A Hunger Artist (Short Prose of Franz Kafka Series)

Book Description

four stories, tr Kevin Blahut, illus H Vlcnovska

Customer Reviews:

Kafka is a dream.......2000-03-21

If you have read Kafka you won't need my advice. But if you haven't, I recommend you to buy this book, "A Hunger Artist" is an incredibly impressive short story. It plays with reality and imagination and at the end it all seems like a dream. Also take a look at Kafka's diaries.

The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing, and Imprisonment

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This is a truly fabulous piece of criticism.

The Hunger Artists: Starving, Writing, and Imprisonment
Maud Ellmann
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Customer Reviews:

This is a truly fabulous piece of criticism........2000-04-18

Ellmann's work is a must-read for anyone interested in anorexia in literature. As theory, it is remarkably readable, interesting, and compelling. Her reading of Richardson's Clarissa actually makes one want to read the longest novel in the English language, and her work on hunger strikers from various movements (focusing on Irish nationalists and suffragettes) is really fascinating. This book has changed the way I think about a lot of things.

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Quirky people saying clever things
Through the Looking Glass

Clear: A Transparent Novel
Nicola Barker
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Psychological & Suspense | Thrillers | Mystery & Thrillers | Subjects | Books
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Mister Pip

ASIN: 0060797576
Release Date: 2005-06-14

Book Description

On September 5, 2003, illusionist David Blaine entered a small Perspex box adjacent to London's Thames River and began starving himself. Forty-four days later, on October 19, he left the box, fifty pounds lighter. That much, at least, is clear. And the rest? The crowds? The chaos? The hype? The rage? The fights? The lust? The filth? The bullshit? The hypocrisy?

Nicola Barker fearlessly crams all that and more into this ribald and outrageous peep show of a novel, her most irreverent, caustic, up-to-the-minute work yet, laying bare the heart of our contemporary world, a world of illusion, delusion, celebrity, and hunger.

Customer Reviews:

Quirky people saying clever things.......2005-08-16

Why am I the first person to review Nicola Barker's "Clear"? It has been prominently displayed for weeks at the Border's bookstore where I purchased it, and you would think that someone would have reviewed it on this website by now. I feel an extra responsibility to get it right. Anyway, I'm pretty confident in stating that "Clear" is not so bad, and not so great.

As a backdrop to what is basically a first person narrative stream of consciousness, we have David Blaine's stunt where he confined himself in a suspended glass tank in London, without eating anything, drinking only water, for 44 days, while London crowds looked on in fascination and disgust. Blaine, of course, is one of those new breeds of extreme magicians/performance artists, who subject themselved to unimaginable hardships, or is it all just some illusion?

In any event, Nicola Barker combines the styles of Whit Stillman (who wrote the screenplays for "Metropolitan," "Barcelona," and "Last Days of Disco"), with Jack Kerouac's classic "On the Road." What you basically have is a bunch of twenty or thirty something men and women who are far too clever, can refer to the most obscure subjects at the drop of a hat, and who listen to the coolest music imaginable. They all have quirky and sometimes androgenous names (e.g. main character and narrator Adair, his larger than life roomate Solomon, Solomon's girlfriend Jalisa, Adair's former male co-worker Hilary, and Adair's two female interests Aphra and Bly). Everyone has something quite deep to say about David Blaine, as well as other unrelated subjects, which get analyzed on an impossibly intellectual level, including (perhaps most interestingly) the western "Shane" (in its novel form). Are otherwise average middle class people who live in England so much more clever than their American counter-parts?

Nicola Barker writes in an interesting and unique voice, which didn't quite do it for me in "Clear." However, if the above sounds interesting to you, you will almost certainly enjoy the book.

Through the Looking Glass.......2005-07-20

Clear is the best novel I've read this year. Ms. Barker has reignited my belief that good writing lives . . . and that novels can be innovative, literate, surprising and accessible.

The book's main theme is that even when we think we are seeing, our perceptions of appearances are deceiving us.

What can be more transparent than an illusionist, David Blaine, who sits suspended in a Perspex box above the Thames while he fasts for 44 days? That central image becomes the fulcrum for this insightful, witty novel about modern conceits.

You soon get a hint that the book is in part about writing when the narrator, Adair Graham MacKenny, opens the narration with ribald praise for the language in Jack Schaefer's Shane. Later, Blaine's very illusion is discussed in terms of a Kafka story. Unlike snobbish novelists, Ms. Barker shares everything you need to know to share her point.

As the story develops, you find yourself in the middle of an enigma wrapped in several mysteries, one Aphra by name, who sits every night watching Blaine in the wee hours while others sleep, who keeps dozens of containers of gourmet food which alternative with regurgitated remnants of such food, and wears outrageous shoes. Aphra's shoe fetish nicely matches Adair's foot fetish, and Adair finds himself in enraptured pursuit. As the mysteries about Aphra are gradually resolved, you begin to appreciate Ms. Barker's point about not knowing what we are seeing. In one powerful passage on page 311, she reveals all in describing Blaine's magic:

"He's like a mirror in which people can see the very best and the very worst of themselves."

Clear goes on to make the point that we all use other people in the same way. It's clear!

The Development of Anorexia Nervosa: The Hunger Artists

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The Development of Anorexia Nervosa: The Hunger Artists
Sylvia Brody
Manufacturer: International University Press (FL)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0823612104

The Greatest Bible a Banquet to Fight Against Hunger

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The Greatest Bible a Banquet to Fight Against Hunger
Rosen Michael J
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000R0CRJ0

THE GREATEST TABLE: A BANQUET TO FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER

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THE GREATEST TABLE: A BANQUET TO FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER
Michael J. And Share Our Strength Rosen
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LY1ZGI

Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture

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Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture
Eliezer Diamond
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World)

ASIN: 0195137507

Book Description

The existence of ascetic elements within rabbinic Judaism has generally been either overlooked or actually denied. This is in part because asceticism is commonly identified with celibacy, whereas the rabbis emphasized sexuality as a positive good. In addition, argues Eliezer Diamond, it serves the theological agendas of both Jewish and Christian scholars to characterize Judaism as non- or anti-ascetic. In fact, however, Diamond shows that rabbinic asceticism does indeed exist. This asceticism is mainly secondary, rather than primary, in that the rabbis place no value on self-denial in and of itself, but rather require of themselves the virtual abandonment of familial, social, and economic life in favor of an absolute commitment to the study of the Torah. It is an asceticism of neglect, rather than negation. He also notes that this asceticism of neglect dovetails with the rabbinic theology of sin and punishment, which encourages delaying gratification in this world in the hopes of a greater reward in the next. The rabbis believed, moreover, that every pleasure taken in this world detracts from what awaits one in the future. The rabbis valued and occasionally engaged in primary asceticism as well. In fact, as Diamond shows, the vocabulary of holiness was often used by the rabbis in connection with voluntary self-denial. One form of primary asceticism--fasting--became increasingly popular in the wake of the destruction of the second temple. He traces this development to the need to mourn the temple's devastation but also to the cessation of three forms of temple-related rituals: the sacrificial cult, the Ma'amadot (groups that would fast, pray, and read from the Torah while daily sacrifices were offered), and naziritism. Fasting is linked by the rabbis to each of these practices and Diamond shows that fasting was seen as a substitute for them after the temple was destroyed. In a final chapter, Diamond shows that there is a greater tendency toward asceticism among the Palestinian rabbis than among the Babylonian. He contends that the divergent political histories of these communities as well as differing external cultural influences account for this disparity.

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Hunger Artist: A Suburban Childhood
Joanne Jacobson
Manufacturer: Bottom Dog Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Family Relationships | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books

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Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1933964111
Release Date: 2007-09-09

Book Description

A book of memories of growing up Jewish in the Midwest suburbs that proves itself literature of the highest order.

"Joanne Jacobson's memoir of postwar suburbia, stories rendered in incandescent images and illuminating insights, unflinchingly depicts life's insatiable hungers. The book's multiple facets leave the reader delighted, disturbed, but ultimately, completely fulfilled."

-Faye Moskowitz, author of A Leak in the Heart and Peace in the House: Tales from a Yiddish Kitchen

Mariage Blanc and the Hunger Artist Departs

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Mariage Blanc and the Hunger Artist Departs
Tadeusz Rozewicz
Manufacturer: Marion Boyars Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Eastern European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0714527769

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My Hunger for Venison
Gary Baseman
Manufacturer: Baby Tattoo Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Museums & Collections | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0977894932

Book Description

Baseman blurs the line between toy culture and fine art with his iconic images, both playful and dark. I ran away this spring and hid in the woods. I ran so fast I did not look where I was going and smacked my face right into a tree limb, Bam. I fell unconscious with my mouth all bloody. When I awoke, I found this beautiful wild deer girl up against my face, nose to nose, sniffing me. She started licking my dried blood on my lips and began healing me with her tongue. Then she proceeded to devour me. This new collection of drawings introduces my muse Venison. I produced most of these drawings during my stay in Barcelona at the Cafe Rosal. They are not studies for future paintings but final works of art. After my return home to Hollywood, I added several paintings of my wild deer girl to the series. - Gary Baseman • Includes an abridged reproduction of Baseman's personal sketchbook

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Continuing on with a Good Story

Sweet Love Story

timeless message

good

Ups and Downs
The Carousel: A Novel
Richard Paul Evans
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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The Locket

The Looking Glass

A Perfect Day

The Last Promise

The Christmas Box Collection: The Christmas Box Timepiece The Letter

ASIN: 0684868911
Release Date: 2000-10-10

Amazon.com

Michael Keddington and Faye Murrow are young lovers who marry on the eve of Faye's departure for medical school. While the bonds of matrimony and faith pull them together, the troubles of the real world do sunder: disapproving parents, work demands, distance, death, and an unplanned pregnancy. As in his earlier novel, The Christmas Box, nostalgia and emotion run unchecked, to the delight of most readers.

This is not the great American novel, but Evans never pretends that it is, he only hopes that you "might find the message of this story meaningful and applicable to your own life." If that is the standard, most readers should be satisfied.--Nancy R.E. O'Brien

Book Description

This is the love story of Michael Keddington and Faye Murrow, a love story that takes place not in seclusion but in the real world, with the challenges that all lovers must face. No relationship is an island: There are threads that bind us all and pull at our lives -- the demands of family, of friends, of work, and social obligation. And there are times that the pull of those threads becomes greater than the strength of the relationship. In these times, no matter how much two people love each other, a relationship must grow strong or be torn apart.

The Carousel is about what happens when life doesn't turn out the way that we planned. Beyond a love story, it is about faith, loyalty, and sacrifice.

My hope is that you, and those with whom you share this book, might find the message of this story meaningful and applicable to your own life.

And that in some way you might feel changed.

Sincerely,

Richard Paul Evans

Customer Reviews:

Continuing on with a Good Story.......2006-11-28

"The Locket" story is continuing on with the same characters. Michael and Faye's romantic relationship continues. This book is sentimental, sad, and touching. This is a wonderful book.

Sweet Love Story.......2006-08-09

The ups and downs of love and tragedy for a young college couple. Good portrayal of the doubts and missteps taken in response to life events and the decisions and emotions which tend to keep people on the right track, even when faced with adversity. An enjoyable read with a happyily-ever-after ending.

timeless message.......2006-01-08

This is the first Evans book I read. I fell in love with his writing immediately. I love his down to earth style and his ability to write a wonderful romance based on true love, not lust. If you are tired of having to skip over porn while reading a romance novel, check out this one. I recommend you start with the first in this series, The Locket. The main characters Michael, Faye, and Ester are easy to fall in love with. This book certainly doesn't sugar coat life. It is very frank about the unfairness of life, but it is not super depressing and the message is full of hope.

This book would appeal to both males and females. I think anyone who enjoys a love story, whether they are 14 or 80 years old, would love this series.

good.......2003-12-03

Though I must admit the story was poignant and I agree that life is like a carousel at times, it left me unsatisfied... This is the first book I've read of Evans, and he's a good author, but at times I was left hanging and wondering...it felt like a soap opera episode... It's a decent read, though, and the publishing company did a really good job designing his books, so don't be surpised if you're drawn to this book.

Ups and Downs.......2003-03-26

Michael and Faye's story began in another book and continued in this one is one that promises lasting love and emotion....hope even in the event of adversity......

Book Description

Meet Meredith Herman, a fourteen-year-old expert witness to the slow unraveling of her parents' marriage amid the lunacy of Los Angeles, 1978, a world of bell-bottoms, grapefruit diets, and plastic surgery. Meredith is a girl of a specific time and place tackling the universal challenges of boys, school, and parents. Her mother, Leigh, is a housewife suffering an excruciating and often hilarious midlife discontent, a malaise that leaves Meredith's father, Robert, genuinely baffled. As Leigh attempts to reinvent herself as a liberated lady - complete with assertiveness-training classes and a dalliance with an exotic artist - Robert runs for cover into a hasty second marriage. Through it all, Meredith and Leigh struggle in a combative mother-daughter relationship as wonderfully real as any in contemporary fiction.

Tanney's debut sparkles with pitch-perfect dialogue and an astonishingly accurate sense of place. This novel will take readers on ajourney of belly laughs and heartbreak. The Herman family's story will charm and captivate you long after you've turned the last page.

Customer Reviews:

Wow.......2002-10-02

I was also intrigued by the story and the cover of the book, and I was immersed from the time I picked it up and started reading. What I especially liked about the novel was how it spanned several years and truly showed Meredith's growth and the changing ways she viewed her parents. I thought the depiction of her mother and father was classic and right on. Katherine Tanney didn't try to sugarcoat or mask the inner workings of a not-so-perfect family, creating such realistic characters that I cringed at some of the dialogue and scenes because I felt how painful Meredith's life was. I definitely recommend this book.

An interesting blast from the past!.......2002-08-08

A Carousel of Progress is an intense journey, albeit laced with some humor, which is seen through the eyes of a fourteen year old. For those who can relate to growing up in the seventies, this book provides an interesting look back at the historic relevance of Meredith's emotional journey. Women's roles, at that time, are changing while the protagonist is trying to define who she really is and where she is going. Her mother and step-mother are poor role models. Caught in a turbulent divorce, her sense of self becomes disjointed. Although the book is interesting, I found myself lost in the characters anger and constant bickering. I wanted more; the characters needed more dimension. I enjoyed going back to the early, chaotic days of teenage years in the seventies, but I completed the book wanting more substance!

Great Read!.......2001-12-04

I was attracted to this book by its cover and I was pleased at what this book had to offer. I was in the mood for a shallow book, and this fit the bill. Overall comedic and entertaining, but much more than that as the story progresses. You fall deeper into the characters, and realize that though your parents may have not went through a divorce, you can relate to Meredith (main character) on a personal level. Read it when you are in for humor, cynism and slight flash back to your teen years.

couldn't put it down, some questions, though..........2001-10-19

I couldn't put this book down, because the story was so compelling. Meredith was believable. I loved how Tanney portrayed her affection for her brother and her relationships with everyone.

But I do have a question...any idea why Kim's pregnancy wasn't addressed head on? And I didn't understand why Tanney wrote in a scene where Leo tells Meredith she will be better off without Kim, and then dances around Kim's pregnancy and maybe Meredith's feelings for Kim... Anyone have any thoughts on that?

A female Holden, and more........2001-09-29

I'm always looking for a hip, current, female coming-of-age narrative to complement "Catcher in the Rye" in some of my classes. The most impressive story I've come across so far--Deborah Eisenberg's "What It Was Like, Seeing Chris"--is a bit sophisticated and elusive for younger readers to handle on their own. But "Carousel" is accessible as well as rewarding at the level of descriptive and metaphoric language (the carousel of the title, which refers to the old Disneyland ride, also symbolizes the narrator's leaving behind childish ways and even resonates with the carousel near the end of Holden's quest).

Initially I gave the novel 4 stars. Impressive as it is, it's no match for a dazzling debut such as Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." But when I look at the lists of current best-sellers, when I read nothing but pages and pages of plodding plot summary from college-age students, and when I see a literary landscape increasingly cluttered with "fantasy" fiction, it's easy to develop a fuller appreciation for a literary talent like Tennant's.

This is "authentic" imaginative literature. It's less about "captivating" (i.e. capturing) the reader's imagination than educating, or liberating, it. The author's narrative style leaves room for genuine "interpretation," for "making" as well as "receiving" meaning from the evocative patterns of imagery. Readers of "Carousel of Progress" are, like the novel's protagonist, challenged to abandon infantile carousels and cultivate, rather than surrender, their imaginations.

For the attentive, creative reader the novel holds many rewards--the love/hate relationship between mother and daughter, the portrayal of a double rite-of-passage (mother's as well as daughter's), the touching brother-sister bond, and the tensions between the teen-age Meredith who is the subject of the narration and the considerably older Meredith who tells the story.

Admittedly, the narration occasionally takes on a one-sided quality. More often than not, it is Meredith who plays parent to her childish, self-absorbed parents. And her account contains no small amount of male bashing, with Meredith's father being the first of a succession of male figures distinguished by their immaturity, egocentricity and flagrant disregard for the sensitive female protagonist. As a result, the climactic moment at which Meredith tells us she loves her father seemed "forced" to this reader--perhaps more reflective of the mature narrator than the 16-year-old who is the subject of her story.

These minor reservations aside, "Carousel of Progress" is a promising debut and an engaging work of literature. Like Holden, Meredith has a real nose for what's phony as well as a creative capacity for fabricating various roles in her search for identity and belonging. The novel is full of Meredith's humorous snapshots of friends and family as well as explicit sexual description that reflects the importance of these matters in young people's lives without gratuitous exploiting of the subject (in fact, I'd welcome the opportunity to defend the novel's treatment of sex before some PTA group). For the present, at least, I'm quite satisfied to be a matchmaker for the always stimulating Holden.

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A great book for begining a discussion about feelings
Carousel: A Novel

Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Family Life | People & Places | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
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Jalapeno Bagels

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Thunder Cake

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The School Mural (6 pack)

ASIN: 0027255123

Customer Reviews:

A great book for begining a discussion about feelings.......2004-03-26

Pat Cummings has created a great story with expressive and vibrant pictures. I especially liked the thought from Alex's father as he tells why he couldn't stay angry. This is a great way to help kids see through the anger and look at what is really bothering them and learning to deal with it. I teach 2nd grade and this book is right on their level.

Set Of 15 Romance Novels by Belva Plain (Random Winds, Eden Burning, Crescent City, Blessings, Treasures, Whispers, Daybreak, The Carousel, Promises, Homecoming, Legacy of Silence, Fortune's Hand, After the Fire, Looking Back, Her Father's House)

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Set Of 15 Romance Novels by Belva Plain (Random Winds, Eden Burning, Crescent City, Blessings, Treasures, Whispers, Daybreak, The Carousel, Promises, Homecoming, Legacy of Silence, Fortune's Hand, After the Fire, Looking Back, Her Father's House)
Belva Plain
Manufacturer: Dell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

The Complete Novels of Rosamunde Pilcher: September, Voices in Summer, the Carousel

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The Complete Novels of Rosamunde Pilcher: September, Voices in Summer, the Carousel
Rosamunde Pilcher
Manufacturer: Wings
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000WCE66A

SET OF NINE COMPLETE NOVELS: by Author Belva Plain - / After the Fire / Whispers / The Carousel / Secrecy / Blessings / Crescent City / Golden Cup / Harvest / Daybreak /

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SET OF NINE COMPLETE NOVELS: by Author Belva Plain - / After the Fire / Whispers / The Carousel / Secrecy / Blessings / Crescent City / Golden Cup / Harvest / Daybreak /
Belva Plain
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Book Description

Newly revised and expanded by the author, this seminal study of epic fanasty analyzes the genre from its ealiest beginnings in Medieval romances on through practitoners like Tolkien up today's brightest lights.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyable book.......2006-02-24

I am a huge fan of Michael Moorcock's Elric series and because of my high opinion of the author, I decided to purchase this book. I was shocked to find that he was not a big fan of some of my favorite authors. He seems to have no use for H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard who I enjoy reading very much. He also doesn't like Tolkien much either. He does back up his opinion with reasons that are well explained and after reading this book, I at least understood why he disliked certain works.

Bloated "intellectual" essays from a pompous windbag.......2005-08-22

In this book, Michael Moorcock, being of the breed of fantasy author who has tried so desperately to come off as a "real" writer because everyone looks at fantasy writers as juvenille hacks, discusses at length his windbag opinions about the current state of fantasy fiction as well as its past. The essays contained within this book are long-winded, pretentious rubbish that should be avoided by everyone except diehard Michael Moorcock fans. This guy has the gall to bash guys like Tolkien and Robert E.Howard, thinking he's some kind of literary genius because of his teen-fave Elric books that are supposed to be so deep and introspective but in reality are nothing more than over-worded, whiny drivel unpalatable by anyone over the age of 25. Spare us, Mr. Moorcock. The Elric books are the only half-decent thing you've ever written, and you've been riding on the fame you accrued from them ever since. Get over yourself. You're not that great a writer and a little modesty would do you a lot of good.

The Moorcock Crows - A great dawn for epic fantasy.......2005-04-28

If Michael Moorcock did not exist we would have to hire a committee of sages to invent him. But because he does exist we must hire the mob to shoot him. He is that necessary, that vital to fantasy literature as it has developed in the last century. His prose fictions suck eggs because they were so shoddily executed but he is a great myth maker - who can escape the great albino with the black sword? Combine that myth making capacity with an arch and angrily self-concious critical voice that does not quit and you have a literary personality that functions sort of like the bad concience of fantasy literature.
"Wizardry and Wild Romance" is a series of shot- gun blasts of thrills. Jeff VanderMeer's piece is school-boyish and dull but China Mieville opens the book with the buzz saw roaring and when Mister Moorcock makes his absurd but grand entrance we are in for a treat - a waspish yet sometimes indolently ecstatic praise and condemnation for some of the more serious works of epic fantasy written in history. Mister Moorcock has the voice of a school master - obnoxious, superior, lazy in its magisterial conciousness as it whacks the world of fantasy into quick form.
There are winners and losers here and the supremely confident Moorcock is not afraid to put laurels on heads (as in the case of Gene Wolfe and M. John Harrison) or cut or bludgeon those heads off (as in the case of the Inklings whom Moorcock despises).
When it comes to Tolkien Mister Moorcock is wrong but he is wrong for all the right reasons. Somehow the pseudo-Tolkien industry spawned out of the ambiguous shadow of Tolkien forces Moorcock to thrust his school masterly charm aside in favor of a left-wing radical standing up to organized oppression (which, in fact, it is) in the tradition of a Percy Bysshe Shelley tinged by a William Blake. Peculiarly fierce is his treatment of C.S. Lewis - a minor writer. Somehow Moorcock is so consumed with his rebel's hatred of sham and inauthenticity he overlooks the few beauties that make Lewis worth reading. Perhaps Mister Moorcock has Oedipal writerly rivalries with Tokien and his clan.
The book's supreme value is its knowledge of literary history pressed through Moorcock's own imaginative and critical fires - the fires of a fierce and wondrous regard for the creative imagination.
I truly hope Mister Moorcock's sharp and swift little tome changes the world. Anybody who wants to write real epic literature needs to read it many times.

Excellent Overview of fantasy lit.......2004-07-25

Traditional fantasy isn't merely 'dwarves and dragons, magical quests and prophecies and little adorable elfs going off wandering'...and this fine book, in itself, disproves that idea that fantasy is based purely on Tolkien and 'the northern thing'. Wildly opinionated, interesting, extremely well written, this is a necessity for anyone who wants to go beyond the mass media fantasy that's become a formulaic waste of time. Excellent essays by China Mieville and Jeff Vandermeer are included.

A fine overview........2003-09-23

Michael Moorcock, Wizardry and Wild Romance (Gollancz, 1987)

Michel Moorcock would be, it seems, the obvious choice to produce a critical work on epic fantasy. After all, he's written more of it than jut about any living author, or he had at the time this book was commissioned, ten years before its release, after the publication of his article "Epic Pooh" in 1977. ("Epic Pooh," revised, appears as chapter five here, and is one of the true gems of this book.) Still an excellent choice, as most of the similarly prolific writers who have emerged in the shadow of Moorcock lack the wit and originality he displays in novel after novel.

Interestingly, this is one of his main criticisms of the fantasy genre overall, not just in the moderns but going back to the earliest days of epic fantasy. The book, which is far more a survey than a critical analysis, strikes a Paul DeMan-esque note in its willingness (perhaps too much willingness) to turn many of fantasy's sacred cows into shish kebab. What is refreshing about Moorcock is that, unlike most critics, he is always willing to suggest a good number of alternatives for each piece of overwrought, mindless fluff the public is willing to take to heart. (Moorcock seems to have a special circle in Hell reserved for the Inklings, the chief fantasists of which were J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis, both of whom Moorcock roundly despises; he spends more column inches disparaging Narnia and Middle Earth than all the other writers he castigates combined.)

One wonders, idly, why a survey draws as much money as it does these days. I could probably pay a month's rent auctioning off my copy of this, a first edition/first printing. Odd, since the volume barely gets a few lines into page one hundred fifty before it reaches its conclusion. But mine is not to reason why. It's not worth the incredible sums it fetches from booksellers these days, but as a jumping-off point for readers of fantasy who are looking for ways to branch out into wider genre-specific reading, it's a pretty darned fine piece of work.

Most of Moorcock's jaundiced views on epic fantasy could apply to all types of literature, which is at the same time both the book's main strength and its weakness. One expects, when reading a survey, to see the ways that the subject's lineage relates to what has come before and what has come after (see Eliade's wonderful Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy for perhaps the finest extant example of how to write a survey on a particular subject), but Moorcock seems to have the underlying belief that writing in a particular genre should have the same strengths and weaknesses as writing in any other, or in writing that is genreless or transcends its genre. To some extent this is true; the best fantasy writers, like the best writers of most genres, do transcend what the hacks are doing and make their work into literature. Where Moorcock goes slightly wrong, though, is in not delineating the transcendent from the more satisfying genre tales. He gives equal weight to, for example, Terry Pratchett (whose work, while parodic, is still very much genre fiction) and Ursula K. LeGuin (who is the very definition of an author who transcends any genre in which she chooses to apply herself). Perhaps he is expecting the reader to be able to discern which is which. Not an unreasonable expectation, if you assume your audience is as widely read in the genre as you are. I doubt many fantasy readers, or for that matter many academics, are as widely-read in their chosen fields as Moorcock, who tosses out the names and critical overviews of fantasy works going back to the pre-Romantic period that have been out of print for a few hundred years as if he'd assigned them the week before while teaching a class on fantasy literature, and we are all expected to go down to the University bookstore and pick up copies of them. Would that we could.

Still, as an overview of what's out there, where both the aspiring fantasy reader and the aspiring fantasy writer should be looking to find the stuff that really is worth being influenced by, despite its age Wizardry and Wild Romance is still the definitive survey on epic fantasy. It'd be nice to see a second edition. I, for one, would love to see what Moorcock thinks of, say, Philip Pullman, Terry Goodkind, or Neil Gaiman. But the recommendations in here should be enough to keep me hunting down obscure titles for the next decade, and the approach he takes to epic fantasy is a witty and readable one. ****

Book Description

In this National Bestseller, one of the most beloved television programs of all--time yields a celebrated 3-volume video based Bible Study. Join Andy, Opie, Barney, and Aunt Bee for the parables of Mayberry.

Customer Reviews:

Well done.......2005-08-22

I was excited to see this product, but once I received it, I was a little let down because I had used this in a Bible study at church and did not realize it.

None the less, this study takes several well known episodes and applied Biblical principles and scriptual references. I keep mine by the TV and if one of the epsiodes airs, I do the study as I watch. This book is best designed, however, for a person who is in a real time Bible study to allow for discussions, etc.

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