This is your last chance to participate in this months Free Books for Bloggers (kinda) contest.
So if you want to receive a free book (on the condition that you post a review) let me know by Sunday. On Monday I will anounce the winner.
This is your last chance to participate in this months Free Books for Bloggers (kinda) contest.
So if you want to receive a free book (on the condition that you post a review) let me know by Sunday. On Monday I will anounce the winner.
Intriguing review in The New York Review of Books. The review – entitled Morning in America covers three recent works by William F. Buckley and uses them to ponder the person and personality of WFB. Here is the last graph:
Reading Buckley in large doses? especially if one’s never met him or even seen him in the flesh?one comes away thinking more of the man than expected, perhaps, and a little less of the writer. Certainly he seems more pedagogue than ideologue, concerned not so much with imparting theories, let alone a vision, as with passing on the benefits of his privileged position near the front row of recent history, and his enviable sense of enjoyment. It’s always sunny and breezy in his world?you can use any sailing metaphor you like?and the boat is guaranteed always to return to harbor. His political opponents, I think, could usefully offer him the kind of tribute he’s lavished so often and so graciously on them. It’s his political allies who may have a question or two.
I am a big fan of WFB. I own every one of his books and have even corresponded with him on occasion. Yet, I think there is something to this review. It is as if Buckley could not force him self to stare into the obyss but rather insisted on taking what pleasure he could from life. He did not shrink from battle by any means but he was not made for the contemplative life. In contrast, think of someone like Walter Lippmann who, at least early on in his career, would take a break from his journalism and write a work of a serious nature. Buckley could never quite accomplish that goal. This unwilligness to pay the price of the serious scholar or deep thinker kept him in a more journalistic role. It may have kept him from being taken seriously by those outside conservatism.
John Judis’s biography of WFB was in many ways unsatisfying. I am looking forward to Sam Tanenhaus’s upcoming work in hopes that it will shed more light on this fascinating figure.
It is not all that often that I come across a review that makes me want to instantly purchase the book being reviewed. But this short review did just that:
Now here’s reason to get excited: a true work of art that’s as vast and mysterious as life itself. Hemon, in just two books, and in just two years (if you haven’t read The Question of Bruno, do), has quickly become essential in the way that, say, Nabokov is essential. The Nabokov comparison is not a facile one. The hero, if we may call him that, of Nowhere Man is “followed” by his doppelganger, his shadow, his shade — a favorite Nabokovian theme. This character is Jozef Pronek, a young, itinerant Bosnian who “has the ability to respond and speak to the world.” In each story, Pronek appears and reappears in different phases of life, and in different guises. There is Pronek as a baby (“during a diaper change, he peed in a perfect arc on an electric heater, discontinuing the arc just in time not to get electrocuted, the piss evaporating like an unfinished dream”); Pronek as a teenager, one who would have been a punk (the name of his high school band: Jozef Pronek and the Dead Souls) if he weren’t so decent (the band plays Beatles covers); Pronek as a young man in wrecked Sarajevo, in Kiev, and speaking wobbly English in Chicago. Are these stories scenes from the same life? We believe so, and we think we know what Hemon is up to here, until the title story, the last piece in the book, when the device unravels and, like a Zen koan, becomes more elusive the more you think about it. This tender, devastating book is evidence indeed that Hemon is a writer of rare artistry and depth.
Someone should buy it, read it, and review it so I know if it lives up to its hype.
Well, what are you waiting for? Get to it!
I was following the mini-Simpsons debate over at Spudlets and it reminded me of a couple of books I have been meaning to read.
The first is Shows About Nothing by Thomas Hibbs:
The portrayal of evil in film and television, frequently denounced as an attack on “family values” and an incitement to real-life violence, is more complicated and more disturbing than we realize. In a pointed challenge to both Hollywood and its critics, Professor Thomas Hibbs argues that the demonic anti-heroes and seductive comic evil of popular culture are not weapons in a conscious cultural assault but reactions to the apathy and conformity of American life.
The other is Gilligan Unbound by Paul A. Cantor:
Popular television shows are commonly a reflection of national principles. Shakespeare scholar Cantor (English, Univ. of Virginia) here analyzes four of the most famous prime-time series in the history of television with particular attention to how these shows portrayed American ideals and influences. Cantor shows us how the castaways of Gilligan’s Island re-created America in their isolation and how Star Trek reflected Cold War fears and sensibilities. He also speculates about the post-Cold War, cynical, introspective Springfield of The Simpsons and how society’s distrust of Washington is evident in the skepticism that characterizes The X-Files.
Both authors see TV, movies, etc. as a reflection of rather than a assault on American life. But it seems that Cantor views these shows (the Simpsons, X-files, etc.) as containing positive ideals as well as negative. Whereas Hibbs views popular culture as sliding deeper and deeper into nihilism.
I think reading and compaing and contrasting these two books should prove interesting. And if I can ever get off my duff and get reading I will do just that . . .
I was following the mini-Simpsons debate over at Spudlets and it reminded me of a couple of books I have been meaning to read.
The first is Shows About Nothing by Thomas Hibbs:
The portrayal of evil in film and television, frequently denounced as an attack on “family values” and an incitement to real-life violence, is more complicated and more disturbing than we realize. In a pointed challenge to both Hollywood and its critics, Professor Thomas Hibbs argues that the demonic anti-heroes and seductive comic evil of popular culture are not weapons in a conscious cultural assault but reactions to the apathy and conformity of American life.
The other is Gilligan Unbound by Paul A. Cantor:
Popular television shows are commonly a reflection of national principles. Shakespeare scholar Cantor (English, Univ. of Virginia) here analyzes four of the most famous prime-time series in the history of television with particular attention to how these shows portrayed American ideals and influences. Cantor shows us how the castaways of Gilligan’s Island re-created America in their isolation and how Star Trek reflected Cold War fears and sensibilities. He also speculates about the post-Cold War, cynical, introspective Springfield of The Simpsons and how society’s distrust of Washington is evident in the skepticism that characterizes The X-Files.
Both authors see TV, movies, etc. as a reflection of rather than a assault on American life. But it seems that Cantor views these shows (the Simpsons, X-files, etc.) as containing positive ideals as well as negative. Whereas Hibbs views popular culture as sliding deeper and deeper into nihilism.
I think reading and compaing and contrasting these two books should prove interesting. And if I can ever get off my duff and get reading I will do just that . . .
For those of you into free things (and who isn’t) don’t forget about my monthly Free Books for Bloggers (kinda).
The concept is simple: just let me know what book you want to read and why; I will pick someone and buy them their book of choice. I will pick this months winner in a week or so.
Send in your choices (either via comment of email).