Customer Reviews:
Philosophy of History: Prove untruth, not truth.......2007-05-04
To Popper, science is a process of "conjectures and refutations"-- advancing bold conjectures about the state of the world and then trying to refute them. "Even in the study of history, objectivity should be sought in the institutions and traditions of a discipline. It is only through the give and take of open criticism and the ongoing interplay of many different kinds of biases that anything approaching objectivity will emerge." Thus, "truth" is seen as a hypothesis--you can't prove truth, you can only prove untruth. This is because one cannot know everything, therefore, nothing can be proved to be true.
Open societies, in Popper's definition, with their ideals of freedom and reason, of men who may create their own future, are opposed to the regimes of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Hegel and Marx are the main focus of the book. Aristotle built his theory on Plato; Hegel on Aristotle; Marx on Hegel. Popper is concerned with their philosophies of history. A philosophy of history is an attempt to interpret systematically the historical process by a principle that unifies the results of research and points to an "ultimate meaning" behind the process. It involves systematic reflection on scientifically derived data about the past. All the parts are unified to form a whole with "ultimate meaning."
It was thus not Marx's historicist method which led him to success, but instead the "methods of institutional analysis." In many democratic, capitalist countries production has been so great that the workers have a higher standard of living than Marx ever envisaged. He also had an unrealistic view of human nature--that because man is born good, changing his environment will bring happiness. But this view ignores the universality of human imperfection, and the sacredness of personality that is lost in the communist state.
Yet, Popper claims that Marx has done Christianity a great service by pointing out the humanitarian demands of Christ. Popper made many generalizations about Christianity without describing the basic tenets that have made Christianity "the strongest opponent of Communism." Popper does not view Christianity as being a "substitute from dreams and wish--fulfillment; it should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the holding of a policy in an insurance company." Popper opposes a "leap in the dark" of faith, whether by Marxists probing the beginning of evolution, or by those experiencing a personal relationship with God. Faith is necessary, but it is to be based on a rational understanding of the difference between belief and fact, and the appropriate place for both.
Portrait of the Philosopher-King as an Artist.......2006-08-22
When confronted with the rise of totalitarianism and the destruction of all that he held dear, Poper felt a single, overwhelming urge: to return to the Greeks, to the dawn of our civilization, so as to understand the root of the evil and to offer a practical way out of bestiality. His search was motivated by the insight that "this civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth--the transition from the tribal or 'closed society', with its submission to magical forces, to the 'open society', which sets free the critical powers of man."
Heraclitus set the stage with his claim that "the cosmos, at best, is like a rubbish heap scattered at random." If "everything is in flux" and "you cannot step twice into the same river", then at least we can try to discover the historical or evolutionary laws which will enable us to prophesy the destiny of man.
Plato's claim to greatness is to have discovered such a law: that "all social change is corruption or decay or degeneration," and that the only way to break this cycle of decay is to arrest development and return to the Golden Age, where no change occurs. His belief in perfect and unchanging things, the Platonic Ideas from which all things originate, finds its expression in all fields of inquiry: be it social justice, nature and convention, wisdom and truth, or goodness and beauty.
Behind these lofty ideals, Popper uncovers a discomforting truth: Plato envisioned the ideal Greek polity as a totalitarian nightmare, where the 'race of the guardians' had to be kept pure from any miscegenation and where the role of the rulers was to breed the human cattle according to some esoteric formula (the 'Platonic Number', a number determining the True Period of the human race). Along his apology of Sparta came his endorsement of infanticide and his recommendation that children of both sexes be "brought within the sight of actual war and made to taste blood."
Popper demonstrates that these crazy ideas were not the vague mumblings of an otherwise sound philosopher: they were central tenets in Plato's philosophy, a system which has been characterized by another author as "the most savage and most profound attack upon liberal ideas which history can show."
Popper connects this extreme radicalism of the Platonic approach with its aestheticism, i.e. with "the desire to build a world which is not only a little better and more rational than ours, but which is free from all its ugliness." Plato, the Philosopher-King, can be best characterized as an artist: a man attracted to a world of pure beauty, a craftsman who tries to visualize an ideal model of his work and to copy it faithfully, and for whom "the part has to be executed for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part." His desire to "start from a clean canvas" or his claim to prefer "the original to the copy" find disturbing echoes in contemporary political debates. Contrary to Plato's belief, however, the canvas can never be made clean, and the copy often improves upon the original.
Let's give Popper the last word: "But there I must protest. I do not believe that human lives may be made the means for satisfying an artist's desire for self-expression. We must demand, rather, that every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to model his life himself, as far as this does not interfere too much with others. Much as I sympathize with the aesthetic impulse, I suggest that the artist might seek expression in another material."
Read the free excerpt - pg 7 Plato vs Pericles.......2006-03-10
Click on the book and keep clicking to page 7 - two quotes from Plato vs Pericles, which could have been written yesterday.
I may be moving and I'm busy, so no I have not read the book, but every now and then I reread that page 7 - how INSPIRING !
A DIFFERENT VIEW OF PLATO.......2005-10-30
I wish Popper were still alive because there are so FEW philosophers who can write so clearly.
Volume 1 of the Open Society is a critique of historicism and an analysis of how Plato's later thought supports totalitarianism, not democracy.
Popper presents a convincing argument about the danger of deifying philosophers of the past. He shows how some of the ideas of Plato are imbedded in our culture in ways that do not always support an Open Society, by which he means not only democracy but a society that is OPEN to learning from its mistakes and adapting to change.
If you are interested in political philosophy or the interaction of philosopy and society, this book is worth your time.
Refuting Plato.......2005-10-06
Popper wrote this book for me and for people like me, i.e. for people who stand in awe of Plato simply because he is Plato.
I read Plato's Republic in 1985 or thereabouts. I had learned of the allegory of the cave in class and wanted to know more. Also, in one M*A*S*H episode, the Republic was among the books Frank Burns was burning, so of course I had to read it. I did, and apart from Book One's denunciation of the maxim "Might Makes Right", I felt uneasy about the rest of the work. At the time, I felt that there must have been something wrong with me, that I wasn't reading it right, that after all having stood the test of time for over two thousand years Plato simply couldn't be wrong. If only I had known of Popper in 1985!
Popper is in many ways pointing out the obvious: that Emperor Plato is wearing no clothes. His Republic is nothing more than a totalitarian state and his value system represses the individual in favour of the State.
Popper begins by describing what he calls "Historicism" or the belief that history develops according to laws from which the future could be predicted, with Heraclitus being the first "historicist". Popper then continues with an overview Plato's thought, especially his Theory of Forms and his brilliant sociological insights. He then exposes over three chapters Plato's political programme to bring about a perfect City-State, and here is where Popper points out the obvious: Plato's Republic is a totalitarian state that controls every facet of the lives of all its citizens and represses any every invidual path to happiness.
In the last chapter, Popper sketches out how an Open Society would work and gives the example of Athens just before Plato. Unlike others who have savaged Plato (e.g. Ayn Rand) Popper doesn't lay out a master plan to replace Plato's. He doesn't believe in utopias, Platonic or otherwise. Popper believes in what he calls "Piecemeal Social Engineering" i.e. fixing problems as they come up, or improving institutions when the opportunity arises.
This is Popper's Open Society. One where we accept that things are as they are, that they can be improved, that individuals are the only judges of their own happiness and that they should have complete freedom to pursue it as they see fit, insofar as they don't harm others too much. His test for an Open Society is very simple: a society is open if its government can change without bloodshed.
In 1948, Scott Buchanan wrote, in the introduction to Penguin's Portable Plato, that "the reading of Plato's dialogues by a large number of people could make the difference between a century of folly and a century of wisdom for the world". Perhaps, but only if the reader approches Plato without awe and with a critical mind. As did Popper.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
Book Description
Short stories and fiction excerpts from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and other countries from whom the government would rather we didn't hear.
"Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring."—Alane Mason, founding editor, Words Without Borders
During the Cold War, writers behind the Iron Curtain—Solzhenitsyn, Kundera, Milosz—were translated and published in the United States, providing an invaluable window on the Soviet regime's effects on daily life and humanizing the individuals living under its conditions.
Yet U.S. Treasury Department regulations made it almost impossible for Americans to gain access to writings from "evil" countries such as Iran and Cuba until recently. Penalties for translating such works or for "enhancing their value" by editing them included stiff fines and potential jail time for the publisher. With relaxation in 2005 of the Treasury regulations (in response to pressure from the literary and scientific publishing communities that culminated in a lawsuit), it is now possible, for the first time in many years, to read in English works from these disfavored nations.
The New Press and Words Without Borders are proud to be among the first to offer American readers contemporary literature of "enemy nations." Literature from the Axis of Evil includes thirty-five works of fiction from seven countries, most of which have never before been translated into English.
Customer Reviews:
censorship is worse in the u.s.......2007-08-05
I call this literature light and I do not believe that many writers backed out due to fear of reprisal. Writers right here at "home" in the U.S who are nationals live in fear and are silenced. And it's good to look into the lives of editors and publishers of books, see what their husbands do for a living, let's say, to see how honest these books really are. Nothing in this book addresss the current genocide against muslims, not in any real concrete way...this is bullshiite without borders.
Censorship.......2007-05-01
Put together by Writers without Borders, I was sad to read of authors who backed out of this project out of fear of reprisal. Even the first short story of the Vice Principal reflects this fear alive in our world today. Censorship in the US of this misnommer of cultures (Axis of Evil) has encouraged me to read these verses, excerpts and short stories and want to pass the book on to another reader.
College textbook needed.......2007-01-19
My son needed this book for college. Fast shipping and better price than local store.
Average customer rating:
- An Enemy of Mortals
- A little book that packs a wallop
- Excellent choice
- Spare and ambiguous, yet moving and memorable
- Poetic and tragic short novel
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My Mortal Enemy (Vintage Classics)
Willa Cather
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
 Cather, Willa
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The Song of the Lark
ASIN: 0679731792
Release Date: 1990-10-31 |
Book Description
First published in 1926, this book is Cather's sparest and most dramatic novel, a dark and oddly prescient portrait of a marriage that subverts our oldest notions about the nature of happiness and the sanctity of the hearth.
Customer Reviews:
An Enemy of Mortals.......2007-06-22
Natural questions a person might have when considering whether to read this book are: What kind of work of fiction is this? Does it fit into a major category of fiction? Who is the "mortal enemy" referred to in the title? I'll address those questions in this review.
My Mortal Enemy is not a classic romance, tragedy, or melodrama. It is a narrative view, from a fallible, secondary character's perspective. Some people might be put off by the title, incorreclty inferring: "Why would I want to read a book about someone ruminating over their interactions with their mortal enemy?" I can understand that apprehension. But hopefully, if you can make it to the end of this review - you may understand both why the above inferrence is partly inaccurate, and where it is accurate - there are plenty of worthwhile and thoughful cognitive twists to make this introspective novel a thrilling read.
"My Mortal Enemy" is a novel focused on the social observations of a young person, watching a close family friend's slow cognitive journey into almost invisible and hard to describe forms of mental dysfunction. I love this book. I read through it like a thrilling page-turner. I couldn't wait to get to the end, and was not disappointed when I got there. It is brilliant, sarcastic, and wise. It shows us, if we have the eyes to perceive, the seemingly benign steps a mind takes into horrific dysfunction.
I love Cather's characterization of Oswald. Cather's rare portrayal of him as a smart and compassionate man, dealing with a spouse who does not see her own self-inflicted demises, is a rare act of literary kindness from one gender to the other. After reading her characterization of Oswald, Cather cannot be characterized as a man-hater. He is so lovingly drawn, in the regular presence of Myra's berating.
It is hard for an author to write a character more interesting than the author. All of Cather's characters are interesting - so I would have loved to have met her. Reading this novel, I sometimes think of the conversations between Myra and Nellie (the narrator) as conversations between a younger generation and an older generation. But Myra does not represent "older and wiser." She represents "older." Many people don't get smarter as they get older or after they get married, and Myra is one of those people (and it appears Avril Lavigne is one also, at least for the moment, but that's a whole nother story). Myra is intelligent. But she is also not smart enough to see where she is misguided. And she is also so tunnel-visioned and bull-headed that she will not concede where she might be wrong. And if we're going to peg her with an Achilles' Heel - an inability and general unwillingness to change has to be near the top of the list of the reasons for most of her follies.
In some ways, Cather's 'My Antonia' can be thought of a young person's recollection and observations of what happens to first loves. 'My Mortal Enemy' can be thought of as a young person's discovery of how some people so easily make so many enemies. Some people are good at drawing many lovers to them. Others, like Myra and her father, are exceptional at creating enemies - even of the people closest to them. And the novel examines the social constructs and personality traits that easily create enemies.
This paragraph discusses the title of "My Mortal Enemy" and to what the title may be referring, so if you want to read the book before knowing the ending, please read the rest of this review thereafter. Who is the "My" referring to - in the title "My Mortal Enemy?" I think it can be read as several people. It could be a general "My," representing anyone. It could also specifically refer to Willa Cather, Nellie (the narrator), or Myra. Her name is "My"ra. And twice, at key plot places in the book (p. 78 and the final sentence), she says, "Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?" From Myra's perspective, she perceives Oswald to be her mortal enemy. I believe the title is intended to be interpreted in all the above ways.
So who is the "mortal enemy?" It could be most easily interpreted as Oswald. But it could also be interpeted as Myra's father who disowned and disinherited her. But I think Cather was smarter than either of those singular interpretations. This book was not intended to be some melodrama or whodunnit, where the protagonist whispers the killer's name in her dying breath. No, this is a book examining larger social and cultural rules and the real and damaging consequences of those boundaries.
Cather's lead characters are not known for their ability to adapt. Neither Antonia nor Myra are able to really see what may have held them back their whole lives. They are both brilliant, individual personalities and beauties. And it is not accurate to suggest Cather is like Thomas Hardy and is simply composing plots where no matter how hard the female leads try, fate seems to batter them down into their pre-ordained destinies. No, Cather's has more intelligent and modern perspectives. Cather wants to show the joys that are crushed by the combination of dominant social rules AND the women who follow them without questioning. Sometimes older generations, as they get older, think they have everything figured out. Myra is an example of this type of person. And Cather uses her as an example of an intelligent person who is also a fool, a fool who thinks all her enemies are the people around her, when tragically, her greatest enemy is her own thoughts, boundaries, and treatment of others.
Myra's mortal enemy is Myra.
As the book nears the end, Myra turns increasingly insentive and hostile toward Nellie, Oswald, and everyone else. She only shows mercy to her dead fatherly guardian, who never adopted her. But even her words toward him are cruel to everyone else - as she suggests he is worthy of mercy while all those who have cared for her daily for years are not worth her understanding, love or compassion.
The book implies Oswald may have had an affair with someone else after marrying Myra. But whether he did or not, is not Cather's great concern. Cather wants to stress that Myra's suspicion of Oswald's sexual or amorous feelings towards anyone else is a dominant basis for her hatred of him. Myra relies on her assumption that if Oswald ever loved another person after they married, then in Myra's moral reasoning, he should be her enemy. This charming, hard working, and loving man, who gave her years of love and compassion doing work he hated, to give her many ornate things he never wanted, is discarded and exiled from her affections. She takes extraordinary efforts to abandon him in the end to die alone.
Cather wants people to consider everything and to think for themselves. She wants people to look at the weight of these character's actions over their entire lifetimes and measure those against individual, exclusive moral standards. Cather shows us the fruit of Myra's and her father's (John's) hatreds and mistreatment of those close to them. Cather shows us what happens when some people require their loves to only love and follow them exclusively. According to several biographical accounts, Cather lived most of her adult life in love with a person who was married to another. Her writings often focus on related universal social concerns.
A little book that packs a wallop.......2007-05-30
When I finished "My Mortal Enemy," I closed the book and said out loud to myself, "Wow!"
For the past year I've been reading all of Cather's novels in order. "O Pioneers" and "My Antonia" are rightly praised, but don't miss "A Lost Lady" and this gem. ("Death Comes for the Archbishop" is next on my list.)
To me, this book is a never-to-be solved mystery. What exactly went wrong between Myra and Oswald? Too passionate and dramatic a beginning?? Oswald's being stuck in work that didn't suit him? Not enough money? Pride? Materialism? Innate incompatibility? All of the above/none of the above/some combination of the above?
There are clues, but no definite answers. And that's what makes the book so lifelike, so thought-provoking, and, ultimately, so moving. Can we ever know exactly why a relationship fails? Aren't the people in the relationship as clueless (or worse) as outsiders like Nellie Birdseye, the narrator of "My Mortal Enemy"?
I don't understand exactly HOW Cather gives the reader so much in so few words. But that is part of her genius here.
A great work of literature - and there aren't many books I say that about.
Don't miss it.
Excellent choice.......2007-02-14
MY MORTAL ENEMY by Willa Cather (one of my favorite authors) is about a couple who get married despite the concerns of others. Things do not go as wonderfully as they hoped, but at the end of the day, not as awfully everyone expected.
To say that this couple had a strange but profound way of loving each other is not giving away the story. Absorbing the nuances of such love can only be accomplished by reading the book yourself.
Spare and ambiguous, yet moving and memorable.......2003-10-12
This short novella (about 20,000 words, close in size to a few of Cather's longer short stories) is a concentrated study of the decline and fall of a marriage. Cather herself agreed with the assessment offered by one of her contemporary reviewers: "there is the steady rhythm of the fundamental hatred of the sexes one of the other and their irresistible attraction one of the other."
The young and idealistic Nelly Birdseye describes the marriage of Myra Driscoll, her aunt's friend, to Oswald Henshawe. Their elopement incites Myra's uncle to disown her from a considerable inheritance, and the couple alternates between mutual bliss and impoverished misery. The fragility of their relationship is further imperiled by Myra's materialism and jealousy and Oswald's indolence and philandering.
"My Mortal Enemy" is, perhaps, one of Cather's most misunderstood novels, and the author seems to have intended that the title's meaning remain ambiguous. Most readers will assume, quite reasonably, that the "mortal enemy" who inflames Myra's inevitable disillusionment is Myra herself, and the text certainly supports such a reading. Yet in correspondence to friends and other writers, Cather admitted that she "had a premonition . . . most people wouldn't [understand]" that Myra's "mortal enemy" was Oswald, since he could never satisfy the excessiveness of her devotion, both to him and to others.
Although framed by the sparsest detail to be found in Cather's fiction, the story's forlorn perspective and memorable characterizations make this one of her most powerful works.
Poetic and tragic short novel.......2002-11-10
We come to know the protagonist of this short novel,Myra Henshawe.through the eyes of a younger woman who at first admires her unconditionally and grows to view her and the motivations behind her behavior more realistically as she encounters her again as an older physically suffering woman.
The bitterness which she feels toward her husband ,covered over with friends and laughter, when they were young and successful is more openly expressed as they age and find themselves in economic straits.
The characterizations achieved in this very short novel are extremely memorable. An excellent one evening read.
Average customer rating:
- here is my review on this
- My first book by Singer and surely not the last......
- Already Gone
- Nobel Prize Winners are few and far between
- Living with the unthinkable
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Enemies, A Love Story
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0374515220 |
Book Description
Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom.
Customer Reviews:
here is my review on this.......2007-03-26
In New York
The hotel staff
gave me the chair
that
Isaac B Singer
used to
lean his back against
years before he died
custom made
produced
out of gentle wings of butterflies
that circled his first wife's head
every day and night in Treblinka
before she finally
went
up in smoke
So
I went down at the front desk
A weird occurence
of
that strange and powerful thing
I certainly
wanted to bring to their attention
Of course they say
I. B. Singer
never stayed here
never had a first wife
nor she died in the concentration camp
But what's metter?
My back
feels better
way better
ever since
My first book by Singer and surely not the last.............2007-01-01
Isaac Bashevis Singer writes a novel of sheer absurdity and yet, page by page, he makes it very believable.
Herman Broder is a Jew who managed to escape the gas chambers of the Nazi Holocaust by living in a hayloft with his mother's servant Yadwiga from Poland for three years. His wife was not so lucky.....she and her children were all killed by the Nazis......at least that is what we (along with Herman) are led to believe early on. Herman manages to make it to the United States where he marries the peasant girl servant Yadwiga out of sheer gratitude for her saving his life, not out of any kind of a love or fondness for her. And while he is married to Yadwiga, he is carrying on an affair with Masha, who also went through her own camp horrors in Russia. Herman identifies more with her, not to mention the fact that an attraction also exists there, both physically and intellectually.
But just when you think the suspension of disbelief Singer creates cannot get any more bizarre, it does, when Tamara, his ex-wife, shows up in New York, after surviving the Nazis. Herman now has two and sometimes three women after him, and still he is unable to commit to any one of them. Singer creates a novel of absurd proportions, and then has the temerity to keep it growing! And the arrant brilliance in it is that it works on the reader to the very end.
Along the way the characters reveal thoughts which make one think more of a philosophical treatise than of a novel, a mark of a great writer and one of the reasons I could not put this book down:
"How peculiar that a panful of brains should be constantly wondering and not able to arrive at any conclusion! They were all silent: God, the stars, the dead. The creatures who did speak revealed nothing."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer, from the book "Enemies, A Love Story"
There are few writers such as Oscar Wilde to whom I can say they are unequivocally brilliant......Singer is certainly one of them.
Already Gone.......2006-12-21
How does one cope with such a thing? You know? The Holocaust.
It was the Holocaust that took Herman's parents, wife and two children. He manages to survive by hiding in a hayloft. For three long years, a former servant in his home, Yadwiga, a plain, uneducated but loving Polish woman, keeps him hidden and alive. After the war, we find Yadwiga and Herman married and living in Brooklyn. For other Holocaust survivors, Brooklyn represents opportunity, a sense of re-birth. All around him, new families are being formed out of what is left of old ones. Old customs are being renewed. The old prayers are said. Feasts are held. Traditions prevail. Life goes on. The future is hopeful, but not for Herman. Herman merely exists. He has a job as a ghost-writer for a famous rabbi. Herman is good at writing inspirational messages, messages of hope. But, Herman is not a believer. Not anymore. Not since the Holocaust. To Herman, God is either dead or an enemy. God is out to get him. Herman has a mistress, Masha, a camp survivor. His life is complicated. Then, as it turns out, his first wife who supposedly died in the camps, she's alive. Now Herman has two wives and a mistress. Complicated. They all want a piece of him. Emotionally, he retreats to the hayloft. But, emotionally, Herman is already dead, as dead as he would have been had he been found and sent to the camps, as dead as the rest of them, as dead as his faith in God. In the hayloft, minute by minute, day by dragging day, Herman was exterminated.
Nobel Prize Winners are few and far between.......2004-08-02
There are reasons that Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and all of these reasons are apparent in ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY.
Though he is not the only Jewish author to have won the Nobel, he is the only author whose primary writing was in Yiddish. Hence, the version of ENEMIES that I read was a translation.
Still, the simplicity of his prose shines through the novel. His storytelling skills are spellbinding.
Mr. Singer perfectly captures the undertone of desperation and doom connected with those who endured the Nazis and survived.
This novel will shock and it will sadden but it never will be less than writing at its finest.
Living with the unthinkable.......2004-07-28
Isaac Bashevis Singer was an idea novelist, in the way that Turgenev was. He fashioned his plots and characters around the questions he wanted to explore, and never let them get out of his control. But, like Turgenev, Singer was a great writer and never let his characters and plots become secondary. His writing is always entertaining as well as enlightening. Enemies, A Love Story is a case in point.
Herman Broder is a Jewish man living in New York City in the late 1940's, having survived the Holocaust in Poland hiding from the Nazis. Now the war is over, but Herman is no more at liberty than he was then. Believing his first wife died in a concentration camp, Herman has married again; he also has a mistress; to both women he lies about his work, and to his boss he lies about his women. Then his first wife shows up alive, and now he has to lie to her too. Herman is always on the verge of running, he must relentlessly cover his tracks in case he has to escape again. This sounds like a comedy of errors, and Singer finds the humor in Herman's plight, but he never loses sight of the tragedy which produced Herman's obsession with escape. This is a man so damaged that he can't really live anymore, and that's the question Singer is exploring with Enemies: is it possible to be whole again after going through the Holocaust? And if not, is it possible to live with the pieces that are left? Consider Vladek Spiegelman in Art Spiegelman's Maus, also a Holocaust survivor who only made it through sheer luck and a relentless hoarding and parceling out of otherwise mundane and unimportant items; now, though he's wealthy and free to do as he pleases, he can't stop hoarding, just in case.
Singer is asking, are the Jews who lived through Hitler's final solution dead, in their own way, like the victims who went into the ovens? What is there to do when you've lived through the unthinkable, and when so many people didn't? Enemies, A Love Story is a brilliant novel that grabs you by the mind as well as the heart.
Book Description
One of the great novels of American girlhood, Jean Webster's Daddy-Long- Legs (1912) follows the adventures of an orphan named Judy Abbott, whose letters to her anonymous male benefactor trace her development as an independent thinker and writer. Its sequel, Dear Enemy (1915), also told in letters, follows the progress of Judy's former orphanage now run by her friend Sallie McBride, who struggles to give her young charges hope and a new life. Full of irrepressible female characters that both recall Alcott's Jo March and anticipate the popular heroines of contemporary literature, Webster's novels are witty, heartfelt, and delightfully modern.
One of the great novels of American girlhood, Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) follows the adventures of an orphan named Judy Abbott, whose letters to her anonymous male benefactor trace her development as an independent thinker and writer. Its sequel, Dear Enemy (1915), follows the progress of Judy's former orphanage, now run by her friend Sallie McBride, who struggles to give her young charges hope and a new life.
Customer Reviews:
Not only 2 great books - but a great value!.......2006-09-22
In Daddy-Long-Legs, Jerusha Abbot is an orphan that gets sent to college by a mysterious trustee that thinks she has a future as an author. The only hint to his identity is the glimpse that Jerusha had of his long legs, as he was leaving. His only request is that she write him a letter once a month (with no hope of ever having a reply). For the next four years, Jerusha learns to be like "other girls", and we watch her grow and mature as she finds her voice.
Dear Enemy, the wonderful sequel, is set after Daddy-Long-Legs, where Jerusha is given the orphanage where she grew up. She enlists her best friend from college (whom we are introduced to in Daddy), Sally, to run the orphanage. Sally, a flighty society girl, is completely changed as she learns to love her orphans and the new life she has chosen to lead.
Both of them are romantic, fun and thoughtful, without the preachy-ness of some of the other girls novels published around the same time.
Best part is that BOTH books are published in this one volume - which is a great deal (and saves room on my already overflowing bookshelf). Footnotes in the back of the book help define some of the terminology/setting of the era.
This is a classic that I read as a child, and I'm so happy to have found it again!
Average customer rating:
- Three Wonderful Plays by the Master of Modern Drama
- An Enemy of the People is agonizingly brilliant.
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An Enemy of the People; The Wild Duck; Rosmersholm (Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press).)
Henrik Ibsen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0192839438 |
Book Description
Taken from the Oxford Ibsen, this collection of Ibsen's plays includes An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, and Rosmersholm.
Customer Reviews:
Three Wonderful Plays by the Master of Modern Drama.......2003-07-02
A professor of mine told me that AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is not a very good play, so I read it myself to find out...and I disagree with my professor! I think AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE is a powerful play on the timeless theme of the individual's relation to society. The "mob scene" in Act IV is a particularly intense piece of dramatic writing that reminded me of the "trial scenes" in such later, American plays as THE CRUCIBLE and INHERIT THE WIND. Several years ago I saw an outstanding local production of THE CRUCIBLE; I would love to see AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE onstage as well.
THE WILD DUCK, however, is my favorite play by Ibsen; I definitely agree with those critics who say that it is his masterpiece. I have read it three or four times, and each time I am amazed at Ibsen's skill. The play is a painful, poignant exploration of lost innocence, embodied in the character of Hedvig, a young girl on the verge of womanhood. If I could see only one more Ibsen play onstage (I've already seen HEDDA GABLER and THE LADY FROM THE SEA), it would be THE WILD DUCK. In fact, I'd love to direct it myself someday!
An Enemy of the People is agonizingly brilliant........1997-11-29
While Ibsen's other two plays in this volume are great, neither can come close to the genius of, An Enemy of the People. Dr. Stockmann's battle for truth against the self-interested masses is perhaps the most agonizingly wonderful exploration into truth and individuality. Ibsen is a master.
Book Description
This long-awaited anthology celebrates the experience of Native American women and is at once an important contribution to our literature and an historical document. It is the most comprehensive anthology of its kind to collect poetry, fiction, prayer, and memoir from Native American women. Over eighty writers are represented from nearly fifty nations, including such nationally known writers as Louise Erdrich, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lee Maracle, Janet Campbell Hale, and Luci Tapahonso; others-Wilma Mankiller, Winona LaDuke, and Bea Medicine-who are known primarily for their contributions to tribal communities; and some who are published here for the first time in this landmark volume.
Customer Reviews:
Spellbinding Women's Literature.......2000-05-26
I bought this book out of my interest in Indian literature, but found that it resonated as deeply with my non-Indian womaness. Simple and clear, the writings take you all over the place and bring you back to yourself. Thanks to my Indian sisters.
exceptional range of work.......1999-11-05
I teach Native American literature. Since the publication of this book I have been unable to exclude it from my syllabus. Students almost unanimously have endorsed this choice, even when they had to shell out the money for the hardcover. Now that it is in paperback, no one should exclude it.
I only regret that an anthology of similar quality of organization, focus, and selection does not exist for male and female Native writers.
Book Description
Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as “the Captain” brings him from his boarding school to London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza, who renames him “Jim” and depends on him for any news about the world outside their door. Raised in these odd yet touching circumstances, Jim is never quite sure of Liza's relationship to the Captain, who is often away on mysterious errands. It is not until Jim reaches manhood that he confronts the Captain and learns the shocking truth about the man, his allegiances, and the nature of love.
Customer Reviews:
Alone in the world.......2006-07-14
This is a minor novel by Greene, although his major themes are here. It was his last and the feeling that prevails is the loneliness of life, the feeling of being a permanent outsider. Victor is the son of a cruel man and a deceased mother, miserably living in boarding school. On his twelfth birthday, instead of his father a complete stranger shows up to pick him up and take him to lunch and maybe a movie. But instead of returning the boy, the stranger, known only as "The Captain", tells him he has won him at backgammon, and proposes him to go and live in London. Hating boarding school, Victor decides to go to London, where he is placed in a young woman's apartment, to live there as a kind of stepson. The woman is the occasional mistress of the Captain and former lover of Victor's father. Victor adopts the new name of Jim. The Captain, who is obviously a criminal, appears at increasingly longer intervals. In the meantime, Jim and the woman, Liza, develop a kind of mother-and-son relationship. Eventually Jim grows up and becomes a journalist. When the woman dies, Jim looks for the Captain and finds out he is living in Panama, where he travels to meet him. There he discovers the Captain is involved in drug-dealing.
Although this is not at the level of Greene's masterpieces, it is an interesting one to read, because Greene's obsessions are present in a haunting way: moral dilemmas, solitude, the strange relationships we develop with the people our fate brings us close to. Worth a try.
A wonderful surprise.......2005-09-12
Publishers reprinting an author's entire opus are always claiming obscure works have been unfairly overlooked. In the case of "The Captain and the Enemy," that is surely true. Any reader will find all sorts of intrigues in this little-known work. But even for a Greene fan, like me, this was something of a revelation--one also made possible through the brilliant introduction by John Auchard. You'll gain more insight into a complex author from this short novel and new introduction than from three volumnes of most biographies. DGibson from Brooklyn.
Greene's Last Novel.......2003-07-10
I had read a few negative online reviews of this novel, had looked at the the cover (with King Kong standing there), and I had few hopes. I find the book a remarkable book---and just those qualities that some readers disliked were qualities which impressed me. The fact that some characters, most characters here, are not "fleshed out" is just right, for these people exist in a kind of spare landscape of slim hope and love, and they are no more attached to worldly things or even common social interaction, say, Ahab. As much as anything else here (and perhaps because the world depicted is somewhat vaguely suggested), we get the feel of Graham Greene's deep and mature consciousness, for in fact we are roaming around the inside of his mind more than around any landscape populated with Dickensian people (despite what one of the back-cover reviews says). Greene wrote this novel only three years before he died, and I found it a privilege to be in the company of his maturity, his encroaching despair, his sense of bleakness and crassness, all touched by hints of the power of love. It's a book that deserve more attention, and perhaps you need to be a bit older than younger to appreciate it.
Not Greene's best.......2003-05-11
This is not one of Greene's best books, but it is worth a read if you are a fan of his works. About a third of the way through this book I was ready to chalk it up as a major disappointment. The payoff comes late, and when it does it makes the read well worth the time. The last third of the book is a marvelous sketch of relationships and love. Greene really knows how to put the subtleties of life into words.
This isn't a "buyer beware," it's just a "buyer be patient!" The Greene touch is here, you just have to get to it.
Intriguing novel of love and its mysterious ways.......2002-02-11
One of the last novels by Graham Greene, "The Captain and the Enemy" was written in 1988, just three years before the death of the master. Although his prose is as always enjoyable, a little detached and sentimental at the same time, in the novel there seems to be an indication that Greene was aware of the shortcomings of the old age. The books is written in a form of a careless memoir with too many holes in it, no doubt intended ones, considering the contents, but now and then Greene ventures into the reflexive mode of general narration, and I couldn't help but have an impression that I listened to an old man's voice of admission. For a writer, it must not have been easy, but then Greene kept writing all his life, and virtually all of his literary heritage has been revered to this day; a wonder the man had never won the Nobel Prize for literature - another proof that one should not hold too much value in such awards.
In a way, "The Captain and the Enemy" is full of contradictions, whether intended or not, but on the other hand, this small book incorporates all lifelong passions of Graham Greene, where yet again he touches the multidimensional subjects of interest from yet another viewpoint. The book starts in a humorous way, to quickly transform into a good-natured and intriguing story of a small boy whose life is one great patchwork, him not having a fixed place in the world, with all family connections never materializing themselves. The mother - dead as long as he remembers; the father, or 'The Devil' as everyone is fond of saying - loses the boy in chess, or was it backgammon? The boy never seems to unveil that mystery which no one bothers to tell him. Then there is the Captain, the winner of the game, whatever it was, and his woman, Lisa. As you shall see when you read the book, there is no other way to call her, but the woman. Never in the center of the storyline, although incredibly essential for one's understanding of the novel, Lisa enters the story as abruptly as she does exit, leaving us virtually scratching our heads. Such is the whole novel, in fact, full of mysteries, secrets, blanks spaces, only some of which shall be filled in eventually.
One of the greatest strengths of the novel is the portrait of the pair, Lisa and the Captain. Although Greene takes infinite care to never really show us them both, or none of them separately for that matter, it seems to me that the key to understanding "The Captain and the Enemy" lies in letting go of the reader's routine, and the yearning for the full explanation, resolution of all threads, explanation one is used to be spoon-fed with. If you accept the fact that the story leaves much to you, all of those blanks to fill in, patchwork to sew together - you are already well-prepared. However, as much as the details are important, the key is to adopt the narrator's viewpoint, or better, the Captain's, if you dare. Why did they live apart from each other all their life, and why it seemed they loved each other dearly, although there's never any real sign of it? Greene was capable of writing a great love story without having his characters ever mention the subject, nor mouth the four-letter word themselves, for that matter. So far away, and so close.
"I brought up the forbidden word. 'Does he love you?'
'Oh, love. They are always saying God loves us. If that's love, I'd rather have a bit of kindness'" [p. 84]
I finished this four-part novel in one day. At first I enjoyed it immensely, but as I read on, I had more and more trouble understanding its real meaning. As the book progresses, we change the scenery and land in Panama of the late 70s, where another part of the Captain's life is revealed, and the book adopts the flavor of an espionage thriller. As I closed the book, I had mixed emotions, and needed to air my head a bit to at least attempt to grasp the full meaning of this novel. Good literature makes you think, and that we can't deny Greene. His novels slowly grow on you, and leave a long-lasting impression and a desire to come back, one day. Which I shall do, and I wish you the same, dear reader.
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