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Lectures on Literature

Vladimir Nabokov

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Solid example of Nabokov's literary perspective 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Some time back, I reviewed "Crime and Punishment" for Amazon. One of the commentators on my review suggested that I take a look at Vladimir Nabokov's critical analysis of Dostoevsky. So, via Amazon, I purchased Vladimir Nabokov's book, "Lectures in Literature." As luck would have it, this was not the volume covering Dostoevsky! However, I did take a look anyhow, my curiosity piqued by the comment on my review. The end result? A greater appreciation for Nabokov--and also a sense that I'm not apt to invest a great deal of time reading other of his literary analysis.

The essays in this book represent lectures that he gave at Wellesley College and Cornell University. The introductory comments note that (Page ix): "The fact cannot and need not be disguised that the texts for these essays represent Vladimir Nabokov's written-out notes for delivery as classroom lectures and that they cannot be recognized as a finished literary work. . . ." John Updike's Introduction also provides some context for this work. He notes that Nabokov's lectures provide (Page xxv): ". . .a dazzling demonstration, for those lucky Cornell students in the remote, clean-cut fifties, of the irresistible artistic sensibility." He also notes, in Nabokov's words, the truth of novels, that (Pages xxv-xxvi): ". . .great novels are great fairy tales--and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales. . . ." Nabokov himself points out that a writer can be considered as (a) a storyteller, (b) a teacher, and (c) an enchanter (Page 5). And, above all, he values style and structure in authors' creations.

Maybe a few examples will illustrate his critical approach. First, Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park." Let me confess. . . . I'm not particularly excited about Jane Austen's work. However, Nabokov is very pleased with her work. Given his emphasis on style and structure, he details how well she constructs this work. For instance, at one point, the characters, among whom there are a variety of tensions to begin with, select a play to perform. The decision as to which of the characters in Austen's story would play which characters in the play is well discussed by Nabokov. The play itself raises questions--it was, in fact, an actual play that scandalized some of the characters in the novel. And it exacerbated pre-existing tensions among the characters. All in all, Nabokov makes a great case that Austen's structure of this segment of the novel was well done indeed. And, in terms of style, he says of Austen that (Page 59) "she handles it with perfection." As noted, I am not much excited by Austen's works, but Nabokov sure convinced me that she was a terrific technical writer, who wed her genius to technique and style and structure to create something special.

Briefly, I would also note that his examination of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" leaves him cold. He does not think that it holds together well and that the dichotomy of the characters works well.

Finally, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," a story I read several decades ago. I recall the sense of despair I felt reading about the travails of Gregor Samsa--and a sense that, despite the awful/offal nature of the work that there was something important here. Nabokov is very positive about this piece. Much of this lecture is a simple description of the work, scene by scene, and Nabokov spennds some time noting how Kafka's work is so much better than Stevenson's work discussed above. Samsa's unexplained transformation into a beetle is the event that triggers this story. Nabokov notes how this tragedy has positive elements--a family finally getting its act together even as it abandons Gregor--and illustrates Kafka's style. Of the latter, Nabokov says (Page 283): "You will mark Kafka's style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast to the nightmare matter of his story."

He concludes this set of lectures by congratulating his students on their work--and making a few final points. He concludes (Pages 381-382): "I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotion of the people in the book but the emotions of its author--the joys and difficulties of creation."

I admire his emphasis on style and structure, but I also think there is an almost sanitary quality about some of his observations. Austen? I have found it difficult over decades to get any purchase on her works. Her style and structure doesn't make up for what I feel as an overly mannered style (I expect to get hammered for saying that!). Does one really need to know about her knowledge of a particular play to appreciate (or not appreciate) her novel? I don't know. I'm a political scientist--not a literary critic. Nonetheless, this is an exciting book, as one learns how a literary critic from one critical perspective examining a series of works--Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. If interested in Nabokov's critical perspective, this is a good starting point!

Editorial Review:

For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.

One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

There are more than six thousand languages used around the world today, although linguists now estimate that by the year 2050 as many as half of those will be extinct. This beautifully designed, engagingly written reference takes us on a panoramic tour of the globe to explore this unique and endangered human gift. Generously illustrated throughout with color photographs, informative sidebars, and clear maps and graphics, One Thousand Languages illuminates the sources, characteristics, and interrelationships of the world's spoken tongues. It looks in detail at the eleven global languages, then delves into the major languages of each world region in turn. Each entry gives a history of the growth and development of the language, details the number of speakers, and traces its geographical spread. The volume also provides information on many extinct languages. A detailed map section tracks the migrations of the major languages, and the book also tells how to count to ten in more than 250 ways.
Copub: Ivy Press Limited

An Experiment in Criticism (Canto)

C. S. Lewis

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Why we read is a process more important than what we read, Lewis claims..................... 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Why read? C.S. Lewis says because it is a hedonistic pleasure and it is "good". Good for Lewis does not mean the subject matter is true or even logical but dependent on individual need.

In the first chapter he compares buying a book to someone who buys a picture. The need can be very different from one person to the next. One might buy the picture to cover a bare spot on the wall and then after a week or two the pictures become mostly invisible to them. The good news is that the bare spot is now invisable too. Another person would buy a picture, live with it, and actually feed off of it, for years. This book helps to understand what it might mean to "feed off" what the book said showing that reading allows one to become what they had not been before. He likens this condition to a Greek poem saying, "I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see".

The book has eleven chapters and an epilogue. Many of these chapters deal with the different choices and kinds of things people read. It concludes with a final chapter that draws conclusions about how literary tastes, reading choices and the process and approach to reading. The book concludes that the way we read is more important than what we read. Mastering the process suggested enables us to become, as he suggests, "a thousand men and yet remain myself".

Rather than pushing a point of view, something it could be assumed and even expected that a Christian writer would do, this book pushes the idea of real agency of reading choice. He then shows how pleasurable the experience can be.

Editorial Review:

Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis's classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that 'good reading', like moral action or religious experience, involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: 'in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself'. Crucial to his notion of judging literature is a commitment to laying aside expectations and values extraneous to the work, in order to approach it with an open mind. Amid the complex welter of current critical theories, C. S. Lewis's wisdom is valuably down-to-earth, refreshing and stimulating in the questions it raises about the experience of reading.

Making Arguments About Literature: A Compact Guide and Anthology

John Schilb, John Clifford

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great College Textbook 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I purchased this book for a college class, and I actually enjoy reading it. It has several works of literature in it, also.

anthology 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

this text book is more of an anthology than a textbook. i used it for class (it was a joke) but i enjoyed reading the short stories and clothes inside.

Editorial Review:

Making Arguments About Literature combines a complete text on argumentative writing with a flexible anthology of literature in a compact format.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

Elaine Scarry

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.

Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

The Arcades Project

Walter Benjamin

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Quite simply, the Passagen-Werk is one of the twentieth century's great efforts at historical comprehension--some would say the greatest." --T. J. Clark, author of The Painting of Modern Life The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin "To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, The Arcades Project (in German, Das Passagen-Werk) is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of thirteen years--"the theater," as Benjamin called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas." Focusing on the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris--glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories with descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age. The Arcades Project is Benjamin's effort to represent and to critique the bourgeois experience of nineteenth-century history, and, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street and interior merge and historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things. Howard Eiland is Lecturer in Literature at MIT and the author of essays on Nietzsche and Heidegger. Kevin McLaughlin is Assistant Professor of English at Brown University and the author of Writing in Parts: Imitation and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Belknap Press 61/2 x 10 46 halftones 960 pp.

Of Grammatology

Jacques Derrida

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Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

read poetry - it's better for you 1 out of 5 stars.
23 of 74 people found this review helpful.

While it's certainly true that there will always be a gulf between reality and words, communication between reader and writer is nonetheless very real and potentially profound, thanks in no small part to empathy and the imagination. Deconstructionism, by denying presence and instead proposing unlimited differences between signs, dismisses any connection between readers and writers and turns language into a hermetic system separated from the outside world which is, of course, inhabited by people who read and people who write. This is exactly what makes deconstructionism so empty and hypocritical: It rejects traditional metaphysics while adopting a pseudo-mystical position which regards language as some unstable and solipsistic alien creature independent of everything and everyone.

Editorial Review:

"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University

Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable.

The Romantic Manifesto

Ayn Rand

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Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Invaluable and irreplaceable 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

When discussing the theory of art in Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide, I cited only Ayn Rand's esthetics. An early reader suggested I "balance" the presentation by mentioning other writers on esthetics.

But here's the problem: no one surpasses or even equals Ayn Rand in the field of esthetics. Rand treats art with the same rigor she applies to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. She begins her discussion by stating what art is and what purpose it serves for human beings. Her definition, "a selective re-creation of reality based on an artist's metaphysical value-judgments," indicates that an artist chooses his subject and style based on what he considers important, and creates something recognizable so that others will see it and grasp his message: "THIS matters - pay attention to THIS."

Rand lays out the fundamentals of the field of esthetics. Using her definition of art plus her theory of knowledge (see Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: Expanded Second Edition), one can determine what is and is not art: driftwood, paint splattered on a canvas, the Parthenon frieze? One can determine the esthetic requirements for good art: Is a portrait by Rembrandt better than one by Picasso in his Cubist phase? One can even explain why people often react so violently to works of art: "It repulses me but I can't turn away!"

I have read hundreds of books by art critics and historians, many of whom have an encyclopedic grasp of their subject and descriptive abilities that make me wildly jealous. Not one of them offers a proper definition of art. The fifth edition of Janson's widely used Janson's History of Art: Western Tradition (7th Edition), for example, says a work of art is "an esthetic object" and that "esthetic" means "that which concerns the beautiful." The term is, he promptly admits, unsatisfactory, but "will have to do for lack of a better one."

When I'm visiting a gallery or reading a novel, I can and do revel in art without first subjecting it to rigorous esthetic analysis. I've found, though, that I can extend my enjoyment if I THINK about a particular work as well. For purposes of thinking about art and conveying my ideas to others, a proper definition is indispensable. In that respect, I have found Ayn Rand's essays on esthetics in Romantic Manifesto, The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, The Art of Nonfiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers, and Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A(the esthetics section) invaluable and irreplaceable.

Editorial Review:

In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand eloquently argues that, because the moral influence of art is inescapable, art should always strive to elevate the human spirit.

Motorcycle: Evolution, Design, Passion

Mick Walker

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Motorcycle: Evolution, Design, Passion 3 out of 5 stars.
3 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Many nice examples of motorcycling inventions. Fine selection of pictures, covering examples of major breakthroughs in designing motorcycles. In my opinion the book lacks a little more dephs in the individual sections. Overall an ok buy for the price for the one who loves motorcycling.

Editorial Review:

This is the definitive, comprehensive guide to motorcycle design. Tapping a deep well of knowledge and a lifetime of experience, motorcycle racer and historian Mick Walker sheds light on the evolution of one of the world's ultimate status symbols and style icons -- a development owing as much to history, politics, and technology as it does to image, lifestyle, and design. In a survey that ranges from the late nineteenth-century pioneers like Gottlieb Daimler and Hildebrand & Wolfmüller to present-day manufacturers -- Harley Davidson, Ducati, Honda, BMW, Aprilia, and Triumph -- Walker sets each model within its historical context and outlines the main technological and stylistic innovations that make each bike unique.

Orality and Literacy (New Accents)

Walter J. Ong

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Stop reading and listen to this! 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I wish I hadn't read this book... but heard it, for this is a book that deserves the delight that comes from the immediate business of listening to sounds in the air rather than the abstracted business of reading marks on a page (or dulled spots on a screen).

In it, Walter Ong makes a valiant attempt to take us back to a time before text, to a place where we might imagine language as something heard and existing only in its moment, language as something without thee concept of words and letters to chop it up, language as something we hear without imagined structures learned from print, language as something replete with revealing repetitions to aid memory and understanding, something that values the familiar over the novel. He then slowly winds us forward, textual innovation by [con]textual innovation, to the edge of the cyber age, the next unwritten chapter along this vast track.

If you're a reader of books, I'm sure you'll be transported by this adventure beyond your cultural assumptions of what language is and can be. You may find yourself yearning for some of the human experience our world of convenient published accessible text may be denying us, or even hoping some of that experience is still available in specialist forms such as live performance, as I do.

Either way, you'll never hear a book like it.

Editorial Review:

This classic work explores the vast differences between oral and literate cultures and offers a brilliantly lucid account of the intellectual, literary and social effects of writing, print and electronic technology.