Wagner Books

Remember the animated specials with Edith Ann in them? As much as I adore Lily Tomlin, as much as the little girl in the huge chair cracked me up, the Jane Wagner version, the smart, sarcastic, slightly sad little girl with the big head, is better. Her voice is perfect, and some of the things she says are things I say, or wish I'd thought of first. "Childhood is the leading cause of stress among kids my age."

THE ODYSSEY OF THE SECOND PEOPLE by Edward F. Wagner is an interesting take on interpersonal relationships; those of caring, love, a sense of family, and exploration of intimacy. This sequel to THE SECOND PEOPLE - THE BEGINNING, revolves around the characters of the band leader Anbessa, and his mate Umfazi, their daughter Caraga and a the medicine man known as The Wanderer. Setting his novel in ancient Egypt, Israel and the surrounding regions, the author is meticulous in selecting names in the story that are authentic. These names are highlighted to reflect the oneness of a "common ancestry" and the meanings of these ancient names are included in the introduction to the story that serves as a reference throughout.

As the band grows, they face many struggles of daily survival. Will they learn to grow together in order to continue to thrive? Will the men accept the women members as their equals? When difficult decisions arise, what is the band's ultimate decision?

This book offers the reader something different in terms of its setting and its approach. It is a refreshing story built on respect, love and adventure. Although I did not read the first book in this series, Wagner does an excellent job in portraying the story and capturing the reader's attention throughout.

Reviewed by Nedine
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Wagner's treatise is fascinating. I found his insights into conducting helpful and very substantial, though his anti-semitism does permeate the book. This translation omits several illustrations of the music Wagner uses to exemplify his points. Their absence was a dissapointment.

This is a must read for any conductor. Wagner speaks with conviction and from experience. While he can definately ramble on about obsolete topics such as the poor state of viola players, his ideas are mostly very good.

Very much a typical Cartland but there were some interesting details to this. Iola (our heroine) is being forced to marry an old man. Her family is thrilled since Lord Stoneham will offer her a title and comfortable life. But he is old enough to be her grandfather and Iola is NOT thrilled! Having been raised by a loving nanny who still keeps in touch, Iola runs off to ask her advice. I won't spoil the part where she visits the nanny. It turns out to be a unique situation. I will tell you how descriptions of Nanny sharing fanciful stories and love to Iola as they reminisce about her childhood show how this wonderful woman shaped Iola into a lovely young lady.

Iola ends up as nanny to a sweet little girl who acts so grown up. (How Iola happens to get this position is part of what you must read in the visit to Nanny). Lucy (the little girl) has a very rich father, Sir Wolfe Renton. He cares about Lucy (but is not over-attentive) and does not want her head filled with fanciful stories and informs Iola of this. Iola tries not to pass on her imagination but is unsuccessful. She also comes to love Lucy. Lucy soaks up the affection like a sponge. There are some funny situations as a very precocious Lucy converses with Lady Isabel, a rather conniving woman who desires to be Sir Wolfe's mistress (and perhaps blackmail him also).

Throw in beautiful locations as the "house party" of Sir Wolfe sails upon his yacht to the south of France and the adventure of a kidnapping and you have an amusing afternoon read. Of course Iola falls in love but is that love returned?

Other teachers and I love this book! It has helped many students transition from Spanish to English with friendly characters that they love. I would recommend this to anyone helping a student find the words to express their knowledge!

Came across this book a couple years ago, and really enjoyed it. Each chapter was submitted by individuals ministering and working in Nigeria. It is very eye-opening to learn of God's tremendous move over there - for example, literally hundreds of thousands gathering regularly for prayer meetings. In short, the book is worth the time and money to read. The Lord used it as a means of a great inspiration to me.

This superb folio-size companion to the PBS television special of the same name explores the history and psychology of Irish immigration to the United States.

With some 100 duotone photographs, it is an inspiring story of those who survived disease on the "coffin ships" as they attempted to reach our shores. The vivid text brings to life the sagas of Irish entrepreneurs who rose to prominence in politics, agriculture, business, religion and culture.

Most importantly it is the story of courageous human beings, people who left everything behind them to search for a better life. And, in so doing, they forged lasting impressions on past and present life in America. Never forgetting "home," they imagined and often lived the American dream.

This splendid book speaks volumes to the descendants of the Irish immigrants and to all who have a vision and struggle to make it reality.

- Gail Cooke

Book does a very good job of covering the basics. Examples are easy to follow and learn. There are several parts that do not make sense. These parts either skip steps or launch into a subject matter that is not relevant. I would recommended to anyone who wants to learn Outlook 2000 over a couple of days. Just pay attention to the details! I wish editing would have been a little better...

The Oxford is a wonderful book. It can be used as a definitive text or as a recreational read. The stories are classic--my faves are "The Yellow Wall-paper" & "Extenuating Circumstances." Many of the authors included are published elsewhere so this book in turn leads the reader to other excellent books. It is broad in its scope of genre: there are essays, short stories, poems & erotica, + more...Highly recommended!

This book is a valuable contribution to the understanding of Wagner's last music-drama, although without bringing new insight or information to the discussion, and of limited value to the specialist, while being too narrow in its exploration of the work to serve as a general introduction. It might be a good choice for a second "Parsifal" book for a reader who has already digested, for example, Peter Bassett's "Wagner's Parsifal, the Journey of a Soul" (Kent Town, 2001). Winterbourne is right to dismiss the view that "Parsifal" is of value for its music alone, since the libretto is arguably the densest in allusion and the richest in irony and ambiguity that Wagner constructed, and therefore of great interest in its own right -- but it is so intimately related to the music that they should be considered together. Winterbourne makes no attempt to do so.

The subtitle of the book refers to Otto Weininger's "Geschlecht und Charakter" (Vienna, 1903), the ultimate study in misogyny. Winterbourne devotes many pages to discussing Weininger and in particular to his use of Kundry as a representative of womankind. This is probably giving Weininger more attention that he deserves, although it is interesting -- and a little disturbing -- to note that his book was taken seriously only a hundred years ago. The reason for paying attention to Weininger is that Nike Wagner, in her book "Wagner Theatre" (Frankfurt and Leipzig 1998, translated into English and republished as "The Wagners: the Dramas of a Musical Dynasty", London, 2000), has asserted not only that Weininger understood Kundry, but also that "Parsifal" (completed in 1882) is a staging of "Sex and Character", and that the latter explains the former. This is Winterbourne's starting point and, to his credit, he does not buy very much of Nike's interpretation of "Parsifal" through the distorting lens of "Sex and Character".

There are some sections of the book in which Winterbourne seems to have lost the path and others that reveal his research to be inadequate, his knowledge of Wagner's output to be incomplete and his reading of the libretto and related documents to be superficial. One cannot learn everything about Wagner from reading the "Selected Letters". He discusses Wagner's apparent lack of interest in "Faust" and the quest for unlimited knowledge, but overlooks Wagner's orchestral work inspired by "Faust" and Wagner's ideas about the veil of Maja. He has some difficulty in accepting that the Grail is held in "sullied hands" (page 58). He assumes that the "homeopathic" action of the lance is an idea that Wagner took from Wolfram's epic poem "Parzival" (page 49), where the lance alleviates the pain of the wound but does not heal, ignoring the spear of Achilles, a hero considered by Wagner as the subject of a drama. He alludes to the myth of the wasteland, asserting, wrongly, that both Monsalvat and the unnamed domain of Klingsor have become wastelands. Wagner expressed his "idea of community" in "Parsifal", not by showing an "exemplary society", but by showing the catastrophic results of separating male from female, or masculine from feminine.

Winterbourne is rightly sceptical concerning claims that Kundry is an anti-Semitic figure. He notes that Wolzogen suggested to Wagner that Kundry was a female Ahasuerus but overlooks the fact that already in the 1865 Prose Draft, Wagner had written that Kundry wanders in a manner reminiscent of the Wandering Jew ("ähnlich dem 'ewigen Juden'"). He also seems not to be aware that it was H. Heine who first described his Dutchman as "the Wandering Jew of the sea". That Kundry is another instance of this archetype, and that in one of her previous lives she was the notorious Herodias, consort of Herod or Herodes, does not make her a Jewess. Even if she were, the sympathetic nature of her portrayal rules out any possibility of an anti-Semitic subtext.

Winterbourne agrees with Nike Wagner in seeing this work as a "redemption drama", although he is a little vague concerning the nature of that redemption. He makes some rather dismissive statements about Nirvana, a concept which deserves more serious attention than he is willing to give to it, and he obstinately refuses to see any character other than Kundry as based on Buddhist or otherwise Indian ideas. He considers and rejects the possibility that Kundry is "a bodhisattva approaching enlightenment". It seems to me that he has misread Carl Suneson (in his monograph, "Richard Wagner och den indiske tankevärlden", Stockholm, 1985, translated into German and republished as "Richard Wagner und die Indische Geisteswelt"). In fact it was Parsifal, not Kundry, who was seen by Suneson both as a Christ-figure and as one who finds and follows the path of the bodhisattva.

Winterbourne chooses to disregard elements of the work that do not fit his interpretation. Thus, when Parsifal reveals that he has had many names, Winterbourne comments (page 33) that this should not be read as a suggestion that he, like Kundry, has been reincarnated, although he acknowledges Wagner's belief in reincarnation -- he cites a letter written to Mathilde Wesendonk in 1860 in which this is mentioned, and in which Wagner first revealed that he would introduce Kundry into the second act -- and despite the evidence that names and naming were important for Wagner. Since this "revelation" of a second-act Kundry struck Wagner while he was rewriting the Venusberg scene, Winterbourne follows Anna-Christine Brade (in "Kundry und Stella: Offenbach contra Wagner", 1997) in seeing Kundry as a reworking of Venus, combined with Elisabeth. Winterbourne's assumption that, in Wagner's original conception, Kundry only appeared in the first act is untenable. The whole point of Wagner's original conception was that the restless Kundry of the first act was to reappear, much changed, in the third act. A Kundry who only appeared in the first act would have been pointless. Weininger, however, thought that she should have been allowed to die earlier, on the grounds that she became superfluous when Parsifal was not interested in having sex with her. This too is untenable; as Parsifal tells Kundry, he has been sent for her salvation. Winterbourne might have done better to focus on Wagner's engagement with concepts of reincarnation, karma and Nirvana, which might have led him to quite different conclusions from those drawn by Weininger; whose interpretation was based on a narrow and partial understanding of only one of the central figures in Wagner's redemption drama.