University of Minnesota Books

Terry Eagleton has a clever and no-nonsense approach to the study of literary theory. This book is a must have for anyone interested in the study of literary criticism, as well as introductions to the various schools of critical thought. Also make sure to pick up a handbook of literary terminology.

Remarkable introduction to several trends of literary criticism in the XX century. I had never seen something like this before. The author presents all critical trends in such a ways as to dissect their founding bases, their theoretical a priori. Bright, insightful, clear, the author, although we should know that he's a marxist by the end of the text, is not willing to push his views on us, but rather takes the opportunities to deconstruct the very founding concepts that have driven marxist analyses worldwide and through history.

This book is an invaluable resource for the comprehension of most of the major literary- and other ideological movements- of the twentieth century From T. S. Eliot to Derrida. What impressed me the most is that he makes general, and often very opaque, theories of The Structuralists, Lacan, and Derrida clear . That, in itself, was worth the read. Also,
putting literary theory in a historical, political, and philosohical context is intriguing. However, the last chapter on the Politcal (see Neo-Marxist) is interesting but a little too polemic and doesn't quite tie things together as neatly
as possible, That's OK though. Rather that than a Jane Austen
or standard "lit crit" snoozer.
If you like this book, then After Theory should be next on your
list. Wish, however, he had included Foucault and Baudrillard,
but if you want to know "Theory," Eagleton and Literary Theory is an ideal place to start.

I have long appreciated the first edition of this excellent book. Apparently the second edition expands the feminist section (although the feminist section of the bibliography remains similar to the first edition) and includes consideration of post-modernism, which the bright and engaging author considers at greater length, at arm's length, in a separate book. The second edition also includes a new preface, which I admit I have not read. I am still grateful to and involved with and faithful to the first edition.

The author fully and carefully presents very difficult material in a comprehensible and engaging manner, logically, and structured for learning. In short, this is actually an academic expert on literary criticism who can not only write well but can teach, and how rare a beast is that! Terry also supplies us with very valid reasons in his conclusion for caring deeply about the ability to read a text critically. Basically, we thus can perceive truth from propaganda and unreliable sources. We can know when our own government lies to us, and who has an ax to grind or a bill of goods to sell.

This book therefore should be as necessary and required a study for any and every reader as are warnings on a pack of cigarettes. By this book we gain the power to understand and to judge what we read; we learn to read critically and contextually, and to learn that not all which is printed is true. And by this book alone I have finally come to begin to perceive just what is meant by that frequently used and never explained term semiotics. That alone is worth the price of admission. No fooling around!

Seriously, this scholar with great talent and commitment opens the world of literacy to us in a comprehensible manner, without leaving anything out. The subtitle of course remains: An Introduction. This introductory book hopefully serves as a portal for you to explore the many other writings and editings of this excellent teacher, thinker and writer. Learn to read, critically, and become stronger and wiser and free.

Literary Theory: An Introduction is a dense crash-course in contemporary literary theory. The book begins with the chapter "What is literature?" Eagleton explores what literature is and is not, and finally posits literature is a subjective, fluid term, as wrapped in the ideologies of its time as its value and class systems. Then he examines seven literary theories and concludes with a theory of his own, though he strongly maintains that his assertion is no theory, but truth itself.

Eagleton makes the interesting case that English emerged in the mid-to-late nineteenth century to replace a waning religion: "As religion progressively ceases to provide the social `cement', affective values, and basic mythologies by which socially turbulent class-society can be welded together, `English' is constructed as a subject to carry this ideological burden from the Victorian period onwards". Due to a bourgeois fear that the lower class will revolt from a middle class bad example, Matthew Arnolds, a key figure of the time, suggests that, "State-established schools, by linking the middle class to `the best culture of their nation' (the bourgeois culture), will confer on them (the lower class) `a greatness and a noble spirit, which the tone of these classes is not of itself at present adequate to impart'." In this "humanizing" pursuit through the teaching of English, it was believed that, "Since literature, as we know, deals in universal human values rather than in such historical trivia as civil wars, the oppression of women or the dispossession of English peasantry, it could serve to place in cosmic perspective the petty demands of working people for decent living conditions or greater control over their own lives, and might even, with luck, come to render them oblivious of such issues in their high-minded contemplation of eternal truths and beauties." And thus English as an academic subject is born! One more interesting quote from the chapter "The Rise of English": "It is significant, then, that `English' as an academic subject was first institutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics' Institutes, working men's colleges and extension lecturing circuits."

There are seven contemporary literary theories covered in this book: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory, Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, andPsychoanalysis. With each literary theory, Eagleton discusses the major theorists involved, the historical impacts that shaped the theory, and the particulars of that theory.

Eagelton concludes in the final chapter with his own non-theory on Political Criticism. He argues that because literature is a fluid ideology, it is in essence political, meaning it reflects the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations this organization involves. "Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times." Eagleton theorizes that if literature is an illusion, then so is literary theory: "It is an illusion first in the sense that literary theory...is really no more than a branch of social ideologies, utterly without any unity or identity which would adequately distinguish it from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cultural and sociological thought; and secondly in the sense that the one hope it has of distinguishing itself--clinging to an object named literature--is misplaced. We must conclude, then, that this book is less an introduction than an obituary, and that we have ended by burying the object we sought to unearth."

What makes this book unique is Eagleton's hypothesis (literature and literary theory are an illusion) and the way he goes about supporting his theory. He begins by examining the subjectivity of literature's definition, then moves into the literary theories themselves, highlighting the historical/period ideologies that helped define these theories, and then makes the analogy that if literature is an ideology and ideology is inherently political, then literature is political. The book is also unique for Eagleton's biting wit and criticism, and the historical impact the book had on literary theory at the time of its publication (1983).

The greatest strengths of this book are Eagleton's passion for the subject, the deep analytical formula he constructs to prove his personal non-theory, and the lush history that surrounds it all. The greatest weakness: while this book has been hailed as an accessible introduction to literary theory, it is by no means easily accessible, but rather coated in academic language, overstatement, unnecessarily lengthy reasoning, etc. I am not a lazy reader and each 5 pages took roughly an hour to read.

Urgency rating:
-The urgency rating is quite variable dependent on the reader. If you have always been hoping for a glimpse into literary theory and have the hours to spend combing through, reflecting, ans digesting the material, then hurry! This is the book for you! If you have already studied literary theory and consider your dues paid in full, don't have much time to spare, or have the attention span of a fruit fly (me), then skip this one.

I walked away with a much greater historical knowledge of the rise of English as an academic subject, the subjective definition of literature, and a passable understanding of most of the theories discussed. Not bad for a Beginner!

While studying philosophy at university, I was fortunate enough to have read this book. Some years hence, I am now middle management at a Fortune 500 company (it's very strange to me), and have just recently re-read it. The ideas about egalitarian models of leadership in this book are almost solely responsible for allowing me to remain a fundamentally good person. Without this book, I know there would have been instances where I would have done things unthinkingly and in error.

Why am I giving this book a five star rating? Because this work is an effort at a new theory that is systematic and terminologically consistent and must have been a torture for the writers to conjure up in their head.

It certainly is a torture to read this work. Not because I can't understand hard-core philosophy - I have read, understood and liked Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida, considered amongst the most abstruse stylists - but because it is difficult to empathize with writers who characterize themselves and their readers as 'desiring machines' rather than as subjects with consciousness and will.

Is desire the only thing that defines human beings - what about will, thinking, compassion, judgment? And further why am I supposed to be a machine and in what sense? These are the questions that came to my mind. The authors never explain. The question of the subject is dismissed in one sentence.

It is also difficult to agree with writers who dismiss all seeking of power and all active resistance by implication as fascism and preach escape/flight as the most radical ideology of resistance and hope.

And it is difficult to find hope in the vain jargon of molecular vs. molar, in the lines of escape or flight, or in a schizoid approach to life (a schizophrenic has no control over himself - is a machine and hence is the authors' favorite).

The authors fail in their synthesis of Marx and Freud although they come close and fail to understand Nietzsche, one of their favorite philosophers. Marx, Freud and Nietzsche would turn violently in their graves, if they ever know what Deleuze/Guattari did to their philosophies. They speculations on incest, kinship etc., are just too weak, sketchy and merely assertoric to be taken seriously.

I do not endorse the philosophy of Deleuze/Guattari. To be sure they offer brilliant insights but their line of argument has as many holes as Swiss cheese.

Yet there are a few things that are brilliant in the work and it certainly remains an original and challenging work. Having, stated my disappointment with the work, now let me also state the better aspects of this work. This work has a very well argued theory of control mechanisms in primitive, barbarian and capitalist societies.

The authors rightly point out that capitalism governs well because it always generates new rules to survive (new axiomatic) and controls because all social codes are 'decoded' (de-codified) into flows (loose, lawlike systems of control) and de-territorialized. (Other writers have explained the same things in simpler jargon, but Deleuze-Guattari need to be given due credit for the brilliance of their analysis of capitalism, although their libidnalization of economics doesn't add anything valueable to the analysis of either libido or economics and seems forced).

The other hallmark of this work is that it offers one of the more interesting critiques of Freud's Oedipal complex, psychotherapy and its role in making humans conformist. They demolish the Daddy-Mommy-Me triangle and its implications in making us conformists quite effectively.

However, it may be borne in mind that there have been better criticisms of Freud's theories and Deleuze/Guattari are in some respects more Freudian than Freud with their libidinal interpretations of human beings as desiring machines and of economy as investment of desire (libidnal economy).

To sum up, this work is worth reading for its analysis of capitalism, and to some extent for its critique of psychoanalysis. However this is not a work that offers hope for the oppressed or an agenda for political action although followers of Deleuze/Guattari like Antonio Negri and Alain Badiou take their philosophy in a more positive direction. The best portion is the third section, followed by second. The least satisfactory portions and the last and the first, although they are essential to read in order to understand the relevant middle portion of the work.

And of course human beings are not desiring machines no matter what Deleuze/Guattari say. Beyond a metaphor, machinism is delusory. We are what we are. Happy to be human and animal rather than machines. Much as post-structuralist and post-modernists dismiss the question of the subject, the question remains - alive and active and kicking.

What a dialectical post-modern absurdity that is the meaning of the life of some random people, clumped together in a multiplicity of neo-Neitzschean thought-waves.

Get what you will from this book, it is wordy--on purpose--and was written to try to piss you off. You may or may not get pissed off, but you will certainly take away something from this book: either a) it is stupid and so is D+G, or b) it is a solid critique of Freud and all those globe-controlling institutions that subliminally followed in his footsteps.

This one is classic. I read it first, a long time ago, before I read A Thousand Plateaus. ATP is a lot more accessible. I recommend that you read Eugene Holland's commentary on Anti-Oedipus while you read D&G. And, by the way, there is a new Deleuze Dictionary out that is very useful. On the other hand, it is fun to read D&G when you have no idea what the hell they are going on about. If you do then you have to work hard and be more creative, really making the book your own. I think that was D&G's intention. They make themselves almost impossible to use (in a name-dropping way) superficially. If one does that, then one just ends up sounding like an idiot.

Although Deleuze and Guattari are usually invoked as part of a "postmodernist" litany, this work is refreshingly different from most postwar French theory. Derrida and Foucault, for all their revolutionary ambitions, are fairly traditional *maitre-penseurs*: the expectation is that you have a tip-top understanding of Hegel and other historical heavyweights, the better to appreciate their reversal. By contrast, *Anti-Oedipus* resembles nothing so much as the "philosophical" part of a work of hip science fiction: the line of argument is neither dialectically nor formally elaborated, but asserts only its plausibility in the context of the world being evoked.

I say this as a form of praise: in fact, unless you are (somewhat foolishly) expecting that an "intimate" knowledge of this book will advance your academic fortunes, your reading doesn't have to be especially careful to get something useful out of the book. As for its relation to thinkers who are properly venerated in the academy, it is (for all its contrariness) more accepting of Freud and Marx than most contemporary discourse is, so it actually isn't all that devastating a critique of them. But the enthusiasm they display for new hypotheses about these two is infectious: this is a book that makes you want to read *more* economics and psychology, not slam your head against the wall in protest against the impossibility of all understanding.

In the theory of schizophrenia advanced here, the "clinical" schizophrenic is carefully marked off from their treatment of schizophrenia as a process, so the anti-psychiatric implications of the book are only of the most general kind. Furthermore, a great deal of this process is elaborated with respect to imaginative literature by eccentric writers, not case studies of the clinically ill. But this means the results are not fundamentally incompatible with a contemporary understanding of psychotic illnesses: what opposes their resituation of schizoid desire as located at the most basic levels of work and social interaction are the normative intentions of those who study and control (or simply detest) the mentally ill, not scientific findings per se.

A thought-provoking book requiring no "theory" masochism to enjoy.

Warning to all those who are reading this for a school assignment: you may think that an "enriched classic" is simply the text with commentary also included. Not so, with this book. They shouldn't call it an "enriched classic". They should call it "dumbed down for lazy readers."

The only budget series of audio books and recorded drama comes from Naxos. One of their more recent entries is a very modern version of Sophocles' in a translation by Duncan Steen. In fact, some might find it a little too modern with its use of idiomatic expressions such as "You can't pin that on me"--which might be taken as an ironic reference to the final horrible deed of the hero. But when the messenger the agonized Oedipus as calling himself a "mother f..." (although he stops at the "f") the effect is far too "modern" for comfort. You see, given a sound recording, we can only assume that the action is taking place in the nearly prehistoric past. I do not know the tone of Sophocles' Greek; but I do read that it is elegant and decorous. Therefore, I can only assume that this translator is doing his source a great injustice.

On the other hand, the dialogue MOVES. There is an excitement to this performance, although the Creon of Adam Kotz lacks some force. Michael Sheen is good in the title role, as is Nichola McAuliffe as Jocasta, Heathcote Williams as the Chorus Leader, and John Moffatt as Tiresias and the Narrator at the start of the recording. The Chorus itself is cut down to four voices, but they are handled nicely with stereo separation and are quite comprehensible. The music is meager but effectively used.

All in all, a very good if not perfect attempt at making one of the greatest Western plays accessible to a wide audience.

Oedipus was a weird book to reab, because the plot was all twisted. The characters in the book are nasty. Oedipus kills his father and has two kids with his mother.....

The central statement of Greek tragedy is that Man can not control his Destiny; that there is an ineluctable Fate, preordained and inescapable. No matter how much the poor humans fight against it, it must be fulfilled. And there is no character as tragic as Oedipus in all literature. In this play, we see Oedipus as a successful man who has become King of Thebes, happily married to an older woman named Iocasta. As the play unfolds, we can feel the proximity of something terrible indeed. When the blind sage Tiresias starts to unfold the true story of Oedipus, we can creepily feel the sheer horror that grips him, as he learns that he has killed his father and married his mother, unknowingly. I have no notice of any other plot that can be described as more tragic than this one. Besides, it is one of the main sources of our culture, as with all true Classics. Oedipus summarizes some of our worst fears and traumas: the need to "kill the paternal figure", the "dependency on our mother", the "impossibility of control external forces that shape our fate". It is horrific and fascinating, and there is simply no way to be indifferent to it.

Oedipus the King is one of the classic works of Western literature. It was originally written as a play in around 429 BC by Sophocles (~496-406 BC), a Greek philosopher and playwright. It took the Greek world by storm, and has been handed down to future generations who have also been greatly influenced by it. Most notably in modern times, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) took this work as pointing toward a deep-rooted psychosis, the Oedipus Complex.

Oedipus the King (also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannus) is the story of Oedipus, the king of Thebes, which is suffering under a horrific plague. Finding out that the god Apollo has laid the plague on the city until it should punish the murderer of its previous king, Oedipus pronounces a curse on the murderer and sets out to discover who the murderer was. Sadly for Oedipus, there is fate upon fate wrapped up in this mystery, and doom upon doom.

This book, is not merely a translation of Oedipus the King, instead it is an "acting version," created by the Stratford Shakespearian Festival Company of Canada for High School level students. The book begins with an introduction to Sophocles and Greek theatre, and after the play are copious notes, critical excerpts and questions for discussion. The play itself was written so that a young reader, with no background understanding of Greek theatre or culture will understand it.

Overall, I found this to be a great book. I enjoyed the information about the play a lot, and believe that it will be very helpful to any reader. But, foremost, I enjoyed the play itself. The story is powerful, and quite enthralling. I have never seen this play acted out, but do think that this translation would make it excellent. I loved this book, and highly recommend it!

This book's intelligently edited, avoiding the temptations of solipsism. I met an elderly Kirmser's regular close to death, and this book helped me understand the comfort to be found -- and yearned for -- in the home of political progressivism during a reactionary social era.

I found this book to be absolutely delightful. Given the time, place and circumstances, I think Mr. Brown made the best of his situation and had a nice life. His experiences were ordinary but told so vividly I had a good idea of everyone and everything mentioned. To me he spoke not with disappointment and sadness but I think he maintained a sense of pride in himself and has fairly good memories of his young gay life in Minnesota that I am so glad he shared with us. Even though the book is short and rather expensive, don't miss out on reading this. If only Mr. Brown had lived to hear our comments and know his writing was published. I read a lot of biographies and this was one book where the person seemed well adjusted, not unhappy with themselves and made the best of life.

Ricardo Brown's posthumously published memoir of gay life in 1940's St. Paul, MN is a series of sharply etched vignettes of the lives of gay men and women at a time when homosexuality was still "the love that dared not speak its name." After acknowledging his homosexuality to his superior officer in the Navy, an act of almost unbelievable courage considering the time period, and receiving a dishonorable discharge, Brown returns to his home town and finds refuge amid a small group of habitues at Kirmser's, a seedy "queer bar" run by a German couple. The book is comprised of reminiscences about the lives of these pre-Stonewall gays and lesbians. Brown's gift for the telling anecdote and bringing people and places to life in a few well-chosen words is evident on every page. Paradoxically this results in the whole being less satisfying than it might be, as one wishes for more detail and context about these people. Still, for the modern-day reader, "Evening Crowd" is an fascinating window into the not-so-long-ago past.

A fascinating look at a gay underculture that existed in the 1940s. I enjoyed the anecdotal style, the snapshots. I'm sure the author could have shared much, much, more about his life, but appreciate what he did choose to tell - those stories that centered around the bar and its patrons. Anyone who reads this book cannot help but come away with a deeper understanding of the social history of twentieth-century homosexuality. Thank you Ricardo Brown.

I am often leery of memoirs published by University presses as they tend to be filled with stoic facts, are often boring, display little emotion, and reveal very little of the real person being showcased. This book is certainly an exception in every way, as it reads like a novel, and is filled with fascinating, intimate details of Ricardo's life. Ricardo J. Brown's memoir offers us an exciting look into gay life of the late 1940's. Brown was discharged from the navy for being a homosexual, and returned to his working-class life in St. Paul, Minnesota. Most of this memoir centers around a bar called Kirmser's that catered to working class men during the day, and at night became a hang-out or underground club for gay men. It's Brown's own personal observations, feelings, and experiences he shares with us of the friends he made during these nightly visits to Kirmser's that are so enlightening, fascinating and fun to read. Some of the stories are sad and tragic, too. It's the honestly in the telling of these stories that will captivate you. A few personal photos have been included in this memoir.

If you want a glimpse into what gay life was life in the time before Stonewall, then this book is an excellent choice. It's a small book that's filled with the life of a time most of us know little about, but would like to know more about. Gay life in the 1940's was quite different than today and certainly very closeted. What will always remain the same whether it is 1945 or today is the love, emotions, and personal intimacy that people share and have in common. A remarkable memoir!!

Joe Hanssen

With "Modernity at Large" Appadurai created a widely acknowledged groundwork for a viable perspective on globalization. This little book is a very thorough description about what is going on and changing in the world around us. Additionally, it provides numerous details and examples from all over the world - each of which could be developed even further. It should be read by everyone, who is afraid globalization is erasing the cultural diversity of this world.

Appadurai uses a number of powerful metaphors to talk about globalization. His language of -scapes (financescapes, mediascapes, etc) is an interesting way to look at global flows from different perspectives. He suggests that in the postmodern world, the collapse of time and space through technology gives rise to widespread agency as the work of the imagination. He also suggests the collapse of the modern nation-state, or at least the decoupling of those terms through the removal of the hyphen, as identities and allegiences become more transnational.
While this work is very thought provoking and a useful lens on globalization and global flows of people, goods, ideas and such, Appadurai overstates his points a bit. His prediction of the end of the nation-state seems premature in light of post 9/11 developments (which might be termed, to borrow one of his seciton titles "The Empire Strikes Back"). And while his discussion of works of the imagination is stirring and powerful, it does not adequately take into account power dynamics that are, on the one hand incredibly freeing to the haves, and on the other, quite restrictive to the have-nots.

I am going to quote Aihwa Ong - Antrhopology Professor from UC Berkeley who criticized "Modernity at Large" since I cannot state it any better than her:

"When an approach to cultural globalization seeks merely to sketch out universalizing trends rather than deal with actually existing structures of power and situated cultural processes, the analysis cries out for a sense of political economy and situated ethnography."

Appadurai is essentially Thomas Friedman in a graduated sense for academia.

Appadurai's book, Modernity at Large, offers quite a few tools to help us think about that big fuzzy thing called "globalization." He coins quite a few words to describe multiply-constituted networks of culture - ethnoscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, financescapes, and technoscapes. All are different ways of looking at the global cultural flows that we're trying to describe, and all are strongly influenced by perspective, overlapping, and rapidly shifting (though the term doesn't quite capture the instability and mutability of global cultural flows).

A book like this, to be useful, should help us think about important problems in manageable, intelligible, and useful ways. Appadurai's book offers more than most in this line. His terms, such as the above, are interesting, and his willingness to theorize as well as analyze is valuable. The ways that he situates himself in his analysis is also illuminating and useful. For example, Appadurai describes a trip he and his wife made to a Hindu temple in Bombay. His wife asked about a Hindu priest that she had known before, and they were told that he was in Houston. The point isn't just that they went there and he came here. He's talking about trans-locality, and the production of locality beyond mere connection to a place. Not all Hindus live in India, and not all Indians have to live in India to maintain their Indian-ness. At the same time, Houston is Houston because of both the people and the landscape located there. But part of its identity as a place derives from the trans-local identities of some of its citizens - a "cosmopolitan" city where some citizens are both Indian and American. He does a better job than I'm doing here explaining his thinking about the contemporary experience of diaspora, which is an accomplishment in itself.

There are some flashes of real insight in this text - for me, some of his coinages were brilliant, and the comment that some trans-local modern ethnicities are forced into violent anti-statism through an inability to articulate their identity except through the language of nation and state also resonates - but overall, Appadurai tried to accomplish too much in one book. He finds himself saying things like "the details of this argument are beyond the scope of this chapter," and it seems like this happens too much. It would have been better to flesh out his thinking about the production of locality in greater detail, with more case studies. And some of his terms could use additional explanation - he doesn't seem to notice his own un-critical use of the term "cosmopolitan," and he pays remarkably little attention to literature and film after professing the importance of both in the global exchange of ideas (mediascapes and ideoscapes, as he calls them).

This is a strong book, with some real value, but I wouldn't recommend reading the whole thing all the way through. The table of contents, the index, and the chapter titles are useful signposts. It's the kind of book that might be most useful in small doses.

Obtuse and without meaning in the real world. Appaduarai needs to set foot on real soil and realize the world is not created, nor can it be defined behind ivy walls.

Use your time to read something of importance and let Appadurai die on the vine, he may impress other sycophantic scholars with his labeling and vocabulary but you don't need him.

That book covers a lot, and honestly if you are unfamiliar with the topics dealt with, then you will feel lost at times; but that is hardly avoidable considering the quite impressive span of the work in question.

This being said, the style is very humorous and punny, so provided you're familiar with the material discussed there, you'll like this book. Yet, if you hate Psychoanalysis and/or Freudism (cheap psychoanalysis) then you may have some issues. Of course, the book doesn't discuss psychoanalysis, since it's not its point, but it's essentially a Freudian reading, and if you disagree with Freud's theories (the primal tribe and stuff like that) then you may shake your head now and then. But that won't be a problem at all if you're looking for deepened analysis of Vampire-ness.

This book made me feel like I was being drained for the change. The author's language or way of thinking took me by surprise, put the bite on me, and then left me there. I am thinking his thoughts! As the title admits, this isn't another book about vampirism; it participates in vampirism: vampire lectures. Enter free willingly.

I bought this book along with several others because I was researching vampires. This is a great book but very technical. I believe it is written more for college students and people who would understand university 'lingo'. The book goes in depth into the psychological theories concerning vampires, why people believe in them, and even certain books like Dracula! I would recommend this book for any college or university level student or graduate who is interested in vampires.

When you first read this book you think to yourself how insightful and unique its contents were. Upon further analysis, however, you realize how absurd and useless the information really is. Lets give credit where it's due, this book captures you, so much in fact that you forget to question anything being written and assume as truth whatever Rickels is trying to say. This author makes it seem as though he is just trying to "sound smart" if I may resort to grade school type critique. The analysis is ridiculous and the complexity of the style in which it was written is unnecessary. I do not recommend this book to anyone studying vampires unless they are insane.

Lawrence Rickels has a very particular writing style that is often frowned upon because the 'average' reader cannot really handle it. It is jargonistic, self-inflating, self-validating, and extremely complex. Like many other writers of critical theory, Rickels is engaging in a discourse for those 'in the know.' This is not an introductory book on the subject of vampyrism, and I would not recommend it to any reader if they are not at first familar with contemporary psychoanalytic theory. I enjoy reading Rickels' writing because he loves to play around with word puns in a very witty way. Perhaps a better introduction to Rickels' writings would be his many short articles in various art exhibition catalogues (check your local university library). I do not think I would have enjoyed this book had I not had the opportunity to listen to Rickels' lectures. This book requires an active reader who is willing to struggle with the text (that is the beauty of theory, right? A sort of painful pleasure). That said, it can be rewarding if you are up for a challenge.

An earlier reviewer questioned what Deleuze was doing with Leibniz's calculus. While Leibniz's calculus is of course crucial for Deleuze, in this work Deleuze keeps returning to one equation that almost acts as a sort of musical refrain, and through it he uses Leibniz's invention to express a philosophical concept. This is an excellent example of the refinement and elegance of Deleuze's thought that pervades the book as a whole.

Here is the equation: d(y)/d(x). This is certainly not a differential equation that a mathematician would have hit upon. Instead it is Deleuze's expression of a philosophical concept via calculus. When plotted out the equation produces a clinamen, or swerve, with no constant, only variables. It is "a world that no longer has its center" as Deleuze phrases it on page 125 of the translation. It is a structure without a center, as Derrida would call it. But whereas Derrida's notion can only be stated as a paradox (because by definition there can be no such thing as a centerless structure), Deleuze succeeds in expressing it as a simple differential equation. In other words, there are nothing but differences (and, Deleuze would maintain, force). Returning to the equation, the function d(y) is dependent on d(x), which it is divided by. d(y) is dependent on a differential function d(x), that is, a continuously displaced variable. Absolutely useless to mathematicians, it is however a succint expression of Deleuze's thought, conveyed via Leibniz's calculus, that creates a distribution of remarkable points. Michel Serres' 700 page tome "Le système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques" is a wonderful companion to Deleuze's little book. It was published in English as "The System of Leibniz" by Clinamen Press.

Deleuze's sojourns into the history of philosophy, as everyone knows by now, paint a stark contrast to his "independent" works; the former being wonders of concision and clarity, each one like a diamond cutter, and the latter being drawn-out, often tedious, and in general more difficult to pentrate.
The Fold falls somewhere in between the two as he wrote it so late in his life when most assumed he was done with history. We should be thankful that he wasn't. In order to get through this book, I'll just offer my opinion for those who it may affect: when I first picked it up, I read the first two chapters and almnost threw it across the room. I didn't pick the book up again because--presumptuous me--I thought the whole book was going to be like that. WRONG! As I said, Deleuze mixes it up here, and while you may not get every chapter, there will be those, like the short, almost curt, "What is an Event?" that will, um, blow your mind.
As for this being a discourse on Leibniz. Hard to say when we've read so little Leibniz, but Deleuze is willing to stick with his "compossible" world throughout all of the book until the end, which is pretty amazing---you know, since for Deleuze's world one of the first requirements is the reality of incompossibles. But it will give you a passion for Leibniz regardless, as the last reviewer made clear.
Finally, I think Deleuze here tries to answer some of the most difficult questions that faced him after years of expanding and 'deterritorializing' D&R and LofS. If you read the latter, for instance, did you have a sort of empty feeling when he got to the "Dynamic Genesis" and afterwards, as if his tying the incorporeals to the corporeals from the point of view of bodies wasn't as solid as from the point of view of sense? Deleuze will repay you here with interest, giving one of the most fascinating and detailed accounts of a body and its connection to monads I've ever read. It may not solve all of the problems for his materialism, but then again, it might. That's a judgment call and regardless of how you judge, this book will have riches for you.
10 stars.

Deleuze's book is, at least for no other reason, a worthwhile read for its sheer imagination. Secondly, it is worth reading as it shows just what is so wonderfully interesting about Leibniz. If you know Leibniz, read this book, even just a single section, and then you will understand why there do exist, in small obscure places, Leibnitians. If you are looking for a splendidly imaginative perspective, read up.

While my French is not good enough to judge others, I find it very easy to believe that this translation is not good. I found this book the most difficult of Deleuze's works, and I think the translator did not understand his task. To recover I needed to undertake a rereading of Leibniz so I could see through the English text before me and re-establish the original terms and questions.

Still, if you do not read French well, this very important book should not escape you even in this edition. Leibniz was a giant at the watershed between faith and science who was able to span this divide and think with complexity and innovation about the soul and mathematics. Since then, few can handle either vocabulary with such perspective, and almost none, save Deleuze, have tried to understand the demands of both.

If one does not, as almost all do, take for granted the givens of the centered subject and the rational world, their mutual differences demand a theory as powerful as the complexities they evoke. This book attempts to place that theory in play again with vigor.

Please forgive me for commenting on an English translation that I have not read, but honestly I was put off from purchasing the English edition by the complaints of several reviewers, so I purchased a French edition instead. I am familiar with Deleuze and Leibniz, but not a specialist in either per se. I read French well enough, but not with the acumen of a French professor. However, Deleuze's French is deliberate and concise, startlingly brilliant and terse. Moreover, the substantive content of the text is not particularly difficult for anyone who has some mastery of the philosophical issues behind Leibniz' mathematics and the development of the calculus or a general mastery of Deleuze. After spending a few days with the French text, I find it highly unlikely that a Harvard French professor with the complicity of the University of Minnesota Press would botch such an important translation. Just for example, one reviewer complained about the word "corps." In Leibniz's philosophical writings on mathematics, natural philosophy, or the mathematical qua philosophical problem of the continuum, for example, he uses the word "body" and "bodies" any number of times in mathematical contexts ... for example "On Minima and Maxima: On Bodies and Minds" (1672-73), "On Body, Space, and the Continuum" (1676), "A Body is not a Substance" (1679), just to name a few. If you are interested in Deleuze's wonderful little book and can't read the French with as much profit or pleasure as an English translation, I suspect you needn't worry about the quality of the translation. With all due respect to the opinions of others... Stuart MacNiven, Rutgers University

This is the first version of the play. Beautiful writing, incredible fluidity of speech. A must have between Peter Pan and Samuel Beckett.

He writes like a comedian, waving his fist at your face, all while enthronging you to read on!

Peer Gynt is a sort of folk tale character who we see go from being a young man to an old man and who gets in several different adventures. The play doesn't have much of a plot exactly. It starts of in a Norwegian village where Peer is a buffoonish character. He leaves the village, meets up with Trolls, gets in a shipwreck, wanders around the desert, and runs into the button moulder. All of this just happens, disconnectedly. He spends time in America also, but we aren't shown that.

There is a lot of talk about being your self, being authentic, etc. If the play has a theme, I am guessing that's it.

It's completely different from Ibsen's realistic works like An Enemy of the People or The Wild Duck. I'm more a fan of those works. Peer Gynt didn't really speak to me.

On a side note, in the movie Educating Rita, with Michael Caine, Rita takes a test where one of the questions was 'What are some of the difficulties in staging Peer Gynt?' A: It's long. It's not in prose. It has trolls and other fantastical creatures. It has a huge cast many of whom are only on stage very briefly. The main character goes from being a youth to a very old man. The settings vary from a Norwegian village to Egypt and the Sphinx. This is why it's rarely done on stage.

Few works of literature have inspired classical music that has broke into the popular press. One of these is Ibsen's Peer Gynt. Written in the late 19th century, Edvard Grieg wrote two Suites of music for the stageplay version of this Scandinavian classic a decade later. This poem / stageplay is actually a short novel, and tells the story of Peer Gynt, the ultimate ingrate of a son. Growing up raised by a single mother, he is the terror of his village, bullying younger ones and annoying older ones. Eventually he leaves his village and encounters a series of creatures and adventures bound to rattle anyone's cage. One memorable moment is when he finds himself in the Hall of the Mountain King, who happens to be a troll. This is the scene whose song of the same name by Grieg is a classic TV commercial tune. Life soon turns the young Peer into an older Peer. Near the end he reflects on his life with some characters he encounters. At this he realizes the waste his life has been. The moral of the story: don't waste your youth or any other moment of your life causing trouble for yourself or anyone else, for in the end you only isolate yourself and make life miserable for both you and those around you.

Peer Gynt is a piece of literature that, like Goethe's Faust Part II plays best on the stage of the imagination. It is too lengthy and costly to be performed on stage. Sometimes the first three acts are performed together, sometimes the last two acts are brought together to become a whole for a theatre production.

In terms of reading, this is a great fable piece. Peer is the Trickster with the mirror to his conscience. As a youth, he is Troll-like in his lusts, in his carousing. In his middle-age, he is Troll-like in his financial enterprises. At the end of his life, he is a folorn man, having given up possible true love to run around in search of his self. He is a fraud but we feel sympathy for him. He pursues life in search of distractions and power but ends up empty at the end, soon to be the vicim of the Button Moulder, soon to be nothing more than a button.

This work has many levels and open to numerous interpretations. Ideally, this is the book you read for a book club. There is nothing conventional about it. The conversations will be endless and the philosophy inspired, well, might be inspiring.

excellent book, well written; the author is a brilliant and well respected art historian

I bought Body Art: Peforming the Subject while doing a research paper for an undergrad course on Contemporary Art History. Amelia Jones' book brings a series of critically incisive contributions to current performance art and body art theoretical debates. Her use of phenomenologigal theory (Merleau-Ponty)is admirable amidst an American academia with a tendency to be over-run by fashionable perspectivisms oblivious to their own roots and histories. Yet, Jones' ambitious work is under-cut by a jargon-ridden prose that sometimes appears to go nowhere, especially when discussing Lacanian psychoanalysis and concepts such as the body, the self, the subject and the other. For example, while trying to argue for an anti-Cartesian view of the subject, Jones insists in mantaining the grammatical dichotomy of "body/self". Instead of pushing Derrida's supplement theory to its limits, Jones seems to have a step in and a step out of the normative and dangerous dichotomies that have plagued Western thought since Descartes.

Still, Amelia Jones' Body Art is a necessary book if one is interested in taking a peek at body and performance art debates. While it does not compare favorably to Schneider's rigourous and well-written dialogue with postmodern and performance theories nor to Goldberg's more traditional yet fascinating take on performance art, Body Art: Performing the Subject remains as an intelligent contribution to the history of performance and body art.

BODY ART/PERFORMING THE SUBJECT offers an excellent critique of a fascinating phenomenon in contemporary art: the artist's voluntary use of her/his body in art. In this superb and much-needed book, Amelia Jones defines body art "as a set of performative practices that, through such intersubjective engagement, instantiate the dislocation or decentering of the Cartesian subject of modernism." Anti-formalist intersubjectivity and poststructuralist criticism against the Cartesian mind/body split are the two theoretical angles from which Jones examines body art pieces from the 1960s to the 1990s. She argues that body art performances, enacted against the grain of normative subject, exposes the logic of exclusion assumed by the modernist art history and criticism.

With this rigorous, incisive, and politically informed thesis, Jones develops a stunning series of analytical re-readings: from the action painting of Jackson Pollock--filmed by Hans Namuth; the erotic/violent/contemplative body sculpture of Vito Acconci; the feminist performances of Hannah Wilke, who marks sexuality, vitality, and mortality with equal measure of intelligence, humor, and courage; to the intersection of body and technology as exemplified by the works of Gary Hill, James Luna, Orlan, Bob Flanagan/Sheree Rose, Maureen Connor, Laurie Anderson, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Laura Aguilar. Other artists covered extensively in Body Art include Chris Burden, Yves Klein, Carolee Schneemann, Yayoi Kusama, Lynda Benglis, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Adrian Piper, and Niki de Saint Phalle. The depth and breadth of Jones's theoretical references that particularize her portraits of these artists makes for the reading of this book a difficult but stimulating pleasure.

Provocatively argued and elegantly expressed, Body Art/Performing the Subject is a must-read for those interested in the debates over embodiment, subjectivity, performance, feminism, and theories of identity. The intensity of Jones's writing is the heat--and the cool--of a philosophical motion.

The main problem with this book is the confusion attending Jones' inadequate construction/theorization of her basic concepts, such as, "the self" "the other" "the subject" "sexuality," "narcissism." Among many glaring problems is the total absence of any engagement or theorization of the unconscious, any true dialogue or understanding of psychoanalysis, particularly Lacanian, even though she depends so heavily on concepts derived from psychoanalysis. What is the subject? Is it the ego? The ego + body? The "social self?" The "subject" has in fact a very precise meaning in Lacanian theory--the subject of the signifier, which also, is utterly absent from this book. There is no conception of the signifier--because she tends to lump anything to do with "form" into the straw man of "Greenbergian Mondernist formalism." The result is that Jones is often trapped in a binary--there is no third term, no theory of desire and no Other--except that which was theorized at one time by Merleau-Ponty, evidently, though, it is nowhere in THIS text. There is a valiant attempt to get out of the spheric binary, but there is nothing there to help construct it, besides the incessant footnoting and referencing of "French philosophy" and "French poststructuralist theory," which is just a way of deferring the process, not entering into it. The "radical" structure she talks about so much is just not part of the production of her text, her process, her methodology. She remains totally at the level of the University Professor talking about people who somewhere else have broken down the borders she seems to want to cross, butdoesn't seem to know how herself.

What is sexuality? How can you speak about sexuality without a concept of the unconscious? In a footnote, Jones disregards Lacan's formulas of sexual difference--allegedly because of his "misogyny," though one could also argue that any true "engagement" and understanding of Lacanian theory would be both too disruptive and too complex and problematic for her book, for the models she wants to work with. But her superficial and clumsy reading of Lacan is the same as every other "philosopher" she quotes.

My quesion is: is "Lacan" and "psychoanalysis," perhaps even "the phallus", the truly repressed and excluded middle of Jones's own form of postmodernism? As Modernism represses the potential for its own disruption and dispersal--where is it in Jones work? I think its in the highly UNtheorized relation to analysis and anaytic concepts. Perhaps she does not wish to deal with the "phallus" precisely because she is so identified with it?

The simultaneous "visible and invisible" quality of her problematic relation to psychoanalytic concepts (particularly, but not only those of Lacan), is epitomized right at the beginning by her choice of Schneeman pulling a scroll out of her vagina. It doesn't take a genius (or Merleau-Ponty, or any "French poststructuralist philosopher") to understand she's constructing not a penis, but a phallus, veiled in the form of a text (a book on Body Art?)(or vice versa? What is the relationship between the phallus, writing, and a hole?). The iconic power of this image speaks to the "subject position" of Jones herself, I believe, and it is precisely this position which goes unacknowledged and unrecognized in all her conscious representations of herself. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, given the ironic (or is it?) work of Schneeman. Whatever the case, Jones misses an opportunity to TRULY implicate herself in her writing.

This is just a very tedious and tiresome book-typical for academe, and typical that Jones herself is utterly blind to HER positioning in the University, of which she is so obviously a product.

The body we inhabit is a contested space, one which artists have beenspeaking of and from for a long time. My own hyper recognition of theproblematics of speaking from the body came in the early 70's whenconfronted by the naked body of Vito Acconci in a hallway at the artschool I was attending. I did not know who he was, only that he was infront of me pulling hairs from his chest... This confrontation wasanything but academic. I was freaked and equally intrigued. Far fromrunning away from or theorizing on what was happening, I entered intoa space of what Roland Barthes calls "twice fascinated", onebody in visceral relationship feeling attraction, repulsion, slips ofidentification etc., another body in simultaneous psychologicalassessment and witnessing of the event. Both bodies were mine...notsplit, rather simultaneous. As I look back at my own production of thepast 30 years I see myself consistently in struggle to express thissimultaneity. The pitfalls have not only been the Cartesianimperatives imbedded within culture, but my own, historically seatedwithin my body.Reading Amelia Jones' book reminds me of the stressesand tensions which are inevitable when re-aligning our ideationalcritiques to mirror our corporeal experiences. It is not an easyposition given that definitions of body, self, other are not fixed. Ihighly recommend this book to all who are committed to reshaping ourtired dualism of nature/culture while aware of our inherentcollusions. It is refreshing to read a writing which is not afraid toslip as it intends to slide.

The music industry is on trial as well as it should be. The cloning of America starts with it's youth, and when Bill Graham closed the Fillmore East in 1971 it was due to the capitalism of the recording industry. Image formula's, profit puppets, and total escape became the norm. What is interesting here is that Attali looks at serious contemporary composition as the only hope to create new forms and provides us with social parallels. That is exactly what John Cage was thinking. The only real freedom is internal, but through exposed sound structures multiperspectives on reality - our current situation will eventually collapse. As Varese said, "The modern day composer refuses to die."

Sometimes lazy people like to use phrases like "literary{wind} " to justify their inability to understand difficult topics, or to cover for their own, lacking, vocabularies. The foregoing review did just that. The fact is, sometimes precise thought demands precise language.

Anyway, this book provides valuable insight into the relationship of fringe art/music, and the future of society. Attali postulates that society is founded upon the idea that bad noise must be subverted. Therefore, all forces effecting social change, at some time, have been subverted. Given time though, they find their way into society by way of, here, music, and begin to cause change.

This is a very interesting and well conceived book. A great read for philosophy student and musician alike. It puts a new spin on the effect of music on culture, and the reciprocal relationship between art and society. Good stuff.

In closing, and in response to the previous reviewer, "college isn't taken as seriously as it once was" simply because the hallowed halls are clogged with students who readily dismiss works of sound thought because they don't like having to look up words or work for their own enlightenment.ENDs

A musicology professor of mine recommended I use this book in a presentation I gave on aesthetics. I compared Attali's approach to that of Benjamin and Adorno and found myself highlighting and smiling and nodding. I found this book to be so brilliant and hopeful (where Adorno was so pessimistic) that I used it again in a presentation for another graduate musicology seminar.

If you don't like to read books that use complex sentences and multi-syllabic words, you should not be in higher education in the first place. Attali makes arguments that may seem outlandish, but with more thought and consideration, prove to be intelligent, fresh, and seemingly common sense.

... because it is so outrageous to be brilliantly thought provoking. Sometimes I think he is out to lunch and I am not confident that he understands everything he wrote. (or maybe the translation is not right.) Still, the mythology he presents is detailed and well developed and whether you agree with it or not, is fascinating.

There is a lot of coverage of European classical music in terms of "Who is paying whom" as well as the current recording industry. He also gets some things wrong, such as his coverage of Free Jazz (Carly Bley is black?), to which he nevertheless is sympathetic towards.

Therefore, I don't know how much you can trust his conclusions, but at the same time it gets the reader's mind to consider all sorts of new facets, and that is why this book is great.

... because it is so outrageous to be brilliantly thought provoking. Sometimes I think he is out to lunch and I am not confident that he understands everything he wrote. (or maybe the translation is not right.) Still, the mythology he presents is detailed and well developed and whether you agree with it or not, is fascinating.

There is a lot of coverage of European classical music in terms of "Who is paying whom" as well as the current recording industry. He also gets some things wrong, such as his coverage of Free Jazz (Carly Bley is black?), to which he nevertheless is sympathetic towards.

Therefore, I don't know how much you can trust his conclusions, but at the same time it gets the reader's mind to consider all sorts of new facets, and that is why this book is great.