Book Description
As anticipation of the final Harry Potter book intensifies, a debate is raging among fans about what’s in store for Harry and the rest of the gang at Hogwart's. In this book, the experts at MuggleNet.com present a wide range of hard facts and bold predictions about the most popular storylines, favorite characters, and final outcome of the Harry Potter saga. Drawing on their intimate knowledge of the previous six books, as well as tips and suggestions made by millions of MuggleNet.com fans (not to mention a personal interview with J.K. Rowling), the authors offer answers to the burning questions of Harry Potter readers everywhere: Will Hogwart's School be open for Harry’s final year and will Harry even be in attendance? Will Harry’s quest for the remaining Horcruxes be rewarded? Where do Severus Snape’s true loyalties lie? And, most importantly, will Harry survive the final battle with Lord Voldemort?
Customer Reviews:
The right and wrong answers.......2007-09-03
Though admittedly few people see much point in reading this book now that the final istalment of Harry Potter has already been read and is now safely tucked in our book-shelves, I beg to differ. I read Deathly Hallows before reading this book, and so knew all the answers to (most) questions, what drove me to buy the book was my uncontrollable curiosity. Being a fan of the website, I thought I'd help them out by buying the book, but what intrested me the most was the arguments. I don't care whether they guessed right or wrong, but how they came to those conclusions! 9/10 times the right answer doesn't matter, as long as you can back it up with sound reason and judgment, which is why I liked this book, and would still recommend it.
No point in buying it now.......2007-08-30
Not only were the predictions incorrect, Now that book 7 is out who would want to read this?
Must Read!!.......2007-08-27
After reading the final installment of Harry Potter I would def. say this a must read. First, it is a quick summary and primer of important info in the past six books. Plus, unless you are super obsessed or a literary genius there are bound to be a few things you learn in the book.
very pratical.......2007-08-23
it really does help to understand some questions you could have or did not
remember why this is there. Good to have before reading Vol.7
Well Researched Book.......2007-07-31
I bought this book just before Book 7 came out and really enjoyed it. While many of the assumptions in this book turned out to be false once I had read Book 7, it was nonetheless a well-researched book. The arguments for each stance they took - both pro and con - were plausible and quite believable and convincing. You could tell the authors had done their homework and really knew the world of Harry Potter. I think I may go back and read it again now that I know what really happens to see where they were spoton and where their ideas missed the mark. In any case, it is a great resource whether you have been a Harry Potter fan or are just discovering his world.
Average customer rating:
- Even The Little People Are Free
- The enunciatory present
- I'd rather stick my hand in a blender than read this again
- Mimicry, Mockery, Menace
- Even though this is one of the most highly regarded ...
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The Location of Culture (Routledge Classics)
Homi K. Bhabha
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415336392 |
Book Description
Terry Eagleton once wrote in the Guardian, 'Few post-colonial writers can rival Homi Bhabha in his exhilarated sense of alternative possibilities'. In rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity, one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. A scholar who writes and teaches about South Asian literature and contemporary art with incredible virtuosity, he discusses writers as diverse as Morrison, Gordimer, and Conrad. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.
Customer Reviews:
Even The Little People Are Free .......2007-06-04
Bhabha writes dense, pretentious prose, which is commonplace now among the humanists who feel inferior to scientists, but he does have something to say. This little book does two things: it is in the end a celebration of literature (and not of theory for its own sake) and it defends the little brown people, such as Indians, against the claim of others, such as Edward Said, that whites oppressed them by denying them a voice. Bhabha argues in effect that the oppression created a new voice that subverted the oppressors. Bhabha has little patience for the sob-sister school of academic discourse which seeks out victims of racism. This is a sustained critique of liberal academic bad faith.
The enunciatory present.......2006-02-16
In The Location of Culture, Bhabha argues for a fundamental realignment of the methodology of cultural analysis away from ontology toward the "performative" and "enunciatory present" (p.178). Such a shift, he claims, provides a basis for the negotiation of cultural difference rather than its automatic repression or negation in the face of irreconcilable oppositions. Bhabha's emphasis on the enunciative production of meaning places the emphasis of critical inquiry on issues of representation or signification, thereby producing "a temporality that makes it possible to conceive of the articulation of antagonistic or contradictory elements" (p.25).
This argument represents a critical attack on the Western production of binary oppositions, traditionally defined in terms of centre and margin, civilised and savage, enlightened and ignorant. Bhabha questions the easy recourse to consolidated dualisms by repudiating fixed and authentic centres of truth, suggesting that cultures interact, transgress and transform each other in a much more complex manner than typical binary oppositions allow.
According to him, hybridity and linguistic multivocality have the potential to intervene and dislocate the process of domination through the re-interpretation and re-deployment of received discourse, thus re-focusing critical attention towards the "agonistic space" (181) which exists on the borders of difference, along the edges of alterity, where cultures meet. Bhabha celebrates cultural heterogeneity and the subversive effects of hybridisation.
I'd rather stick my hand in a blender than read this again.......2004-05-26
The fact that this book is influential is generally beyond argument. What astonishes me, however, is that so many people had the endurance to sit through the horrific writing; the author's style is obnoxious in the extreme. The first paragraph, for example, notes that the question of culture is the "trope of our times," characterized by "a tenebrous sense of survival." These concepts are not mind-bending. An everday, or as Homi would say, "colloquial" vocabularly would sufficiently articulate his thesis, yet he seems hellbent on packing his work with obscure language like he needs show off or prove something. Again, his ideas are influential, but he makes reading them as painful as possible.
Mimicry, Mockery, Menace.......2003-01-21
Ambivalence is a key term in Bhabha's Location of Culture. Accordingly, Bhabha's prose might be considered poetry or gibberish, but certainly not scholarship. There is no thesis, no argument, no evidence. That is not to say that Bhabha wouldn't be capable of such writing. Every once in a while, the reader can catch a glimpse of Bhabha's Other: the lucid thinker of post-colonialism. In order to compensate for the lack of clarity, structure and, yes, basic congruity between subjects, verbs and objects, Bhabha enacts the thoughts he fails to express. Indeed, his text is a performance of itself. Take, for instance, his chapter on mimicry. Whatever intelligent thoughts other scholars have derived from this concept, you will not find them in Bhabha's book. But he indeed shows you what he means, as he goes through the motions of scholarship. First, he makes a number of general statements that sound like a thesis. Then he puts a in a few convoluted sentence structures that make no sense-grammatically or otherwise. And finally he slams in a quote or two to prove a point-what point doesn't matter, for he did not make one in the first place. As a reader you will have to decide whether his work is a mimicry (in his definition "almost but not quite") of scholarship or its menace (according to Bhabha, 'not at all but still a little'). About one thing, though, he leaves no ambivalence: he "quite simply mocks its power to be a model." Harvard volunteered to be the evidence.
Even though this is one of the most highly regarded ..........2003-01-11
...theory books of the 1990s, its fame and reputation seem overblown. None of the other reviews posted here have really stated what Bhabha tries to accomplish in "The Location of Culture," so I'll give it a crack, even though I'm no expert on postcolonial theory.
To save you all some time, many of Bhabha's key points are made in the first two pages of his book. For instance: "In-between spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood--singular or communal--that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society" (p. 1-2). Elsewhere, in-betweenness is easily the key concept in the book, as well as the notion of HYBRIDITY. The reason the modernist model of Colonialism is doomed to fail is not only because it needs the Other (the colonized) to validate its own supremacy (and to fulfill its desires), but also because it engages in what Bhabha refers to as "contra-modernity": modernity in "colonial conditions where its imposition is itself the denial of historical freedom, civic autonomy and the 'ethical' choice of refashioning" (p. 241). Bhabha finds that by examining the borderlines between Colonial power and Colonial oppression, a truer history of global populations can be obtained. In one of the finer passages in the book, Bhabha examines a scene from Salman Rushdie's controversial 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" and descibes how the postcolonial body--shaped by an outside nationalist culture--is representative of the colonizer, yet the colonizers "can never let the national history look at itself narcissistically in the eye" (p. 168).
Now let me preface my explanation by saying this is what I THINK Bhabha is getting at. It's not that his prose is "confusing," as other reviewers have stated here--although it is exceedingly "academic" (and there is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself)--but it is mired in the theoryspeak of the West that Bhabha seems so insistent upon de-centralizing. Bhabha uses the theories of the European male elite with so much blind faith that it easily undermines much of what he is trying to accomplish. Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida are all over this book. These "founders of discourse" (as Foucault called Marx and Freud--and could posthumously call himself given his exhaltation in the academy after his death in 1984) represent an alternate (i.e. "left") critical practice, yet completely dominate Western discussions of theory in literary circles. Is not Bhabha, an Indian scholar, colonized by these minds?
Also, Bhabha's insistence upon in-betweenness at times really seems to undermine his (apparent) intentions. He seems, on the one hand, to claim that it is precisely through in-betweenness that the oppressors dominate the oppressed. Yet, it also seems that this in-betweenness gives the oppressed the opportunity to resist the oppressors. We seem to be back at step zero. Is anything really being said here?
He should have followed better the example of Frantz Fanon, who appears early and often as a primary source in "The Location of Culture." Fanon was surely no stranger to the Western tradition, but was able to write in a critical-poetical-personal style that was accessible to non-academics, a style that had real fire. Bhabha, with all his emphasis on the work of postcolonial theory--which, in his words, seeks to "revise those nationalist or 'nativist' pedagogies that set up the relation of Third World and First World in a binary structure of opposition" (p. 173)--continually relies on the concept of "doubling" (likely a Lacanian theory) as well as his notion of in-betweenness (or liminality, as he calls it) in such a manner that no distinct point of view really emerges. The theoryspeak seems to subsume any important observations he might be willing to make.
While this book has some wonderful moments in it, I would estimate that about 25 of the books 250 pages really says something. I'm worried that this book has been canonized because the mainly white scholars that run the Academy need their theories stated in a dense manner by an Indian man to give them validity. I know that kind of thinking is very conspiratorial, but it is only a concern. I've not read any other Bhabha, or other postcolonial theorists like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak or Arjun Appadurai, but I cannot recommend this an easy gateway into this material. I would recommend the writings of Fanon, though his writing precedes the moment of postcolonial theory by some three or four decades, as a better introduction.
Book Description
Universally acclaimed when it was first published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has become a modern classic. More than any other book of its time, this collection captures the mood of 1960s America, especially the center of its counterculture, California. These essays, keynoted by an extraordinary report on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, all reflect that, in one way or another, things are falling apart, "the center cannot hold." An incisive look at contemporary American life, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been admired for several decades as a stylistic masterpiece.
Contents:
I. LIFE STYLES IN THE GOLDEN LAND
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
John Wayne: A Love Song
Where the Kissing Never Stops
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
II. PERSONALS
On Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind
On Morality
On Going Home
III. SEVEN PLACES OF THE MIND
Notes from a Native Daughter
Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All That
Customer Reviews:
Yeats, The Grateful Dead, and All That.......2007-05-17
This book starts out citing W.B. Yeats and Peggy Lee, co-equals in esteem and regard. Yeats and his slouching towards Bethlehem, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...And What rough best, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" and this lovely gem from Miss Peggy, "I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein, and Cary Grant." And what a unique dichotomy to start out a unique collection of essays uniquely told, from a voice risen above voices of that time--Joan Didion.
This book has a little story to it worth telling. I found myself in Boston of all places in the Harvard Book Store (no affiliation I guess to the better known little school near by). A bookstore staff member points out her recommendations from the staff recommendations section. It turns out she grew up in California parents of some freerer spirited, macrobiotic, driven by the very power of flowers types. This book store maven also goes to the little Harvard school and she recommends Joan Didion as one of her very fave reads of all fave reads. I having spent time in Cali myself and thinking that San Francisco is America's greatest city and having always been vexed, perplexed, and intrigued by that 60's counter-culture period in our country couldn't resist picking up the book...well picking it up from Amazon. Where else would one in their right mind buy books after all?
Joan Didion, as it turns out, is a phenomenal writer. She hails from Sacramento and wasn't in the thick of experiencing the 60's (aka Hunter Thompson) but a passionate 3rd person observer. She writes as if she is reporting on the age, place, and times but between the lines you pick up the pathos of these words, "Michael (a three-year old) burned his arm though, which is probably why Sue Ann was so jumpy when she happened to see him chewing on an electric cord. 'You'll fry like rice,' she screamed...they didn't notice Sue Ann screaming at Michael because they were in the kitchen trying to retrieve some very good Moroccan hash which had dropped down through a floorboard damaged in the fire." And things fell apart.
But "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," isn't about the Haight-Ashbury district scene alone. Didion's writing extends to a love letter for John Wayne, personal reflections (which are far from self-absorbent as personal reflections can trend), and a witty eye that takes it all in unflinchingly, bracingly, and honest. Here's a little nugget from "On Self Respect," "...it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one's head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower."
I'll be a faithful reader of Didion for many moons to come. Thank you Harvard Book Store girl...thank you Amazon. Don't miss out on Didion dear readers. ...mmw
Joan Didion A Voice for the Sixties.......2007-03-29
I had read Joan Didion's essays written in the sixties and covering a variety of topics when they were first published. I was pleased to see that this book was still available at a reasonable cost. Having just finished rereading it, I found that her views were insightful, honest and often humorous, and the one written about he 'flower children' in the Haight with the same title as the book was even prophetic. I was inspired to share it with my blog readers, most of whom were children in the sixties. Her comment that stands out "The center is not holding" aptly describes the restlessness of the time.
Great Collection.......2007-01-11
This is a great group of essays by one of the century's premier American essayists. I suppose reading her latest book, The Year of Magical Thinking, before reading her older material--which is what I did--necessarily changes one's perspective on her early essays. While I wouldn't recommend this approach, it certainly makes things interesting.
Anyway, this is an excellent collection of essays of various topics. If you're anything like me, it'll make you want to be a traveling journalist. If you're smart, it'll make you want to read the rest of her considerable repertoire. If you're human, it'll make you want to write.
Didion doesn't slouch.......2006-04-26
I am relieved to have finally read Didion's much acclaimed book of essays, which was published in 1968--and so it's old. So what? Didion is old, too, and probably an even better writer because of it. But even back then her skills were blazingly and brilliantly sharp. Aesthetically the work is not beautiful--there's no poet in Didion, although the title of the book is from a fantastically riveting poem by Yeats, which she quotes prior to the preface. Beauty is no matter, however, because Didion's essays are the archetype, the Platonic Form; put simply: the way it should be done. The book is divided into 3 sections. The first section is comprised of essays on 1960s California. It is here that we find Didion's diamond, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", which is a quasi-insider's view of San Francisco's Haight-Ashberry drug culture circa 1967. Other memorable essays from this group include an elegy-esque piece for John Wayne titled, "John Wayne: A Love Song" and "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38", a portrait of California wealth painted in the image of Howard Hughs. The second group of essays is a collection of Didion's personal reflections on subjects such as self-respect, morality, and the poignant "On Going Home". Didion ends the book with a series of seven essays on places she has visited: Hawaii, Mexico, Alcatraz, Los Angeles, to name a few. Here her ruminations are vivid and blunt, but also exciting. The reader feels as though she has taken a trip of sorts to the places Didion portrays so clearly and persuasively. Clear and persuasive are Didion's hallmarks. Hers is a style whose fruit is a truly a masterful group of essays.
Interesting if not dated well written essays about CA and counterculture........2006-04-25
Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays that generally revolve around California and how counterculture is a reflection of society falling apart. Didion's style is a combination of investigative, reflective and informative writing techniques and it results in unique and entertaining prose. She is very concise and efficient which sets the tone for her messages. Finally she is the master of last sentence one-liners which end her essays and occasionally saves the work.
Most of these essays are from the 60's and while they probably opened up a lot of eyes back when they were first published, they sometimes seem dated in 2006. The title essay is a perfect example of this as it follows a community of young hippies in the Haight-Ashbury district though their drug filled anti-establishment existence. Novel at the time, but about as groundbreaking as crabgrass in Ohio. Other subjects include California lifestyles, and Joan Baez. Despite this, her prose was able to keep me interetested thoughout the book and I would consider reading something else of her's.
Bottom Line: This is one of those collections that is pretty straightforward and worth reading if you like strong writing or are particularly interested in California. As a native Californian I felt she did capture some of the magical essence that is the Golden State.
Average customer rating:
- The freedom to read, think and talk about Literature
- Revenge on the Blind Censor
- B-O-R-I-N-G
- Life and Literature in Iran
- Rambling and boring
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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
Azar Nafisi
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 081297106X
Release Date: 2003-12-30 |
Amazon.com
An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.
Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen
Book Description
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi’s living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.
Customer Reviews:
The freedom to read, think and talk about Literature .......2007-10-15
As Nafisi says , people tend to take for granted the freedoms they have, and only appreciate them when they have been denied them. This is a book about appreciating the freedom to read , think about, and discuss Literature. It is also a book about how Literature and Life may intermingle with and influence each other. It is also a book about a courageous teacher who shows not only a real love of literature but a genuine concern for the lives of the seven students she gathers in her apartment to teach Literature to in Tehran. She does this under the regime of the Ayatollahs and the action is taken in defiance of the uniformity of mind and culture, the totalitarian spirit they impose upon Iran.
The group reads Austen, Henry James, Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow and most importantly Nabakov's 'Lolita'. They in the course of this symbolically escape as Lolita from her imprisoning Humbert Humbert, the tyrannical controlling Tehran regime.
Nafisi is not only an intelligent and skilled writer. She is also clearly a very warm and considerate human being , and a teacher of the value of freedom.
An inspiring work of art.
Revenge on the Blind Censor.......2007-10-07
If you could see into Dr. Nafisi's living room - you would see seven young women - her most committed students of literature, sitting in on their teacher's study class held in the privacy of her home- It is the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran - and they are reading forbidden works of literature including Lolita.
Each reader will interpret this book in their own way according to what they capture from the selected works of literature that the author chose to study with her students - and how they compare to their own reality.
There are four sections in the book: Lolita, Gatsby, James, Austen. The author takes you into the heart of these books exposing the parallels of fiction to reality, and in many cases the reality of their own world.
The study class becomes not only an act of defiance but also an escape from reality. Her students, intellectually curious and enthusiastic, drink up every sentence and ponder on its greater implication and meaning. The subtleties of each story are drawn out and unraveled - analyzed and held up as if a reflection of their own predicaments.
"Reading Lolita in Tehran" is one of those books that will take the reader on their own journey into the lives of people half a world away when their country experienced tumultuous and frightening times. Through the recounted reading of selected literature - and the author's memoirs, you the reader are captured in the emotions of those who lived through it and feelings that encompasses each of her students.
Many reviewers here have attached the meaning of the books Nafisi discusses directly with the events that happened in Iran during its revolution - but it much more than that. The book is not just a critique of the Islamic Revolution (mostly under Khomeini ) but rather it is a condemnation of all ideologies, past - present and future, that would preach in black and white absolutes while it adherents abandon any critical thinking thought process.
For just as it is in the fictional works this book passes through, self deception comes in many forms and from many places, and usually from within oneself. But more than anything else it is through these readings that Nafisi manages to capture the nexus of their own dreams and reality.
B-O-R-I-N-G.......2007-10-07
I'm sorry to have to title my review as such. I wanted to read this book for quite some time. I had expected to read about the struggles of educated Iranian women in an oppressive regime. Instead I was subjected to the pompous ramblings of an English professor. I don't mean this to sound like an insult, but she writes like an English professor - trying to sound educated but not actually relaying a good story.
I hate to not complete a book, but at page 42 I just cut my losses.
Life and Literature in Iran.......2007-09-30
For two years, Azar Nafisi, an Iranian professor, gathered a group of young women into her home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. This circular memoir begins by talking about these weekly meetings, then takes the reader into poignant fragments about Nafisi's life in Iran and how things became the way they are. Throughout the book, learning and discussion occurs through novels such as Lolita and Pride and Prejudice.
I found the middle sections a little monotonous. The first and fourth sections were my favorites, because they focused on the girls' group that Professor Nafisi led. I would recommend this book if you love literature and writing and English... or if you want to learn more about the nuances of Islamic life in Iran.
Rambling and boring.......2007-09-21
First, I must confess: I didn't finish the book. It contains a lot of disjointed literary criticism in additon to descriptions of the lives of the author and her women students in 1990's Iran. I found it boring.
Average customer rating:
- Calculations are only as good as your numbers
- Pants on fire?
- Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed.
- Very Interesting
- History as Science Fiction
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History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Anatoly Fomenko
Manufacturer: Mithec
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
-
History: Fiction or Science? Astronomical methods as applied to chronology. Ptolemy's Almagest. Chronology III
-
Discovering the Mysteries of Ancient America: Lost History And Legends, Unearthed And Explored
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Before the Pharaohs: Egypt's Mysterious Prehistory
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They Cast No Shadows: A Collection of Essays on the Illuminati, Revisionist History, and Suppressed Technologies
ASIN: 2913621058 |
Book Description
Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.
Customer Reviews:
Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03
Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.
Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19
Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.
Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09
There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.
For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.
Very Interesting.......2007-03-07
It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.
History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10
Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.
I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.
Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.
Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.
I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.
This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.
Average customer rating:
- Love
<3
- not as good as Angela's Ashes
- A Natural Born Storyteller
- 'Tis
- Excellent
|
'Tis: A Memoir
Frank McCourt
Manufacturer: Scribner
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Similar Items:
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ANGELAS ASHES
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Teacher Man: A Memoir
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Angela's Ashes
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A Monk Swimming : A Memoir
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The McCourts of New York
ASIN: 0684865742
Release Date: 2000-08-29 |
Amazon.com
The sequel to Frank McCourt's memoir of his Irish Catholic boyhood, Angela's Ashes, picks up the story in October 1949, upon his arrival in America. Though he was born in New York, the family had returned to Ireland due to poor prospects in the United States. Now back on American soil, this awkward 19-year-old, with his "pimply face, sore eyes, and bad teeth," has little in common with the healthy, self-assured college students he sees on the subway and dreams of joining in the classroom. Initially, his American experience is as harrowing as his impoverished youth in Ireland, including two of the grimmest Christmases ever described in literature. McCourt views the U.S. through the same sharp eye and with the same dark humor that distinguished his first memoir: race prejudice, casual cruelty, and dead-end jobs weigh on his spirits as he searches for a way out. A glimpse of hope comes from the army, where he acquires some white-collar skills, and from New York University, which admits him without a high school diploma. But the journey toward his position teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School is neither quick nor easy. Fortunately, McCourt's openness to every variety of human emotion and longing remains exceptional; even the most damaged, difficult people he encounters are richly rendered individuals with whom the reader can't help but feel uncomfortable kinship. The magical prose, with its singing Irish cadences, brings grandeur and beauty to the most sorrowful events, including the final scene, set in a Limerick graveyard. --Wendy Smith
Amazon.com Audiobook Review
'Tis a blessing that the author narrates his own work. McCourt follows up his Audie Award-winning performance in Angela's Ashes with another brilliant reading as he chronicles his return to post-World War II New York. Like all good storytellers, McCourt has good stories to tell; 'Tis pulses with grim adversity and quiet triumphs--character-shaping moments that gain the listener's empathy. What makes McCourt a great storyteller is his ability to give these moments just the right amount of humor and perspective. His lyrical tones are wise but not weary; he's survived life's challenges to tell his tale. And while it may be trite to credit McCourt's verbal skills to his Irish heritage, these war stories were undoubtedly polished amongst friends in the pubs. 'Tis is Grammy material, and a perfect example of how an author's voice can enhance the written word. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Rob McDonald
Book Description
Frank McCourt's glorious childhood memoir, Angela's Ashes, has been loved and celebrated by readers everywhere for its spirit, its wit and its profound humanity. A tale of redemption, in which storytelling itself is the source of salvation, it won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Rarely has a book so swiftly found its place on the literary landscape.
And now we have 'Tis, the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant to brilliant teacher and raconteur. Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat. He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this "classless country," and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports. It is Frank's incomparable voice -- his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue -- that renders these experiences spellbinding.
When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should "stick to their own kind" once they arrive. Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University. There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blonde, and tries to live his dream. But it is not until he starts to teach -- and to write -- that Frank finds his place in the world. The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela's Ashes comes of age.
As Malcolm Jones said in his Newsweek review of Angela's Ashes, "It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he is done...and McCourt proves himself one of the very best." Frank McCourt's 'Tis is one of the most eagerly awaited books of our time, and it is a masterpiece.
Download Description
The sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angela's Ashes, " McCourt's glowing memoir chronicles his story from impoverished immigrant to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher--a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and often hilarious as its bestselling predecessor.
Customer Reviews:
Love
<3.......2007-09-18
I love this book. While Angela's Ashes was somewhat depressing but 'Tis is hilarious and enthralling. Throughout the book all you can think is how much you want to hug him. and you'd like to think you'd be the pretty girl that would give Frank a fair shot. Anything this man writes is pure gold that's for sure.
not as good as Angela's Ashes.......2007-09-05
Tis is not nearly as good as Frank McCorts other work. I it sometimes talks about when he was a kid. But for the most part is not as good.
A Natural Born Storyteller.......2007-06-23
The only thing more pleasurable than reading Frank McCourt's memoirs is listening to him read them! Wonderful! You will not be disappointed.
'Tis.......2007-05-04
"`Tis," an Autobiography of Frank McCourt's life, tells how he made his way in life as a young immigrant living in New York. It also explains how he survived the chaos and mayhem without much money or family. Yet it also tells of his struggle to get through the army, how he learned to write and then explains his way through college. Written with passion and full of memory, "`Tis" is an outstanding book that is recommended for any young person about to go on their own in the world. Frank McCourt wrote this book as a sequel to Angela's Ashes, which is an autobiography about Frank's life as a child in Ireland. Full of twists, drama, deaths and love, "`Tis" should be on everyone's top ten list of books to buy. After he wrote this book he wrote "Teacher Man" which is a summary of his life as a teacher and how it changed his life and who he thought he was going to be. -Daniel Archuleta
Excellent.......2007-04-01
This is a great book. Not as good as Angela's Ashes but if you reade the first you will want to read this one.
Amazon.com
Watch the Star Wars trilogy enough times and you'll find yourself straining to catch all the little details. Not the subtle plot points (Darth is Luke's dad, check; Luke and Leia are brother and sister, check), but all the cool gear and gadgets that keep flashing in front of the camera. Like what are those pointy things on Boba Fett's kneepads? And what's with all that ammo on Chewie's bandolier? And does an Imperial Probe really need that many legs? Finally, we've got some answers.
David West Reynolds, a boyish Ph.D. in archaeology who looks like he just rode in on the last Bantha, has catalogued the artifacts and inhabitants of the Star Wars universe with the same clinical thoroughness one typically reserves for studying Mesopotamia. His oversized, eye-pleasing picture book is packed with scrutinizing photos of actual props and characters from the movies, complete with systematic, scientific labels. And Reynolds's friendly, pseudo-academic style seamlessly blends new information with old. (In the Sand People description, you can't help but hear Alec Guinness's voice when Reynolds reveals that "Sand People ride in single file to hide their numbers.") In a few instances, the book shines an embarrassing light on the movies (Max Rebo is clearly no alien lifeform, just a poofy, blue elephant muppet), but the countless close-ups of thermal detonators, imperial blasters, and gaffi sticks more than make up the difference. --Paul Hughes
Book Description
The Visual Dictionary is an essential guide to Star Wars. DK's renowned Eyewitness style brings the characters, costumes, droids, and gadgetry of the Star Wars universe to life in astonishing visual detail. Highly defined, annotated photography shows and explains the culture, background, and technology of the Star Wars trilogy. Fans of all ages will enjoy detailed revelations of Star Wars secrets like how a Stormtrooper's equipment works, what the insides of a light saber look like, and what Sand People keep in their bandoliers. A visual glossary explains all the technical terms used in the trilogy. Together with Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections, these books comprise a definitive classic Star Wars reference library.
Customer Reviews:
Great pictures........2007-09-07
I have 2 little boys who love Star Wars. I like the pictures in this book. The words are too advanced for small children but I try to ad lib. My boys love to look at the pictures.
The Visual Dictionary of Star Wars.......2007-08-13
I bought this book and the complete guide for the entire saga. I was more impressed with this book than the other. This book was missing atleast the one character I was looking for Niem (Sullustan) that flew the Falcon with Lando in 6. So I looked him up on the internet and found his info readily availble on some star wars website. I was hoping that they would atleast list the name and race for ever character shown, but they don't.
Excellent book!.......2007-03-22
This book was just what we needed. My five-year-old son has developed a sudden interest for Star Wars, and since he's too young to watch the films, this book was perfect for him. Excellent pictures, everything is well explained, all the major points of interest are covered.
Very informative!.......2007-02-08
This was one of my very first Star Wars books and I half credit it with my burgeoning interest in the expanded Star Wars universe.
Includes great pictures and information such as what those little knobs on Darth Vader's chestplate are for to what exactly Salacious Crumb (that little Kowakian monkey lizard that works for Jabba the Hutt) does! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then read this book!
Great for the enthusiast, beginner/amateur/expert and all!
Perfect gift for my 10 year old son.......2007-01-02
I bought this book as a gift for my 10 year old son who is a serious Star Wars buff. He told me he likes it because it has a lot of information about the characters, weapons, vehicles and technology.
Book Description
UNLOCKING HARRY POTTER gives you five essential keys for understanding the HARRY POTTER series. Not just who will live or die in DEATHLY HOLLOWS, but how J.K. Rowling created the most successful books of our times. To understand the story behind the stories, John Granger, author of THE HIDDEN KEY TO HARRY POTTER and editor of WHO KILLED ALBUS DUMBLEDORE?, introduces the themes and patterns Rowling uses to write books that resonate with readers of all ages. This book is for "serious readers" but Granger writes in a very entertaining style. If you never understood the term "postmodernism" or how "literary alchemy" is used by great authors from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling, then this is a fun way to learn. UNLOCKING HARRY POTTER is the only book to examine in depth the importance of what Rowling said in an interview from 1998, that "to invent this wizard world" she had to learn about alchemy "in order to set the parameters and establish the stories' internal logic." - . - . - . - . - Here's what other HARRY POTTER authors and experts have to say about UNLOCKING HARRY POTTER: - . - . - . - . - "I got so hooked I had to stop everything else and just read, read, read. I carried it around the house, read it while using the excercycle, I hid in rooms away from the action of daily life so I could take it all in. I haven't had that reaction to a book since, well, THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. A spectacular read for all serious fans of Rowling's works. Compelling, well-argued, fun and funny. Engaging. Thought provoking. Erudite." - Tom Morris, author of IF HARRY POTTER RAN GENERAL ELECTRIC and PHILOSOPHY FOR DUMMIES. - . - . - . - . - "John Granger peels back the layers of Rowling's stories and sees patterns the rest of us miss - and he never forgets to be a fan, engaging in fun speculation about what will come in the finale. Once more Granger has shown himself to be second to none among Potter commentators and literary sleuths. Some books are meant to be ingested quickly. Not this one. Serious fans of HARRY POTTER will relish it." - David Baggett, editor of HARRY POTTER AND PHILOSOPHY.
Customer Reviews:
Unsat.......2007-09-09
I purchased this for my grandson, who at 91/2 is an exceptionally bright boy.
Neither he nor his father were able to make heads or tails out of this purchase.
I'm a much more serious reader now.......2007-08-17
Very early in the book John Granger recalls Professor Moody's trunk with 7 locks. Each time Dumbledore inserts a key into a different lock the trunk opens and contains different items. This book is exactly like that trunk! I have read or listened to every Harry Potter book (except Phoenix) more times than I can count and yet each time that Granger brings out a new key my reaction was "I didn't know that that was in there!" I even understand now why I didn't enjoy re-reading Phoenix (the alchemical "black" stage of the series)as much as the other books.
I didn't read this book until after I had read Deathly Hallows and I still truly enjoyed reading Granger's predictions. Some of them were spot on, while others weren't, but the premises on which they were based were solid. I had to laugh at one point, when a reference was made to the sun/Sol and moon/Luna coming together as part of an alchemical wedding. It wasn't precisely a prediction, but in Deathly Hallows Luna certainly did arrive at the wedding wearing brilliant yellow, "sun colors."
The best part is that I can reread the entire Potter series one more time, with a new perspective, and be assured of appreciating details that I have missed before.
Unlocking Harry Potter: Five for the Serious Reader .......2007-08-14
I have seen the books' author on tv, I like the way he divided the book in 5 parts so you can understand about Harry Potter.
good read even AFTER finishing the HP series.......2007-07-28
If you've already finished "Deathly Hallows," and you think this book is now obsolete, think again! This author's take on how Rowling thought while writing the HP series is fascinating and highly educational. Granger could teach a college course on the post-modern literary aspects of Harry Potter, and students would have to go on a wait list just to sign up for the course. Though Granger, I think, would be an annoying prof. His narrative voice has an edge of sarcasm and snobbery - which is hilarious and incredibly irritating at the same time.
Throughout reading this book, I was also fascinated with how on-target were many of his predictions for the "Deathly Hallows" book. At times he is way off-base, and other times you think he must have had an advance copy because he is so precise in his insights about how Rowling will think in crafting the 7th book. I learned a lot about this fascinating series - why I was duped by Rowling in almost every single book, why the themes are so compelling across 3 generations of readers ... and I was left wondering if we will ever again see a book or series like Harry Potter in our lifetime.
COLLEGE LEVEL READ.......2007-07-23
This book is for those who are serious about literature. It is designed for college educated or those who read at the college level. I have a Master's Degree though not in literature. Parts of the book were a challenge to understand.
Amazon.com
Christopher Vogler has served as a studio folklore specialist, and here comes up with a book that is, in one regard, much like the screenplays it seeks to strengthen: it's derived from other sources! An acknowledged distillation of, and meditation on, the work of Joseph Campbell, The Writer's Journey approaches the storyteller's craft as one of recounting the hero's mythic journey, replete with roadblocks and life lessons. But why the unspoken assent that movies hew to this structure, when we don't demand the same of plays or books? Could it be that the collective viewing of films is one of our last tribal rituals?
Customer Reviews:
Great Book!.......2004-02-15
This book's a bit controversial among established writers, and I know wonderful and successful writers on both sides of this fence. It seems you either "get" this book and can use it, or you don't. Personally, I love it. But then, I love movies and plotting and dissecting stories to figure out why they work or don't work. You have to decide for yourself.
A Journey Worth Taking.......2002-11-03
Christopher Vogler's "The Writer's Journey" is an open corridor to superb characterization. In preparing to write either your novel or screenplay, Vogler's vivid descriptions of the most common archetypes are truly indispensable and useful. Every fiction writer owes it to him or herself to be mindful of the qualities that each archetype possesses. My mind has been opened by studying the different characteristics of the Hero, the Shadow, the Mentor, the Threshold Guardian, the Herald, the Shapeshifter and the Trickster. Vogler describes each one's dramatic function as well as their psychological function. After teaching us the merits and peculiarity of the character, Vogler exhibits his own unique dramatization of Joseph Campbell's work. The Writer's Journey gives the writer a chance to develop a story to its fullest potential. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and have started to employ its direction in my own fiction writing. It will not only change the way we view our characters' and their prospective journeys but it will also help us to see some of their characteristics in our own lives. This is a great book. Every novelist and screenwriter must have The Writer's Journey. Kudos!!
Bases on the work of Joseph Campbell.......2001-12-26
This is Christopher Vogler's interpretation of Mystic Structures for Storytellers & Screenwriters.
I have not yet applied this book yet it was a real eye opener. This book is not only for the aspiring writer but is a good insight to existing stories and movies. The content goes way beyond Campbell with contemporary movies as subjects.
He covers heroes and journeys down to a science. I think I'll put the story together first then come back to this book for the polish. If nothing else this is a good companion to "The Lord of the Rings"
Using the Model of the Hero Myth in Books.......2001-06-01
I have just finished Vogler's fascinating book. The Hero model he describes is a novel writer's dream. It is so flexible and dynamic that the nature of the Hero and his ordeals can find expression in almost all story forms. The writer and the Hero together share the Villan, Trickster, Ordeal, the In Most Cave, the Reward, the Elixir and so much more. It is the writer's life journey incorporated into the Hero model of their story. I am using it to write an historical trilogy for young adults. Vogler will take you to Joseph Campbell the master mythologist.
Mythology gives insight into Movie story-telling.......1998-08-11
This book will tell you how the most successful stories in history are written. How did George Lucas decide on the plot for "Star Wars"? Why do certain movies work so well? This book is a must for any screenwriter. It outlines the story structure which is inherant to humanity, and engrained in our culture.
Customer Reviews:
A Cornerstone of Sorts.......2002-06-18
The three way comparison format (english translation, cultural translation, and reasoning for translation based on historical and linguistic fact) and the dry, reserved language give this book the cut to access unique tumblers in the most difficult of locks. LeFargue and his students (he mentions them adding their understanding) paint meaning and understanding like a watercolor, with each layer's contribution plainly visible, rather than the masking qualities of psuedo-scientists' day-glo acrylic or the holistic turtles' enamel pastels. Triangulating one's own understanding from a single source is an unusual treat. For a rational and restrained mind the fit is magic and the bolt of suspicion is thrown back (or a rough slide for some). All the same its the only book in its genre I've been able to wholly admire.
Meaningful text or Rorschach test?.......2001-03-17
Michael LaFargue says the Tao Te Ching is the former even though it's often treated as the latter.
According to LaFargue (my paraphrase), there are two ways to read the Tao Te Ching, just as there are two ways to read any text.
The first -- the one taken by any number of readers of Lao-Tzu, including some "translators" whom LaFargue doesn't name and I won't either -- is to point your face at it and sort of see how it makes you, like, _feel_, you know?
The second, and the one LaFargue favors, is to place the text in the context for which it was written and try to understand what its writer or speaker would have intended by it.
This is the approach LaFargue uses in order to produce his excellent (and thoroughly annotated and cross-referenced) translation of the Tao Te Ching. He also, in an extremely helpful essay on hermeneutics, discusses this approach at length and explains the context in which he believes the text to have been written.
I won't try to discuss every topic he covers, but one extremely helpful point is his identification of much of the text as what he calls "compensatory wisdom." On his view, some of the Tao Te Ching's pithy sayings are intended not as metaphysical speculation but only as counters to contrary human tendencies. (When we say that "a watched pot never boils," we surely do not mean that if you sit there and watch a pot, it will literally _never_ boil. We are merely warning against a common tendency to rush things that can't be rushed.)
This seems to me to be right on the money, and indeed to be pretty widely applicable to Oriental religious literature including the Bible. It is the right way, for example, to read the book of Proverbs, and some of Jesus's sayings from the Christian New Testament as well.
LaFargue's volume, then, may be of interest both to readers of Lao-Tzu and to readers of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. In discussions of "biblical inerrancy" and such, it is too often forgotten that the Bible is ancient Near Eastern literature and therefore not written to modern Western European standards. Inerrantists and religious "liberals" alike could surely profit from greater appreciation of this point; many apparent contradictions just disappear (and so do some theological creeds) once we understand that the text isn't _always_ offering us metaphysical principles.
In any event, widespread reading of LaFargue's book might spare us another spate of ill-considered screeds on "the Tao of" this, that, and the other thing. What a relief that would be.
Inspiring contextualisation and translation: perfect........2000-04-05
As an anthropologist, constantly confronted with hermeneutics and the interpretation of culturally unknown texts and social situations and as a former student of chinese language and philosophie I can only strongly recommend this book. It is -by far- the best translation and interpretation I have ever read. Crucial to the the understanding of teh tao te qing is a good and profound explanation of the historical and social setting of the work and its probable authors. Lafargue has achieved this wonderfully. Strongly recommended...
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