The Hall Of Uselessness

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590176200
Total Pages : 577 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Hall of Uselessness written by Simon Leys and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NYRB Classics Original Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.

Author : Philippe Paquet
Publisher : La Trobe University Press
ISBN 13 : 1925435563
Total Pages : 720 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Simon Leys written by Philippe Paquet and published by La Trobe University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning biography of one of the greats. Simon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. He died in 2014. Writing in three languages – French, Chinese and English – he played an important political role in revealing the true nature of the Cultural Revolution. His writing on China and on varied literary and cultural topics appeared regularly in the New York Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro Littéraire, Quadrant and the Monthly, and his books include The Hall of Uselessness, The Death of Napoleon, Other People’s Thoughts and The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper. In 1996 he delivered the ABC’s Boyer Lectures. His many awards include the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca, the Prix Guizot and the Christina Stead Prize for fiction. This substantial biography – recently published by Gallimard in France to wide acclaim and winning an award from the Académie Francaise – draws on extensive correspondence with Ryckmans, as well as his unpublished writings. It has been translated by an internationally renowned French translator Julie Rose (based in Sydney).

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 9780140047875
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chinese Shadows written by Simon Leys and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1978 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Sandor Goodhart
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136525955
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reading Stephen Sondheim written by Sandor Goodhart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Sondheim is arguably the most important writer for the American musical stage today, the equivalent in his field of Miller, Albee, O'Neill, and Williams. Yet he has rarely been treated seriously within the academy. Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays is an attempt to remedy that situation. Bringing together scholars and critics from a wide variety of literary and theoretical perspectives, this book undertakes to examine all of Sondheim's major productions and themes.

Author : Vladimir Sorokin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Queue written by Vladimir Sorokin and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vladimir Sorokin’s first published novel, The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet “years of stagnation.” Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn’t matter–if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin’s tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on."--Amazon.com.

Author : Eduardo Lalo
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022620765X
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Uselessness written by Eduardo Lalo and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-10-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Puerto Rican student at a Paris university grapples with heartbreak and isolation in this compelling novel by the author of Simone. The streets of Paris at night are pathways coursing with light and shadow, channels along which identity may be formed and lost, where the grand inflow of history, art, language, and thought—and of love—can both inspire and enfeeble. For the narrator of Eduardo Lalo’s Uselessness, it is a world long desired. But as this young aspiring writer discovers upon leaving his home in San Juan to study—to live and be reborn—in the city of his dreams, Paris’s twinned influences can rip you apart. Lalo’s first novel, Uselessness is something of a bildungsroman of his own student days in Paris. But more than this, it is a literary précis of his oeuvre—of themes that obsess him still. Told in two parts, Uselessness first follows our narrator through his romantic and intellectual awakenings in Paris, where he elevates his adopted home over the moribund one he has left behind. But as he falls in and out of love he comes to realize that as a Puerto Rican, he will always be apart. Ending the greatest romance of his life—that with the city of Paris itself—he returns to San Juan. And in this new era of his life, he is forced to confront choices made, ambitions lost or unmet—to look upon lives not lived. A tale of the travails of youthful romance and adult acceptance, of foreignness and isolation both at home and abroad, and of the stultifying power of the desire to belong—and to be moved—Uselessness is here rendered into English by the masterful translator Suzanne Jill Levine. For anyone who has been touched by the disquieting passion of Paris, Uselessness is a stirring saga. Praise for Uselessness “In this dreamy and succinct novel, Lalo takes readers on an intimate journey of companionship abroad. . . . This book is an important exploration of the Latin American experience in Europe. . . . Uselessness is a novel of modern plight that’s brimming with hope and wisdom.” —Booklist “Exploring the themes of love, isolation, and intellectual maturation, Uselessness will resonate with anyone who has fallen in love with Paris and its extravagant promises of romance and fulfillment.” —Rachel Cordasco, BookRiot “What a powerful, bleak, and moving novel. It dwells on things—human insignificance, disappointment, compromise, failure—that most books only gesture at.” —Ross Posnock, Columbia University

Author : Roger Berkowitz
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823230759
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Thinking in Dark Times written by Roger Berkowitz and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hannah Arendt is one of the most important political theorists of the 20th century. This book focuses on how, against the professionalized discourses of theory, Arendt insists on the greater political importance of the ordinary activity of thinking.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1590178424
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Death of Napoleon written by Simon Leys and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Napoleon Bonaparte escapes exile just before death in this quirky alternate history novel that reimagines the life of the great French emperor. “This comic tale of Napoleon’s imaginary yet all-too-human tribulations poses serious questions about the relationship of truth, history and imagination.” —The Wall Street Journal Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena, leaving a double behind him. Now disguised as the cabin hand Eugène Lenormand and enduring the mockery of the crew (Na­po­leon, they laughingly nickname the pudgy, hopelessly clumsy little man), he is on his way back to Europe, ready to make contact with the huge secret organization that will return him to power. But then the ship on which he sails is rerouted from Bordeaux to Antwerp. When Napoleon disembarks, he is on his own. He revisits the battlefield of Waterloo, now a tourist destination. He makes his way to Paris. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps conduct our puzzled hero deeper and deeper into the mystery of Napoleon. Adapted into Alan Taylor’s 2001 film The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Death of Napoleon is a smart alternative history for the Napoleon obsessed—as deep and compelling as it is quirky and fresh.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Black Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1921866632
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Other People's Thoughts written by Simon Leys and published by Black Inc.. This book was released on 2007-10-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ʻA book is a mirror; if an ape looks into it, an apostle is hardly likely to look out.’ –G. C. Lichtenberg ‘The desire to go into politics is usually indicative of some sort of personality disorder, and it is precisely those who want power most that should be kept furthest from it.’ –Arthur Koestler ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.’ –Thoreau In this wonderfully entertaining collection of quotations, Simon Leys gathers insights and bons mots from a motley group of great artists, wits and thinkers. Topics range from ambition and adventure to youth, sex, time, toads, wine, faith and friendship. Wise, witty and delightfully unpredictable, Other People’s Thoughts is for anyone who has ever rifled through a friend’s bookshelves or snuck a peak over a reading stranger’s shoulder. In this wide-ranging miscellany, we are given free rein to explore the nooks and crannies of one man’s mental library. By turns profound, whimsical and subversive, the result is a book-lover’s delight.

Author : Rivka Galchen
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0811222977
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Little Labors written by Rivka Galchen and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In paperback at last: Rivka Galchen’s beloved baby bible—slyly hilarious, surprising, and absolutely essential reading for anyone who has ever had, held, or been a baby In this enchanting miscellany, Galchen notes that literature has more dogs than babies (and also more abortions), that the tally of children for many great women writers—Jane Bowles, Elizabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Willa Cather, Patricia Highsmith, Iris Murdoch, Djuna Barnes, Mavis Gallant—is zero, that orange is the new baby pink, that The Tale of Genji has no plot but plenty of drama about paternity, that babies exude an intoxicating black magic, and that a baby is a goldmine.