Irish Books

Unterecker's "Reader's Guide," a vade mecum for the apprentice
or seasoned reader, informs and instructs. As commentary or teaching tool, it advances a concise, systematic way to interpret the ideas, literary devices, images, symbols, and occult motifs that permeate Yeats's poetry, a thematic
analysis that connects one poem with another and reveals the visionary design at the center of Yeats's work. From the allegorical quest in "The Wanderings of Oisin" to the meditative panorama of "Under Ben Bulben," Unterecker explicates the motifs of Yeats's evolving mythology of a unified self.

In terms of understanding the writings of WB Yeats, this book is a must. It provides insights into otherwised missed subtleties that allows for a greater appreciation of the work of a great artist. (I use the diction of great artist because this truely describes his work). Anyway, this book is well written and recommended by myself.

Unterecker's "Reader's Guide," a vade mecum for the novice or seasoned reader, informs and instructs. As commentary or teaching tool, it advances a concise, systematic way to interpret the ideas, literary devices, images, symbols, and occult motifs that permeate Yeats's poetry, a thematic analysis that connects one poem with another and reveals the visionary design at the center of Yeats's work. From the allegorical quest in "The Wanderings of Oisin" to the meditative panorama of "Under Ben Bulben," Unterecker explicates the motifs of Yeats's evolving mythology of a unified self.

If you want to know what this book is about, read the other reviews, which do a decent job of summarizing the contents. I'll focus on what those other reviews don't tell you.

First, Eric Sams is a remarkable writer, a remarkable mind. His background is in music, and he has two breathtaking abilities: one is the ability to hold in his head large quantities of information, and the other, to sift through that information and spot patterns. In Shakespeare's writing he identifies recurring thoughts, metaphors, associations; he identifies word usages, turns of phrase, images, all of which, taken together, truly seem to be characteristic of Shakespeare and as unique as a fingerprint.

Second, he gives you perspective. If you browse in the works of Shakespeare professionals for long enough, you encounter all sorts of speculations about the conflicting texts, who wrote what, possible collaborators, and how this scene must have been written by somebody else, and this quarto must be "memorial reconstruction" -- the term they use to say that a couple of actors who once played those parts reconstructed the play from their own recollections and then filled in the blanks. These same academics dismiss plays like Edward III and Edmund Ironside as inferior to the works of "the canon" (works they all agree were written by Shakespeare): they couldn't possibly be Shakespeare, the academics say; they're all by "other writers." While academics make frequent references to these other, unknown playwrights, collaborators, and actor-writers, Eric Sams puts all such speculation into perspective. He clarifies two things: first, that there is no real evidence that these playwrights, collaborators, or actor-writers ever existed; they're convenient figments of the academic imagination. Second, these men who lived in and around London and were contemporaries of Shakespeare and writing plays -- these men numbered perhaps two dozen at most. And we already know the names of more than half of them. So if a play like Edward III contains those usages and images and comparisons and types of word play that seem unique to Shakespeare, well, you've got only a handful of possible unknowns to whom you can attribute such a play -- and all those peculiar images, usages, etc. It's not scientific certainty, but for circumstantial evidence, it's pretty telling and the best we're likely to get.

Most of the biographical works I've read are long on speculation and short on facts. Not so with this book. Facets of Shakespeare's life that are touched on and dismissed in other works are thoroughly explored here -- like Shakespeare's Catholic background, his legal experience, poaching, etc. And instead of speculative sentences that begin, "Young Will may have longed for..." or "... may have attended..." or "may have learned about..." -- Eric Sams delivers what facts we have. In one chapter he simply lists ALL of the significant documents from Shakespeare's lifetime (and just before and just after) and summarizes their contents for you. Boom. That's it. That's all there is.

What I never would have guessed from reading other works is that, in fact, it's quite a LOT. Sams speeds through a wealth of information, little clues here, little clues there that, when combined with patterns he uncovers in the plays themselves, form a remarkably coherent picture of Shakespeare.

This book is in large part an attack on the orthodox "Stratfordian" academic 'establishment'; not however from the point of view of someone claiming that a person other than William Shakespeare of Stratford Upon Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare (an impression which the cover picture and title might give at first glance). Rather, Eric Sams accepts that Shakespeare was Shakespeare, so to speak, but claims that the account of the writer's early life and literary development promulgated by 'orthodox" 20th Century British Shakespeare scholars is basically eroneous, and distorted by fashionable, unproved theories. His main claim is that Shakespeare started acting on, and writing for, the stage, much earlier than most modern academics allow, that he wrote plays (and perhaps pamphlets) other than the 'canonical' plays (i.e. those plays included in the First Folio of 1623, plus "Pericles"), and that he frequently revised or rewrote his own plays. In the first few chapters of the book Sams speculates on Shakespeare's early background and upbringing in Stratford. Sams sometimes brings in quotes from the plays to support his view of Shakespeare's early life, and this is perhaps a bit problematic, but on the whole his contentions are pretty convincing, and he persuasively argues that the oral traditions about Shakespeare should be taken seriously, and not simply dismissed as gossip or folk-tales. Sams' main bugbear is probably the 'memorial reconstruction' theory, which holds that the so-called "bad quartos" are the botched piratings of Shakespeare's plays by unscrupulous actors. Sams contends that there is absolutely no evidence for this theory, and instead favours the simpler and more convincing proposition that these "bad quartos" are in fact early versions of these plays by Shakespeare himself, which he later revised. There is much more in this book than I have mentioned above, and it is definitely well worth reading.

1.Eric Sams' The Real Shakespeare constitutes a determined attempt to reconstruct the early part of the playwright's life. It shows Shakespeare not as a late developer but as an early starter who assiduously revised his work and who, in fact, was responsible for early dramas, including apparent source texts, not usually accepted as part of the conventional canon. Clearly the result of much work and contemplation of extant records and other details, The Real Shakespeare looks initially at biographical issues: a Roman Catholic Shakespeare leaves school, probably at the age of thirteen, to help with family farm chores, becomes involved (as a clerk) with the legal profession (hence the character of his hand-writing), marries Anne Hathaway (already pregnant), and departs soon after for London to escape the consequences (whipping, at the least) of poaching deer owned by the influential, anti-catholic Sir Thomas Lacy. In London, Sams asserts, Shakespeare makes his connection with the Shoreditch Theatre, working his way up the proverbial ladder as ostler, call-boy, prompter and soon becomes a Queen's Man far earlier than Schoenbaum et al. are inclined to allow (58). 2.Biographical issues, however, cannot be detached from literary matters (which particularly dominate the second part of the book), and Sams, in looking at the Bard's young life, also takes into account the work and comments of contemporaries (e.g., Marlowe, Greene, Nashe, Spenser, et al.), the Parnassus plays, and Willobie his Avisa (1594) before turning to the Sonnets, the association with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, and the problem of the dedication in the first edition. He then moves to a consideration of the "early style" and ascription of both the 1589 and 1603 (Q1) Hamlet to Shakespeare, as well as A Shrew (c.1588), The Troublesome Reign of King John (c.1588), the first part of the Contention...(1594), and The True Tragedies of Richard... (1595); also offered as possible candidates for canonical authority are Faire Em and Locrine (of which there is, indeed, pace Sams, p.166, a modern edition). Attention is also given to bad quartos and the matter of memorial reconstruction, source-plays, derivative plays, dating, "collaboration," so-called "stylometry," and handwriting (a script, Sams suggests, of a law clerk suggesting links to the hand of Edmund Ironside [c.1588]). Curiously, for this strongly argued book, which contends in a detailed way with the conclusions of much twentieth-century scholarship (references to contrary opinion are carefully included), there is no concluding chapter, and the reader is left to pull the threads together. However, by way of addendum, Sams provides a section headed "The Documents 1500-1594," 205 biographical details and citations in chronological order, which under-pin especially the reconstruction of the early (Schoenbaum's "lost") years; and a bibliography (with + and * marks denoting items which support or counter Sam's arguments). An index concludes the volume. 3.It is always important to review evidence for conventional knowledge, to challenge the validity of accepted views, and to suggest plausible solutions to bothersome problems. Yet, at times, the greater wisdom, unfortunately, lies in uncertainty, in being sure of what one can and cannot know, and in Shakespearean scholarship, the fields of speculation are rather broad. Given the available documentation, many readers will find some of Sams' arguments, while intriguing, still unconvincing and will prefer to rest with the more cautious approach of Schoenbaun, Vickers, Wells, and others. The academic community has not blindly or wilfully rejected solid evidence, and should not be reproached for what might appear, to some critics, to be tradition-bound precepts or unduly conservative empiricism. 4.Could Shakespeare have known about ostlers and law-clerks without being an ostler or a law-clerk? Probably? Did he write Locrine? Almost certainly not -- given the style, and if he did, why did he not revise it? If Shakespeare was the dedicated reviser Sams claims that he was, why did he not rework the questionable scenes in Titus and Pericles? Were all the source plays (e.g., King Lear and Famous Victories) really by Shakespeare? Doubt could enter here. Does revision necessarily or "normally" mean that the resulting work will manifest two separate styles? No, it does not; though the reference to the Brahms' piano trio (Op.8) on p.187 is interesting, it does not, I think sufficiently support the general point. And what is the difference between an "ordinary" reader of Shakespeare and other kinds of readers (105)? Is one to infer that academic readers and textual editors lose some sensitivity? 5.Certainly, Sams' The Real Shakespeare will shake the scholarly stage a little, which is not a bad thing. But I should guess that, when the tremors have subsided, many -- perhaps most -- of the props will be more or less where they were before and others, which would be nice to have -- some certainty about the early years, for instance -- will still be absent.

An important part of appreciating (and teaching) plays from the Renaissance period involves understanding the relationship between the poet and the acting company, and the extent to which rehearsal practices of the period placed a large burden on the poet to include acting instructions within the play's text.

Drawing clues from a broad array of sources, Professor Stern provides a detailed look at rehearsal practices from the late sixteenth century and onward.

Especially as regards Shakespeare, understanding the very limited rehearsal time, especially when compared to modern day practices, employed by companies that put on essentially a different play every afternoon, offers a valuable new insight into the importance of rhetorical and metrical structure as well as many kinds of imbedded stage directions.

Tiffany Stern's book offers revelations about the theater based on her extensive research into the rehearsal processes of each period. Her writing is also accessible for those who may not love lit. crit. speak.

Tiffany Stern's groundbreaking book will revolutionise your view of Shakespeare in a fascinating discussion of day to day life in the theatre. Read how actors had copies only of their own parts - many didn't know the story of the whole play until performance. Learn about ad libbing clowns and heroines who fall in love, literally, on cue. The Shakespearean sections combine ingenious archival research (from coal bills to prompt books) with sensitive textual analysis. The Restoration and seventeenth century sections are alive with comic anecdote and original insight, not to mention Garrick's mechanical wig. This book will change your perceptions of drama in the past, but will also raise questions about theatrical practice today. Invaluable to all who love the theatre.

The Conclusion which crowns this, the most perfect book in the English language should be memorised and chanted sutra-like on a daily basis.

This work by Walter Pater, published in 1873, as
a volume of collected (previously published) essays
along with an essay on "Winckelmann", a Preface, and
a Conclusion was [and perhaps still is] an extremely
influential work of aesthetic criticism. The volume
helped shape [influence] the perceptions, the
attitudes, and the approaches of many youthful readers
in the late 1880's and 1890's. It is very interesting
to read, immensely engaging to consider and muse about,
but also offers cautions to the overenthusiastic,
easily influenced [or persuaded] disciple.
This volume consists of an Introduction [by the
editor, Adam Philips], a Preface [by Pater], 9 chapters,
and a Conclusion (in this particular edition
by Oxford Classics there is also a chronology, a
Selective Bibliography, an Appendix titled "Diaphaneite,"
and Explanatory Notes in the back. The chapter titles
(after Pater's Preface) are: Two Early French Stories;
Pico Della Mirandola; Sandro Botticelli; Luca Della
Robbia; The Poetry of Michelangelo; Leonardo da Vinci;
The School of Giorgione, Joachim Du Bellay; Winckelmann;
and Conclusion.
* * * * * * * * * *
What's the problem here? Well, unfortunately, Pater
is not completely reliable as an objective perceiver
or critic. He tends to be a bit eccentric in his
individualistic perceptions and interpretations of
the art works, but he goes ahead and defends this
approach in a very "modern" sounding fashion --
which seems to include a bit of "situational perceptions,"
subjective impressions of perception and response,
and subjective criticism. Which makes for extremely
engaging [sometimes irritating] reading, but leaves
something to be desired as far as objective and
judicious thoughtfulness and truthfulness. Pater
seems to believe that it is acceptable to "bend"
or even create facts to further his own it-pleases-
me-to-think-that-this-is-or-should-be-so desires.
We know that we are on a slippery critical slope
[though it will sound all too familiar to modern
ears and modern apologetics] when the editor Phillips
informs us: "In Pater's first published writing, his
essay on Coleridge of 1866, he had suggested that --
'Modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its
cultivation of the "relative" spirit in place of the
"absolute" ... To the modern spirit nothing is, or
can be rightly known, except relatively and under
conditions." It doesn't take much time to realize
that such a critical position is going to lead to
an end-position of aesthetic, critical, and moral
relativism ("You can't tell me I'm wrong, because
there is no one set way of seeing, analyzing,
believing, or evaluating."-- the spoiled, indulged child's
self-justification for the validity of its own
ego supremacy and authority against that of any
parental or adult restrictions. Such a position usually
means a lack of any meaningful in-depth self questioning
or objective evaluating of personal motives, and a
welcoming of lack of restraints in the pursuit of
pleasure and non-self discipline. And this, of course,
is the critical negative refrain that often comes
against the decadent followers of Pater's credo.]
The second fall-out effect of Pater's evaluations
and pronouncements is that some of his disciples
[self-styled] went farther than even he was willing
to approve with their hedonism and purposefully
shocking lifestyles and "decadent" behaviors and
aesthetic appetites.
But it came from statements like this, which Pater
may have meant one way, but which their subjective,
individualistic perceptions took another way: "The
aesthetic critic, then, regards all the objects with
which he has to do, all works of art, and the fairer
forms of nature and human life, as powers or forces
producing PLEASURABLE SENSATIONS [caps are mine], each
of a more or less peculiar or unique kind. [We value
them --he says] for the property each has of affecting
one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure.
Our education becomes complete in proportion as our
SUSCEPTIBILITY to these impressions increases -- in
depth and VARIETY."
Let the perceiver and the critic -- and the
experiencer -- proceed with extreme caution and good
judgment.
* * * * * * * * *

This book has changed many lives in a very
peculiar way: although its evaluations are
quite wrong at times, particularly the chapter
on the School of Giorgione(if you care, check
out the edition with an introduction by
Kenneth Clark), Pater's Renaissance still
shines with the very same light that made it a
cult among Victorian youngmen.

The "gemstone flame", the pervasive feelings
of which Pater invited us to share have not
vanished (in spite of the attempts of the
so-called modern art), and the book's
invaluable lesson is that you simply
do not need a fancy objet d'art to see
what true beauty is all about.

So basically this is what I have to say: if
you have ever derived aesthetic pleasure from
anything at all in life, you should read this
little book tomorrow. If you never felt any
such pleasure, you must read The Renaissance
right now, or you'll simply let the good
things pass you by. I mean it.

Okay, Michael Meyer has edited a brilliant textbook to be used for English majors and should be used in classrooms in American high schools. Here are a list of the authors and writers that are included in this book: Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Jean Anouilh, Matthew Arnold, John Ashbery, Margaret Atwood, W.H. Auden, Toni Cade Bambara, Samuel Beckett, Aprha Behn, John Berryman, William Blake, Elizabeth Bishop, Harold Bloom, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bowen, Anne Bradstreet, Peter Brook, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Carver, Tracy Chapman, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Kate Chopin, Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Colette, Stephen Crane, Countee Cullen, E.E. Cummings, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, E.L. Doctorow, John Donne, Rita Dove, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sigmund Freud, Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Glaspell, Lorraine Hansberry, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Hayden, H.D., Seamus Heany, Ernest Hemingway, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman, Langston Hughes, Henrik Ibsen, Gish Jen, Ben Jonson, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Jamaica Kincaid, D.H. Lawrence, Ursula Le Guin, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Amy Lowell, Robert Lowell, Claude McKay, David Mamet, Katherine Mansfield, Christopher Marlowe, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent MIllay, Arthur Miller, John Milton, Moliere, marianne moore, bharati mukherjee, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound, Walter Raleigh, Rainer Maria Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Christina Rossetti, Muriel Rukeyser, Sappho, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Percy Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Wole Soyinka, Wallace Stevens, Wislawa Szymborska, Alfred Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Susan Glaspell, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Wendy Wasserstein, Fay Weldon, Walt Whitman, Tennesse Williams, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, James Wright, William Butler Yeats, and many more. What I like here is the lack of visuals and notes that you don't need. You just need the work. As an English teacher, I would like to more variety of choices to choose from. The Bedford is an invaluable resource of excellent choices.

Having majored in English myself, I honestly believe that this is the book that should be used for AP Literature classes or college Intro classes. Not only do you get introduction to the formal elements of each genre (fiction, poetry and drama), you get sound writing instruction, an introduction to critical theory and scholarship, in depth treatment of major authors in each genre(ie Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, etc.)and even some cool selections like a Bruce Springsteen song in with the poems, and an episode of Seinfeld in the drama section. To top it off, you even get collections of World Literature and Modern Literature for each genre, something that expands the literary canon beyond the basics. The questions at the end of each piece are fabulous, really thought provoking. This is a perfect introduction to Literature, especially for AP kids preparing for college level English studies, or for college kids who are only planning to take one literature course.

The Bedford Guide to Literature brings together some of the most timeless and representative stories, poems, and dramas of wesetern culture to educate the reader on such literary concepts as Theme, Plot, Symbolisim, and various structures of short stories, poems, and plays. This book is easily understood by readers of many levels, andshould be enjoyed by all

The "Sweet Dropper," as the heavenly Doctor Sibbes has been called, will live up to his name in this finely written and meticulously researched book. Mark Dever himself may well deserve such a moniker, being one of the few scholars (this is his PhD. dissertation from Cambridge) who can speak as eloquently as he writes. Anyone who has had to crawl through the desert of arid scholastic tomes, or swim the oceans of pedantic language, will find Dever's work a delightful exception.

The book is divided into two parts.

Part one is biographical material. While the writing itself is lively enough, sadly, the subject matter is not. Alas Sibbes was no Bunyan. But Dever does the historical reader a favor by revealing a couple of overlooked facts, correcting repeated mistakes of former historians. Sibbes was neither the disenfranchised preacher of lore, who lived out the remainder of his life in obscurity, nor was he a rebel-rousing nonconformist, but rather a moderate Puritan, more the reformer rather than a revolutionary.

Part two explores the theology of Sibbes, appropriately distinguishing him as one of the last of the great English reformers. The author highlights several salient features of Sibbes as a Reformed theologian. Of special interest, Dever adroitly dispels the misconception that Sibbes was an irrational or even an a-rational mystic. The "Sweet Dropper" was nothing of the kind but rather an affectionate theologian, scrupulously concerned with the centrality of the heart and the proper role of the conscience, specifically an educated one.

This reader came away with three specific encouragements:
1. Sibbes believed that godly preaching was the salvation of the Church of England. So should it is for any church in any generation.
2. Sibbes was a reforming conformist. He was a hesitator and a questioner but not a dissenter. Rather than separate from the established church, he elected to remain, attempting to bring reform from within. For those pastors and church leaders who labor in non-Reformed churches or denominations, his example will be of encouragement. Although history may show that his endeavor was actually an idle venture, such warm-hearted commitment will loom as a grand and noble gesture in the light of today's rabid transience and hyper-individualism.
3. Many voices today are clamoring for a new Reformation. As great as the need may be, much is cool, calculating, and highly polemical. Sibbes was a doctor of the heart. His tender, warm-heartedness needs to be rediscovered. Sibbes was the England of his day, what Jonathan Edwards was to America, both sharing a mutual concern for true religious affections.

A fresh look at the life of Richard Sibbes may well rekindle a warm-hearted passion for the gospel, based upon the great doctrines of the Protestant Reformation. This truth on fire was the hallmark of English Puritanism. Mark Dever has done a great service in reminding his readers of this fact.

A great look into the life of Sibbes. His 7 volume works are a treasure chest of devotion and spiritual encouragement. This book does a great job in painting a picture of Sibbes beyond his works. I would highly recommend getting the 7 vol. works as well but certainly get the cheeper cd-rom version from richardsibbes.com.

Pastor Mark Dever, author of "Nine Marks of a Healthy Church," originally penned "Richard Sibbes" as his doctoral dissertation, then revised it for this book-length edition.

In the first half of his work, Dever summarizes the life and influences of Richard Sibbes. It is in the second half of the book that Dever excels. His explication of Sibbes affectionate theology demonstrates thorough research and accurate understanding. The only exception to this is Dever's summary in a footnote that for Sibbes "imagination" is similar to what we would call "emotions" today. Actually, in Puritans such as Sibbes and Edwards, the imagination was a rational faculty of the soul, deeper and more primary than the emotions. This interpretation not withstanding, Dever's work is an excellent secondary source for understanding the life, ministry, and theology of an oft-neglected English Puritan.

Reviewer: Dr. Robert W. Kellemen is the author of "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming, "Sacred Companions: A History of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction."

Teresa Bateman's Ring Of Truth is simply wonderful! I enjoyed reading this wild tale of "true" blarney. Delightful and entertaining---A great read.

Rich, complex and gorgeous illustrations provide the perfect compliment to the story of the braggart Patrick who is tricked by the Leprechaun King and must now tell only the truth. Obviously, this will be a decided disadvantage in the Blarney contest in which he is entered. Or will it? A thoroughly enjoyable tale which has the familiar feel of a truly great fairytale for the ages.

"Patrick O'Kelly was a peddler of scarves and trinkets, with a habit of telling magnificent lies." So begins "The Ring of Truth". "Magnificent" may even be an understatement for him. He is supposed to have kissed the Blarney Stone once, that fabled and mystical rock that gives one the gift of gab, and by the way he carries on, it's believed that he managed to get a bit of that rock stuck in his teeth! He is such a fine artist of Blarney, that he easily boasts that he could out-fib the very king of the Leprechauns himself!!

Well, as any good Irish legend will tell you, be careful about what you say about the Fair Folk, for they have great ears for hearing and egos to boot!! It's hardly long before Patrick O'Kelly is swept off to the very land of the Faeries to meet the king of the leprechauns himself!

Like any fine Celtic tale, the book is full of twists and turns and play on words, of which the title of the book is just one (I'll not give away the ending for fear of spoiling the fun for readers!). The ending is a fun surprise for readers, as well as for our brave hero, Patrick O'K. Himself! What will stick to readers' ribs most, however, are the illustrations.

Illustrated by Omar Rayyan, the book resembles now an illuminated manuscript, now a surrealistic painting. Faeries and other Fair Folk are mischievous creatures, to say the least, and to step into their world, however briefly, is to take a roller coaster ride into the ethereal and strange. Winged sprites flit too and fro, and the King has always about him a smile that is first playful and fun, and upon closer inspection, hinting at some darker purpose. Once Patrick has gone to their fair land, they are all about him, hiding here and there, yet the reader knows that they are invisible to everyone-another example of that mischievous, almost sinister magic they weave.

All in all, a tremendous book and perhaps too overlooked in the children's section. Though Irish in nature, it is not about St. Patrick's day, so there is no need to keep it mothballed until then! Bring out this treasure of a story and illustration and read it often!!

I saw this play in London a year or so ago, then again at a festival in Toronto. Reading the text brought the entire experience vividly back to me ... I particularly loved the way the text seamlessly blends poetry and humor. And that the 'gay' subject matter is a springboard into something universal and accessible to just about everyone. A brilliant read, and a neat format, like having a little poetry chapbook in my pocket !

Seeing an announcement for an upcoming stage production here in Los Angeles, I decided to read this text. What I read not only moved me, but Hamilton's use of romantic and phantastical landscapes took me on a journey I have never before experienced. Joel, a hard driving, hard drinking publicicty director drives across the US to a voice (a siren?) calling him to the shores of love. Along the way he encounters three very damaged and very strong women. Ma Diva, a condom distibuting mother, Myra, a diner-locked divorcee and Dharma a sad and wounded child of a hippie. The strength love and loss these women pass on to Joel serves as the spine of this incredible poem....play....landscape. Read This Book!

Godfrey Hamilton has created one of the defining works of gay theater with his play "Road Movie." At once uplifting and heartwrenching "Road Movie" is a journey of self-discovery for both the characters and the audience. The plot centers upon the experiences of Jeff, a gay man with AIDS. His search for emotional fulfillment in the face of an uncaring community and fatal disease is extraordinary and realistic.

Many books and articles have been written about the poetry of Robert Frost, but this book, astonishingly, makes almost all of them obsolete. Frost's critics have found him haunted by a dark vision but they have been hard pressed to say exactly what it was. They have struggled to find the real context of his thinking, but the poems, in spite of many melancholy readings, have remained elusive. What are these elegant meditations really about? Where does the impetus for these disturbing dramatic monologues and stark dialogues come from? Faggen's brilliantly researched and forcefully written book finally tells us the answer: Frost was obsessed with Darwin and his vision of the natural world. He said so many times (though none of his critics was willing to listen). And once you have recognized this fact, the grave, witty, tender, and frightful poems acquire a new clarity and force. Frost was no "spiritual drifter," no vague perveyor of "metaphysical terror," as earlier writers have thought, but the most sophisticated and tough-minded poet of science that modern culture has produced--the nearest thing we have to a Lucretius. This book takes a figure who has seemed conservative or even backward to his readers and shows him to be the most forward-looking artist of his generation. And it accomplishes this task with an easy mastery of detail that removes all doubt. "Never again would bird's song be the same," Frost wrote--never the same after reading Darwin, that is, nor will this poem be the same after reading Faggen. The romantic Frost is dead, and a new Frost is afoot. Some will mourn, some will rejoice at the news, but scholarship is seldom as conclusive as this and hardly ever as exciting.

This book helped me see Frost in a new light, as a thinker grappling with the problems science poses to religion and to poetry. There is an enormous amount of scholarship brought to many poems, and we see the ways Frost thought not only about Darwin but about Lucretius, Milton, James, Bergson, Emerson, and Thoreau. The Frost that emerges is both dark and complex--a subversive and subtle pastoralist. Though the book is written in clear prose with very little jargon, it is a heavy read. But well worth it.

Professor Faggen has written a remarkable book. We might have considered Frost a sentimental, a provincial poet, but in this volume we discover that Frost (far from the potato-hoeing grandpa of our collective memories) is a poet of the first order and among the most challenging of the moderns. Frost's revaluations of the Romantic and the Miltonic myths in Darwinian terms place him as our chief poet of the scientific, the skeptical turn of mind. The evidence amassed for his argument is daunting and Faggen has contributed to our understanding of the place of Darwin--biological and social--in modern poetry. Faggen's individual readings are acute and original. We will from now on see "The Road Not Taken," "The Oven Bird," and "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things," in a different way. We will see them not as melancholy mood poems, but as tough and riddling explorations of human and animal existence. We may now begin to see Frost's place in American literature, and that a high position indeed! We may thank Robert Faggen for deepening our understanding and broadening our view.

...continues the excellence of the series. Originally intended as the final book of the series, "The Story of Civilization", in ended up being the penultimate volume.

The Durants lucidly and eloquently summarize the philosophy, life and influence that Rousseau had on the 18th century and, indeed, continues to have to this very day. Rousseau may be regarded as the creator of the Left-wing sensibility. This may seem anachronistic and, in a sense, it is. Rousseau died before the French Revolution, which created the modern political division of Right and Left. Nevertheless, it is accurate to see him as the Fountainhead for relativism, communism, and the worship of feeling as opposed to reason (debased and emptied of all intellectual content this is now called building "self-esteem" by the modern leftist).

Rousseau created most of the modern ills of political fanaticism and airy, absurd idealism as the Durants so ably note.

The rest of the period is not neglected and vivid portraits are made of Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, the Elder Pitt, Diderot, D'Holbach, Samuel Johnson and many, many others help this book to shine.

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize--which should have gone to the entire series as opposed to just this volume--this book gives the reader a complete (if necessarily synopsized) account of the End and Failure of the Enlightenment and how what Rousseau and Voltaire intended in their attacks on the social structure (Rousseau) and religion (Voltaire) lead to disastrous consequences in the French Revolution.

The writing sparkles with vivid wit, pith and lucid beauty. It is a book to be read for a lifetime and bequeathed to children. In an age where smarmy, intellectually empty, political fanaticism is attempting to erase the past in favor of the PC fantasies of the moment, the Durants offer a vivid account of the Truth. European civilization is presented here in all its glory and with all its warts. Slavery, religious fanaticism, exploitation and the horrors of the penal system and warfare are all presented here, in their proper place and in context. The modern academic community has attempted to destroy the ideal of context and balance. As long as these books are around, REAL history and historiography are available to anyone who simply opens a copy and reads it.

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...continues the excellence of the series. Originally intended as the final book of the series, "The Story of Civilization", in ended up being the penultimate volume.

The Durants lucidly and eloquently summarize the philosophy, life and influence that Rousseau had on the 18th century and, indeed, continues to have to this very day. Rousseau may be regarded as the creator of the Left-wing sensibility. This may seem anachronistic and, in a sense, it is. Rousseau died before the French Revolution, which created the modern political division of Right and Left. Nevertheless, it is accurate to see him as the Fountainhead for relativism, communism, and the worship of feeling as opposed to reason (debased and emptied of all intellectual content this is now called building "self-esteem" by the modern leftist).

Rousseau created most of the modern ills of political fanaticism and airy, absurd idealism as the Durants so ably note.

The rest of the period is not neglected and vivid portraits are made of Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, the Elder Pitt, Diderot, D'Holbach, Samuel Johnson and many, many others help this book to shine.

Awarded the Pulitzer Prize--which should have gone to the entire series as opposed to just this volume--this book gives the reader a complete (if necessarily synopsized) account of the End and Failure of the Enlightenment and how what Rousseau and Voltaire intended in their attacks on the social structure (Rousseau) and religion (Voltaire) lead to disastrous consequences in the French Revolution.

The writing sparkles with vivid wit, pith and lucid beauty. It is a book to be read for a lifetime and bequeathed to children. In an age where smarmy, intellectually empty, political fanaticism is attempting to erase the past in favor of the PC fantasies of the moment, the Durants offer a vivid account of the Truth. European civilization is presented here in all its glory and with all its warts. Slavery, religious fanaticism, exploitation and the horrors of the penal system and warfare are all presented here, in their proper place and in context. The modern academic community has attempted to destroy the ideal of context and balance. As long as these books are around, REAL history and historiography are available to anyone who simply opens a copy and reads it.

In this, the tenth volume in the critically acclaimed series "The Story of Civilization," Dr. will & Ariel Durant have compiled a masterful dramatic exploration of the European climate and the events which paved the way for the French Revolution.

The reader will be exposed to a vivid recount of the acts of: Rousseau, who confessed his most embarassing sexual and emotional episodes. England and the rise of her overseas empire. Catherine The Great of Russia. Frederick The Great of Prussia. The German Enlightenment. Marie Antoinette. France's impotent and frustrated King Louis XVI. And much, much more including plates and maps.

Written to stand alone or within the series, the Durants have composed an unparalleled historical prose in smooth flowing narrative that is easy to read and understand by both professional and layperson alike. In short, this book is for everyone. I rate it as five stars. Bravo!