcover by Egypt Exploration Society (1976-05-30)

Author: J. D. Ray

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MOST INTERESTING ARCHIVES OF A PTOLEMAIC PRIEST

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2000-11-30

The texts published by Dr. Ray originated in the diggins of the Egypt Exploration Society at Saqqarah between 1965-72 and rank amongst the most important ones discovered as yet. There are 7 ostraka in demotic, recording a long petition addressed to Ptolemy VI (c. 181-145 B.C.) by a priest called Hor: these documents provide valuable insights in the history of the period and the invasion of Antiochus IV and the intervention of Rome in the affair. There are even texts on dreams and the administration (or chaotic management) of the cult to the ibises of Thoth. The research of the material, the comments and the data are masterly presented to the reader. Top Ten!

Country House (Polish Theatre Archives)

Published in Paperback by Routledge (1997-10-01)

Author: D. Gerould

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Jane Austen it isn't

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2000-03-06

Transposed to England, with a few specifically Polish references removed, this is one of Witkacy's easiest and most entertaining plays. Like most of his best work, it's a lunatic parody; unlike some, it parodies only one genre, the "country house" drama of conflicts and secrets within a well-to-do family. Thus much of the dialogue takes the form of debates, with the mother's ghost, over tea and toast, over who her various lovers were and what they and her husband may or may not have done to her. The Geroulds' translation is as fluent as always, and there is a long and very fine introduction. An extra and unexpected bonus in this edition is the inclusion of several of the author's paintings and drawings, quite a few in colour. Like the play (and like most of the rest of Witkacy's work), they are grotesque, downright peculiar, and well worth a look.

Fernando Pessoa (Pocket Archives Series)

Published in Paperback by Hazan (1997-05)

Author:

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Creative Idea

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2000-07-03

This small little book is a clever idea. The book is a wonderful photographic biography of the great Portuguese poet from the 20th century - Fernando Pessoa. Even if one does not know anything about Pessoa, this book provides a wonderful pictorial view of what his life was. Here, one will find pictures on almost every aspect of the poet's life, from his birth certificate, to family pictures, including pictures of letters, his typewriter, and terrific pictures of Lisbon in the early part of the 20th century.

Antonio Tabucchi introduction gives us a clear and well written explanation of Fernando Pessoa's importance for the literature of the 20th century. I highly recommend this book. This is an excellent introduction to Pessoa.

Fire the Bastards!

Published in Hardcover by Dalkey Archive Press (1992-11)

Author: Jack Green

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A must of Gaddis readers

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 1999-08-01

Brilliant, terrific. A must for Gaddis fans, and any writers of criticism (including all you Amazon hacks)!

And after reading this book that's as much as I dare say.

Introduction to United States Government Information Sources (Library Science Text Series)

Published in Paperback by Libraries Unlimited Inc (1992-08)

Authors: Joe Morehead and Mary Fetzer

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An excellent way to learn about government information.

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 1997-06-13

If you're wondering just where all the useful information is in the so-called "information explosion," this item just might be for you. Joe Morehead's book is a part of Library Unlimited's "Library and Information Science Text series" (intended as a textbook for librarians in training), but the book is an excellent resource for genealogists, business researchers, educators-anyone who wants to learn more about the vast and varied store of information the U.S. government makes available. And you don't have to be a doctoral student to use this book: Morehead writes in a clear and concise style; facsimiles of pages from various reference sources are included, so that the newcomer to a source will know what to expect.

Of especial interest to newbies and Internet veterans alike is a the first chapter, "Public Access in the Electronic Age," which covers the legal aspects of information provision as well as electronic sources of government information. The history and operation of the Government Printing Office and the Depository Library System are discussed. General reference sources, sources of legislative, executive, administrative, legal, statistical, technical, geographic information are covered in detail. One of the best texts for learning what the government publishes and where to find it.

Polynomials and Pollen: Parables, Proverbs, Paradigms and Praise for Lois

Published in Paperback by Dalkey Archive Press (2008-04-21)

Author: Jay Wright

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Over seventy years of life experience

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-05-05

Eleven books of poetry and over thirty plays are nothing compared to the over seventy years of life experience award winning-writer Jay Wright brings to the table in his anthology of poetry and wisdom in "Polynomials and Pollen." Although promoted as a gift for his wife, any reader is sure to enjoy Wright's words and his look into philosophies of order, chaos, the natural evolution of life and so much more. Brilliantly written from first page to last, "Polynomials and Pollen" is highly recommended to community library poetry collections.

Ronald Firbank: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Materials, 1905-1995 (The Dalkey Archive Bibliography Series, 3)

Published in Paperback by Dalkey Archive Press (1996-06)

Author: Steven Moore

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A Correction and an Offer

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2000-05-15

Due to a production error, the final line of my preface was cut off. It should read "... date due to a surge of new material." If you like, send me your copy and I'll handwrite the missing line and autograph the book gratis. E-mail me at smoore3@worldnet.att.net.

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