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Vertigo and dizziness
Thomas Brandt ,
Marianne Dieterich , and
Michael Strupp
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 1852338148 |
Book Description
After headache, vertigo and dizziness is the second most common complaint of patients. Vertigo is not a disease entity, but rather an unspecific syndrome consisting of various disorders with different causes. Most syndromes of vertigo can only be correctly diagnosed by means of a careful medical history and physical examination of the patient. The majority of these cases have a benign cause, a favorable natural course, and a positive response to therapy.
This short and concise, clinically-oriented book and accompanying DVD with 65 video clips of case histories is for physicians of different specializations who treat patients with vertigo including neurologists and ENT specialists. Easy-to-use, it has an overview of the most important syndromes of vertigo, each with explanatory clinical descriptions and illustrations.
Target market: Physicians of different specializations who treat patients with vertigo including neurologists, neurootologic specialists, neuroophthalmology, otolaryngology, head and neck surgery, ophthalmology and ENT specialists, and general medicine practitioners.
Book Description
What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today?
To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country.
The result is
American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth.
Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America
faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice.
At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Nice surprise........2007-04-16
The book is very well written, concise and not not becoming destructed by theoretical excursions. The fact that philosophy ala BHL is not ex cathedra discurse but field research gives freshness and sharp observations to the reader. Avoiding to polarize between "uncivilized americans" and civilized europeans credits BHL with objectivity and wide spectrum of participation from every day life up to intellectuals, politicians and even Hollywood opinions. Good contribution to bridge the gaps of recent years between USA and Europe away from chronical antiamericanism syndrom
A star French dilletante publishes his little travel notes?.......2007-04-13
For the best review of this one, check the NY Times.
"You meet Sharon Stone and John Kerry and a woman who once weighed 488 pounds and an obese couple carrying rifles, but there's nobody here whom you recognize. In more than 300 pages, nobody tells a joke. Nobody does much work. Nobody sits and eats and enjoys their food. You've lived all your life in America, never attended a megachurch or a brothel, don't own guns, are non-Amish, and it dawns on you that this is a book about the French. There's no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title."
".... every 10 pages or so, Lévy walks into a wall. About Old Glory, for example. Someone has told him about the rules for proper handling of the flag, and from these (the flag must not be allowed to touch the ground, must be disposed of by burning) he has invented an American flag fetish, a national obsession, a cult of flag worship." MYTimes
As far I can tell, Lévy is a "self-styled" philosopher and a boring writer, except to the French who treat him like a film star. It makes you wonder about the French. I have known some who are fine people; but this man makes me recall the English indictment: "France; a lovely country. Too bad about the people." Too bad their taste in writers isn't as good as their taste in food and fashion!
Good Travel Writing, Heavy Ending.......2007-03-02
This was a treadmill book for me but it probably shouldn't have been, it got pretty heavy at the end. The author is a French philosopher who travelled throughout the United States for several months, loosely following in the steps of fellow Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. He starts in the East and really covers a lot of ground, going all the way to California, then heading south and ending back up on the east coast.
The first part of the book reads like a politically-savvy travelogue and it's the part I liked best. I liked reading about the country from such a different perspective. Levy is struck by all the kitschy museums he finds on his travels, and he seeks out interesting political figures (Tom Daschle, Russell Means) and places (Savannah, Georgia, New Orleans) to visit and write about.
The end of the book is Levy's philosophical and political analysis of the state of the U.S. as he sees it, and whether he feels anything can be done to change the negative things that are going on here and the negative way the country is being viewed at this time. This was the part I shouldn't have read on the treadmill, a lot of it was pretty deep and over my head. Overall, I enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend the first section of it.
Intellectually Stimulating View of America.......2007-01-25
I just read American Vertigo and am overwhelmed by nostalgia and relief. Why nostalgia? It will be a while before another European writer puts together such an excellent compilation of travel vignettes about America - so well written and so full of substance. Why relief? American Vertigo is not a light read as BHL's writing style is sophisticated, sprinkled with many references, comparisons and examples. Brilliant arguments are presented and defended and the reader needs to stop, think and evaluate before moving on. It is an engaging and intellectually stimulating book, almost too engaging.
One big surprise... The book lacks observations about middle-class America. BHL interviews people from his "milieu" - Francis Fukuyama, Barak Obama, Sharon Stone, etc. and then some representatives of the opposite spectrum - a stripper, a prisoner, a daughter of a coal miner. The "core" of the country, the bulging class of entrepreneurs, professionals and other hard-working Americans is omitted. Maybe he is trying to stay away from clichés and selectively presents only the sensational... Maybe this is what an educated French audience likes to see...
Interesting Critique on U.S. Culture.......2007-01-03
This book is great as an introspective into the American Cultural Landscape. It opened my eyes on things within our culture I never thought about as being unique or different. Bernard has his own opinions on various topics and they are woven throughout the book, but I was pleasantly surprised that his opinions did not take away from the content. If you like reading about our country with a different set of eyes this book is for you. It is an easy read and one you can put down and take up again after a few days since it is written in a journal style format.
Book Description
Most clinicians find it difficult to diagnose dizzy patients, as the potential causes span various subspecialties, including internal medicine, neurology, ontology, ophthalmology and psychiatry. This book offers a novel approach with chapters organized by easily recognizable clinical presentation, such as recurrent vertigo or positional vertigo. To orientate the reader, a table with differential diagnoses is given at the beginning of each chapter, including key features of each disorder. The authors' friendly approach extends advice on history taking and clinical examination, and each chapter ends with hints as to 'what to do if you haven't a clue'. Common disorders are highlighted, with brief coverage of rarities. Basic science aspects are limited to what is really relevant to the clinicians. A useful DVD shows the clinical examination, positioning and exercises for vestibular rehabilitation. With this book at hand, many more doctors will approach their next dizzy patient with confidence.
Book Description
- When you turn your head suddenly, do you feel sick to your stomach?
- Do you often become dizzy when you get up too quickly from a chair?
- Have you ever felt a sense of motion when you're standing still?
You're not alone. Whether it's fainting, imbalance, or spinning sensations, these disorders affect 76 million Americans at some time in their lives. Feeling Dizzy explains what can go wrong, what physicians can do to diagnose and treat problems, what you can do to help yourself, and how you can finally regain your sense of balance. The first complete book on the subject written from the general reader, Feeling Dizzy:
- Identifies and explains the three types of dizziness: vertigo, imbalance, and fainting.
- Describes treatment options, from medication or surgery to therapy and rehabilitation.
- Outlines self-help options, including relaxation techniques, biofeedback, and exercise.
A Macmillan Health Book
Customer Reviews:
Feeling dizzy.......2006-03-21
I have been diagnosed with vertigo, and found the book to be very helpful, as to symptoms and possible causes. Thank you for a great book.
Dr. Michael L. Johnson.......2004-02-29
This is a good book. It is well written and very insightful.
Dr. Michael L. Johnson, author of "What Do You Do When the Medications Don''t Work--A Non-Drug Treatment of Dizziness, Migriane Headaches, Fibromyalgia, and Other Chronic Conditions".
Excellent guide for the layperson.......1997-08-02
Blakley and Siegel do an excellent job of explaining dizziness in terms that are easy to understand for a person unfamiliar with medical terminology. I have Meniere's Disease, of which dizziness is a symptom, and this is the first book I turn to for reference. Its only drawback is that is isn't up-to-date on current treatments, which is, of course, impossible
Book Description
Can men mother? Can women be breadwinners? This book investigates single fathers, married baby boom mothers, and heterosexual egalitarian couples and their children to discover how family relationships can flourish without gender as the central organizing mechanism.
Customer Reviews:
From a student's prospective..........2007-01-20
I read this book the summer before my senior year of high school because it was an assigned reading. Put it this way: by your senior year, you don't like to read nonsense, and this book is pretty much nonsense. It's a complete waste of time. I don't want to read about some woman cleaning some kid's dirty bum with her bare hands. And YES, by "dirty bum" I mean she cleaned FECES of some kid's BEHIND, to put it softly. And the fact that the kid's dirty bum is a result of his fear of fast driving is just ridiculous. On top of that, Mr. Aster is trying to convince me that this kid who can't control his bowels can walk on air? No.
Do yourself a favor. There are like 10,000 other books that can be considered fantasies. Go pick up one of those.
This Book Will Make You Dizzy With Delight.......2006-03-03
I have to tell you, I am more than impressed with Paul Auster. The only other work I've read of his is the collection The New York Trilogy, and I took him as essentially an experimental writer who deals more with theme than storyline.
Mr. Vertigo proved me wrong and then some. The plotline is preposterous, and every time I tell someone about the book they look at me like I'm nuts. That being said, Mr. Vertigo is about a young orphan from St. Louis who is recruited by the enigmatic Master Yehudi. Master Yehudi promises that he will teach the boy, named Walter Rawley, to walk on air. And, lo and behold, he does.
Crazy, I know.
But, Auster writes it in such a delightful, realistic fashion that never once do you doubt what you read. And his dialogue is pure joy. I love the speech patterns his characters employ.
Of course, there is much more to the novel than Walt simply learning to walk on air, but I won't ruin it for you. Let me just tell you that as fanciful as this book sounds, there are some grim realities in it, some perhaps too potent for just the casual reader.
Remarkably, as the story begins in the late 1920s, Walt's tale mirrors that of his native homeland, the USA. His ups and downs match America's in such a way that a real study of theme could be employed just as with The New York Trilogy.
You will greatly enjoy this novel, and I daresay you'll be stunned at how connected to the characters you will become.
(Visit author Scott William Foley at www.swilliamfoley.com)
Talk about suspension of disbelief!.......2006-02-22
I absolutely loved this book! I was a believer....the style of writing is so unique, the language so fresh. You feel like you are in the era depicted, the family fabricated, and that you are rooting for the kid.
LOOK WENDY, I CAN FLY.....SO WHAT?.......2005-11-26
Found on the streets of 1920s St. Louis, Walter Rawley is a 9-year old boy whose life is not one of luxury. He lives with his aunt and Uncle Slim, the latter being an abusive drunkard. Walter doesn't look like he has much of a future to look forward to, until a strange man named Master Yehudi approaches him, and promises to make him rich and famous. How, you might ask? By teaching him the mythic art of levitation! No illusions, no tricks or strings involved. Walt will actually be able to fly! When Yehudi tells him that his relatives have given their blessing and are actually glad for Yehudi to be taking him off their hands, it seals the deal. Little does Walt know that learning to levitate involves some pretty horrific training. He'll have to cut off part of his finger, eat and drink swill and feces and other pointless exercises that Yehudi prescribes in a sadomasochistic version of the Karate Kid. Living in the middle of nowhere on a farm with Yehudi and the kid are Mother Sue, a descendant of Sitting Bull and a former trick rider in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and Aesop, a 15 year old black prodigy who spends his time studying the classics. What follows are the trials and tribulations of Walt mastering an art that should be impossible.
Mr. Vertigo is one of Paul Auster's weaker works, along with Leviathan. Like that book Mr. Vertigo was missing the mystery of Auster's earlier books. Auster used to be able to weave metaphysical questions about identity and truth and viewpoint into his narratives, but this work is largely devoid of any big questions or cosmic inquiries. Mr. Vertigo is what it is, a mediocre attempt to write a popular novel that fails to claim its own identity. The dialogue especially seems artifical, as if the author were speaking to himself instead of crafting characters. There's just no originality here, and nothing really imaginative happens to Walt. You could have had the same book if you had made Walt a water dowser or an obsessive seeker of Sasquatch.
A Literary Mess - An English Professor's Dream.......2005-09-04
This book is well written in many ways, but it is a literary mess. I kept waiting for the story to chose a direction and stick with it, but it never does. Rather, it goes in four or five different directions. The language is overly course, even for someone like myself who has uttered a few choice phrases in his life. It reminded me of several books that I read as an undergraduate in college, the likes of which that a professor or TA would go crazy over-analyizing, pointing out every possible metaphor, analogy, etc. This is not to say that the book is horrible. It does have moments, and it can be enjoyable in parts, but it would be difficult to go out of my way to recommend it.
Average customer rating:
- Positively Amazing.
- metacomic
- twilight zone-ish comic
- Amazing.
- A postmodern comic.
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Enigma (DC Comics Vertigo)
Peter Milligan
Manufacturer: Vertigo
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1563891921 |
Customer Reviews:
Positively Amazing........2007-03-31
I'm an avid reader of both comics and novels, and must say this is definitely one of, if not The best, graphic novels I've read thus far. Although the artwork is a bit scratchy, it quickly fits in with the mood of the story and even adds to the effect. The story itself deals with many interesting psychological and personal topics including homosexuality, responsibility, disillusionment, and the frailty of the human mind. The characters each have their own quirky, unusual backgrounds that will stimulate your brain cells and draw you into the tale, such as the average joe who was tranformed into a mind-devouring monster after a short chat with a dead lizard. And as you can probably tell by now, this book does have its quirks, so be prepared for a truly unique read.
metacomic.......2007-03-20
My problem with this comic is that I really could never like this iper realistic drawing style which boast every single line fo people faces so that even those supposed to be very good looking (Enigma himself and the model Victoria Yes) look deformed.
It was a deliberate choice of course, I simply do not share it.
This booklet is self contained and tells us the story of an average straight boy leading a very average life meeting the -male- hero from the comics he used to read as a child.
The idea fo a comic about a comic is not bad and brings forth some fairly interesting issues: identity, sexual identity, children mistreatment, etc.
I was not overwhelmed by enthusiasm but other people might be.
A lot of gore and some topics (nudity and mild gay sex among them) make this booklet unsuitable for minors.
twilight zone-ish comic.......2006-01-09
Brilliant comic with a great twist at the end. Very underated from Vertigo's early days. Offbeat characters like Envelope Girl and Titus Bird bring this book to life paying homage to 70's whacked out comics world. Enjoy! and then what?
Amazing........2005-01-19
Words can not describe how incredible this comic book is. It really has to be read.
The only people who have given this book ANY remotely negative comments are straight men who are turned off by the homosexuality.
If you can't get your hands on the equally awesome (yet expensive and nearly impossible to find) Flex Mentallo,, a work that is very indebted to Enigma, then make sure to pick Enigma up, it is kind of like an older cousin who came over to visit a lot.
And, other then The Minx, pretty much everything I've read by Peter Milligan has been amazing. He's probably one of the best writers in comics today, I'd rank him right after Grant Morrison (who would either be number one or three, depending on whether Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore counted or if they just had an apotheosis and were so far above other comic writers that they no longer were even on the same scale) and before quite a few writers who sell more books.
But Enigma is probably one of his best titles. It's only eight issues and collected in one place for twenty dollars (or less if you can get it used). You don't have anything to lose.
A postmodern comic........2003-02-06
This mini-series defines postmodernism. Milligan plays with the convention of comics through editor comments and satire toward older styles. The main theme throughout the whole book, although one may not realize until partially through it, is that trying to find the meaning of life is absurd. The question "What's next?" permeates the mystery. And the answer? Nothing. Life is like that.
But that doesn't make the story less interesting. The characters are fascinating, and the art perfect for a postmodern comic. There is just enough detail and shadow for you to figure out what the lines are supposed to represent. Of course, these drawings aren't the real thing. So why try to recreate the thing on paper, if the artist can't help but fail. At best, all you get is a pretty picture.
This is definitely not a comic for younger readers. Postmodernism is very difficult to understand, and I'm still struggling. The point to this story is simply that there is no point. Who is the Enigma? What is the truth? What's next? Do the answers really matter? Postmodernism would say, that the Enigma is a construction of several different things. He is a man that spent most of his young life in a well, he eats lizards, he possesses great mind powers, he loves the lead character (Michael Smith), he based his image on an old comic book character. Have I defined him? Is that who the Enigma is? No! He has so many more definitions, but he is nothing really.
Five stars! Because this is the first time I have read a comic book and actually felt like my mind was challenged. I will offer it to all of my friends who enjoy intellectual reading. I shall read it again and again. I'll never figure out the point completely, but it sure is fun to try!
Customer Reviews:
got it all.......2006-03-11
I loved this book so much I know have the whole series and am going arounf geting the diferents ones even if the cover is the only diference.
A worthy effort.......2004-07-15
The original Books of Magic, written by Neil Gaiman was great reading. John Ney Rieber Takes over writing chores for the regular series and manages to put together a decent arc in "Bindings" which takes place in Books of Magic 1-4.
There are a few subplots in the story, but the main driving force is Tim Hunter's battle with the Manticore. The Manticore is a changeling beast that captures children, "educates" them and eventually eats them. This is vintage Vertigo horror stuff, and is creepy enough to make you think that Gaiman might have ghostwritten it.
Tim's search to find the identity of his real father is also dealt with, although not to my satisfaction. Also something about the destruction of the lands of Fairie is thrown in, but it seems like an afterthought and isn't developed very well.
Death also makes a housecall, but is she there on business? Read the book and find out.
Overall, it's a very good story, the artwork is serviceable, but at times sketchy. This is another hallmark of early Vertigo work, and it does seem to add to the atmosphere of the book. The covers by Vess, on the other hand, are great. Too bad Vertigo reprints them 1/2 their regular size in this edition, you lose a lot of the detail.
Fair.......2001-06-17
This isn't my favorite of the "Books of Magic"--Summonings takes that honor. It's an interesting tale of Timothy Hunter, perhaps the greatest magician of all time, the illegitimate son of Tam Lin and Queen Titania of the Faeries.
Tim lives as an ordinary boy in our world, with a sloppy but loving father, and a few rather unworldly acquaintances. His father, Tam Lin, occasionally pops up in human form as does the Amadan, a rather repulsive little sprite who waits on Queen Titania. The Queen herself is furious because the Faerie lands are dying, for reasons that no one knows.
Tim has problems of his own when he ventures into the lair of a mysterious - and sinister - creature. This will lead to the discovery of what is killing the Faerie lands, and exact a terrible price in return.
While I found the story tight-paced and enjoyable, I wished they'd give us a little more backstory as to how Tim knows who his true father is. It would've made Titania's comments in the garden a little easier to understand ("we made love and a child in this garden"). I also felt that the explanation for the dying Faerie lands was a little too pat.
The artwork was pretty bad - often it shifted from one frame to another, becoming well-defined in one frame and blurry in another. Dimensions altered. And Titania was terribly drawn - she's supposed to be beautiful, darnit! It looks like they simply took a picture of a none-too-pretty woman and colored her green (not to mention the fact that her teeth often appear the same color as her skin). She looks much better in future books.
However, the atmosphere is unparalleled. The clash with the Manticore was downright chilling, as was the effects on Tim. I was quite surprised by Death's arrival, you'll be surprised at the face and personality of "death." And the last few pages were both sweet and sad.
A nice comic book, hardly flawless but nor is it bad.
meet tim hunter, greatest of all enchanters.......2000-10-14
this is not where i first said hi to tim, but it's the meeting where you actually exchange a few words about yourself and get a feel for where your relationship is going to go :) needless to say, i like tim, and this is one good reason why. if anything, for his soliloquy at the beginning about love and fear and what holds the universe together. jnr writes uniquely weird stuff, and this is before it all overwhelmed tim and he got... well... a bit ahead of himself maybe. no molly yet, but otherwise, there's always death, isn't it :)
very tantalizing if you start with it (as one should if you don't want the original mini too). also, do not be deceived!! jane yolen just wrote the introduction (it was a very nice introduction, but really, jnr should get first billing, i daresay).
i suppose it may be too short-- only four issues-- but it completes its arc and you won't be disappointed if you like magic.. and boys... and maybe england :)
beutiful.......2000-02-23
it was great stuff.i love diving into the magical world of timothy hunter. very enjoyable.
Book Description
In the 1992 Sight and Sound poll critics and filmmakers voted Vertigo the fourth greatest film of all time. Released in 1958, Hitchcock's masterpiece is a pinnacle of the cinema. Yet in it Hitchcock abandoned his trademark suspense, allowing the central mystery to be solved halfway through. What remained was a study in sexual obsession, as James Stewart's Scottie pursues Madeleine/Judy (Kim Novak) to her death in a remote Californian mission. Novak is ice-cool but vulnerable; Stewart--in the darkest role of his career--genial on the surface but damaged within.
Though it seems to many to be Hitchcock's most personal film, Charles Barr argues that, like Citizen Kane, Vertigo is a triumph not so much of individual authorship as of creative collaboration. Barr documents the crucial role of screenwriters Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor and by a combination of textual and contextual analysis explores the reasons why Vertigo has come to exert such a continuing fascination both on general audiences and on a wide range of critics and theorists.
Customer Reviews:
Vertigo.......2006-11-08
This is one of a series on classic movies put out by the British Film Institute, and I guess Alfred Hitchcock qualifies because he began as an English director, even though Vertigo was made in Hollywood...Anyway, like all of the BFI series I have read, this one is a little gem (almost as good as Camille Paglia's essay on The Birds). If you are a Hitchcock fan -- if you love movies, especially suspense thrillers -- if you think Vertigo is one of the best movies ever made (like me), you will devour this little book the way a chocolate lover gobbles up a box of Godiva truffles. Everything you ever wanted to know and more about Vertigo. Well, almost. My only complaint is that it isn't long enough.
Experience Vertigo at New Heights!.......2005-12-15
Although I have always enjoyed the movie Vertigo, it was never on my list of favorite Hitchcock movies, preferring North By Northwest and Rear Window even more. Charles Barr's book VERTIGO may not have changed my opinion but it certainly allows me to understand why someone else would disagree with my personal ranking. The book explores Vertigo on several different levels allowing for a richer appreciation of the movie.
As Barr notes, Vertigo is unlike many other Hitchcock movies in that it is more about the relationship of the characters played by Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak than it is about the criminal plot. In fact, again unusual for Hitchcock movies, the plot twist, the scheme by which murder has been committed, is revealed not at the end of the movie but rather about two-thirds of the way into it. This allows the remaining forty or so minutes to focus on the interactions between the characters. That Novak is playing a dual role and all the characters are working with different levels of knowledge at different times makes this all the more interesting.
One part of VERTIGO that I find fascinating is the theory that Jimmy Stewart actually dies at the beginning of the film after hanging from the rooftop. The viewer never sees him rescued and therefore, so the thought goes, everything that follows (basically the whole movie) takes place in his head while hanging, falling and dying.
Usually I do not go for such metaphysical theories unless there is a solid basis of support. Here there is. Barr introduces the reader to the author Ambrose Bierce who wrote a story using the same plot device. Clues of Bierce's presence are placed throughout the movie and one of the screenwriters made an elliptical, though nonetheless explicit, reference to Bierce with respect to the story. Although this theory of Stewart's death at the beginning of Vertigo may be a minority opinion, it is nonetheless valid and quite interesting.
Film criticism being what it is, Barr throws in a number of phrases that come off as hoity-toity. But I never had the feeling that he was speaking down to the reader. The British Film Institute guides are usually fairly well written and informative and VERTIGO is no exception.
Amazon.com
It is not often that books receive the universal critical acclaim with which W.G. Sebald's work in English translation has been met. Both The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn won the sort of plaudits that would enable most writers to die happy. Sebald first employed his limpid, literally entrancing style in Vertigo, which appeared in German in 1990 and then waited a decade for its English-language debut. Like The Emigrants, this earlier novel interweaves four different narratives, which cumulatively sound a single, transcendent note--in this case, that of memory.
Sebald begins with Marie Henri Beyle (better known as Stendhal), cruising through the French author's painful and unreliable recollections of his military career. Then he splices in his own voyage through Italy, allowing these historical and personal perspectives to intersect when we least expect them to. As the book develops, it returns to the same locations: Milan, Verona, Venice, and the Alps. And in the course of this fractured meandering, the reader cohabits with a haunted Franz Kafka, admires the serene beauty of the stars above Lake Garda, and ultimately returns to Sebald's home in Bavaria, where the author confronts his childhood memories.
For Sebald, a straight line is never the shortest distance between two points: he more often travels in concentric circles, or cuts wild capers from past to present. Yet the stumbling journey in Vertigo seeks to replicate the distorted and unfathomable workings of memory itself. And it succeeds to an astonishing extent, so that the acts of traveling, recalling, and writing are impossible to tell apart:
On this occasion in the midst of the holiday season, the night train from Vienna to Venice, on which in the late October of 1980 I had seen nobody except a pale-faced schoolmistress from New Zealand, was so overcrowded that I had to stand in the corridor all the way or crouch uncomfortably among suitcases and rucksacks, so that instead of drifting into sleep I slid into my memories. Or rather, the memories (at least so it seemed to me) rose higher and higher in some space outside of myself, until, having reached a certain level, they overflowed from that space into me, like water over the top of a weir.
Thus is the writer inundated. And so, happily, are his readers--those lucky enough to take the plunge. --Toby Green
Book Description
Vertigo is the third novel New Directions has published by W.G. Sebald, one of the most enormously acclaimed European writers of our time. Vertigo, W.G. Sebald's first novel, never before translated into English, is perhaps his most amazing and certainly his most alarming. Sebald -- the acknowledged master of memory's uncanniness -- takes the painful pleasures of unknowability to new intensities in Vertigo. Here in their first flowering are the signature elements of Sebald's hugely acclaimed novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is again our guide on a hair-raising journey through the past and across Europe, amid restless literary ghosts -- Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova. In four dizzying sections, the narrator plunges the reader into vertigo, into that "swimming of the head," as Webster's defines it: in other words, into that state so unsettling, so fascinating, and so "stunning and strange," as The New York Times Book Review declared about The Emigrants, that it is "like a dream you want to last forever."
Customer Reviews:
Sebald, the Last Great Writer of the Twentieth Century.......2006-08-24
Having never read a book by W.G. Sebald before, I bought this novel on a trip to London and began reading it on the long flight back to the States. The airline seated me next to a friendly, intelligent and beautiful woman, so I don't think I read more than eight pages or so during the flight. When I finished the book a few days later, I was stunned to discover that the route the narrator walks across central London near the end is EXACTLY the route I walked through that same area just a few hours before buying this book.
I mention this coincidence not solely because of narcissism, but because such coindences, such unexpected correspondences, such synchronicities, are the raw materials from which Sebald's books are made.
"Vertigo" is the first and most difficult of Sebald's four novels, and it may also be the most profound. The first example of his trademark form, the travel narrative as psychological and philosophical exploration, the book moves from London to Venice to the German alps and covers a range of subjects from the paintings of Pisanello to the loves of Stendhal, working in meditations on the treachery of memory, the fragility of identity, the struggle to find meaning in history (both personal and national)... Sebald's works are so intellectually rich that summary descriptions of them can only sound banal. Read the book and see for yourself.
Accessible - even though I had never heard of Sebald.......2006-03-08
I was wondering around the bookstore when I saw the cover. I open the book up and paged through it. Illustrations, drawings and maps and photos, on every page! Text written directly to the images! I purchased the book. I can't imagine a better decision.
Vertigo unfolds like a dream, unreal and hyper-real at the same time. A string of unrelated stories, a chapter each. Different characters, different centuries, yet underneath it all a use of language as music no less gifted than Mozart's. Moods, spells, memories, rapture -- all suspended from reality to take on their own existence. A masterwork, wonderously accessible, a book you will read more than once.
A journey into memory.......2006-01-20
This account of wanderings on both sides of the Alps perfectly captures that mixture of familiarity and strangeness, fascination mingled with isolation, and the sense of rubbing shoulders with a checkered history, that is the experience of a solitary traveler who takes his time. Sebald's narrator is a lot more sensitive than most, prone to nervous fears and intense but unconsummated attractions. By interspersing his own narrative with accounts of Stendahl (referred to only by his real name, Marie Henri Beyle), Casanova, and Kafka (Dr. K.) in the same parts, Sebald adds layers of resonance to his own experience, while questioning the nature of memory itself. The layers of thought, the ungoverned spirallings of the mind, which mirror and surpass the narrator's impulsive wanderings, are the true subject of this book.
I have to admit, though, that VERTIGO disappointed me after reading the same author's AUSTERLITZ. The memories that lie at the heart of the rose for this particular narrator are those of a child in a Bavarian village just after the German defeat in 1945. While they are vivid, they do not have the power of the Holocaust memories of the earlier book, nor is this one man's experience so easily seen as a symbol of the malaise afflicting an entire culture. I was convinced by the suggestion of a couple of other reviewers on this site that Sebald's German nationality itself is felt as something akin to an endemic disorder -- but this does not come over with anything like the inescapable strength that it does in the later and greater novel.
Unenjoyable.......2005-10-04
I did not enjoy VERTIGO by W.G. Sebald. The book was well reviewed in The New Yorker five years ago, which is why I bought it, but I had trouble getting through it, I know I completely missed its point, and I guess I won't be reading other novels by Sebald.
This is Sebald's first novel, though two others of his were translated into English first and appeared in America to positive reception: The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. The book reads as "experimental" prose, interweaving the author's own memories with fictionalized accounts of the nostalgic and journey experiences of Kafka, Stendhal and Casanova in four parts.
From what I can tell, the book is a consideration of memory, its elusiveness and its meaning, but it wasn't a consideration I found compelling. I have a respect for the author, who is German and lives in England (he is a professor of modern German literature at the University of Manchester), and the work he does, but I was not moved by it. I did find the best section, the most readable, to be the final one, in which Sebald returns to the German village that was his childhood home and makes a thoughtful comparison of the village he finds today with his memories of the community where he lived as a child. It was a longer section, and so held my interest more.
He has a lyrical and intriguing writerly voice (he writes that Casanova "likened a lucid mind to a glass, which does not break of its own accord. Yet how easily it is shattered."), but the entire did not make enough of a whole to engage me. Perhaps his other novels are more engaging...
A poor example of a modernist book.......2002-06-05
Not really a novel, Vertigo mixes interesting accounts from the lives of writers such as Stendahl and Kafka with loopy, trying and utterly arrid accounts of the narrator's neurotic, pointless journeys in Italy. I frankly found it boring. From what else I've read, Sebald's other books are apparently much superior -- I would skip this first novel entirely.
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