false 167199 2 3 male 1955/11/10 90840 296360 1879193159 9781879193154 0 <![CDATA[Stet]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482853m/296360.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482853s/296360.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296360.Stet 4.50 8 Stet tells the life story of Stet, a filmmaker from Soviet Leningrad, who (like the real-life Sergei Paradjanov) is sent to a prison camp in the 1960's, and who dies there without having produced much more than a single film. The novel is narrated in an extravagant third-person voice which emulates the sound and attitude of the classic "Russian Novel." Opinionated, discursive, soulful, the voice establishes the basis of the society in which Stet lives: a place where everybody judges, everybody feels he has the right to criticize, and the State even encourages "self-criticism." Failing that, the State may even criticize you to death. The novel imagines a world where we do not live by our judgments of others, nor by our fear of what other people think of us. Stet, a classic Russian "holy fool," does not criticize anybody, and does not defend himself, but simply works at his art without acknowledging any barriers. He does not compromise because it doesn't occur to him to compromise. The result is that he is treated brutally by friends and enemies, and is judged in every imaginable way. Yet he lives and dies as a happy man. The mystery of this is the mystery of the novel.]]> 167199 4.05 41 9 2006 296363 1879193078 9781879193079 3 <![CDATA[Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream!]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482856m/296363.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482856s/296363.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296363.Daughter_I_Forbid_Your_Recurring_Dream_ 4.29 7 Frieda is trying to reconcile the things she believes in with the things she knows to be true. Each chapter of the book shows a different failed attempt of hers to take on some sort of faith--faith in the power of her own physical beauty, power of art, power of love, duty, religion--finally just the power of "what-is," simple existence. Each time, she immediately tests her new faith, and hits its limit, hence breaking one more enclosure for her spirit. Each smashed faith is like a box that breaks open, leaving her in a larger one, in which she then sinks her faith, only to then furiously test it in turn. (This--plus an an aspect of hommage to the artist Joseph Cornell--is why "boxes" are the recurring image.) She ends up homeless, with nothing but a memory of the tiny, meaningless original event from her childhood that happened to set her whole life onto a search for one True Belief.

]]> 167199 4.05 41 9 2000 1108198 1879193027 9781879193024 1 <![CDATA[Glass: Pray the Electrons Back to Sand]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181067073m/1108198.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1181067073s/1108198.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1108198.Glass_Pray_the_Electrons_Back_to_Sand 3.67 6 167199 4.05 41 9 1994 6267062 1879193183 9781879193185 0 <![CDATA[Degenerescence]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6267062.Degenerescence 4.75 4 Degenerescence is about the creation and destruction of the world--both creation and destruction being caused by language, the human urge to name things and make stories.

In the novel, a goddess named WOE creates a world and bears seven daughters, then witnesses the death of all her creation.

An homage to ancient Near East writings of 4000 years ago, Degenerescence shares with Sumerian literature a drumming repetition and a sense of devotional terror that inhabits every human's relationship with the natural world.

Written at a time when its author's own relationship to the literary arts is in question, its more hidden topic is his private world and what he himself may have destroyed and created.

]]> 167199 4.05 41 9 2009 1344799 1879193019 9781879193017 3 <![CDATA[The Walls Collide As You Expand, Dwarf Maple]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182885284m/1344799.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182885284s/1344799.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1344799.The_Walls_Collide_As_You_Expand_Dwarf_Maple 3.80 5 167199 4.05 41 9 1993 1344788 1879193175 9781879193178 1 <![CDATA[How Is This Going to Continue?]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182885139m/1344788.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182885139s/1344788.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1344788.How_Is_This_Going_to_Continue_ 4.25 4 The libretto consists of dozens of scored quotations from outside sources (many of them invented) around the subject of death. Particular obsessions of the composer--the life and death of contralto Kathleen Ferrier, the illnesses of Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould, and composers Gustav Mahler and Alfred Schnittke, as well as Hindu poetry, German history and many other matters, provide the reader with a ghostly outline of the soul of a dying artist.

The most unusual formal innovation here is the musical scoring, indicated by columns--the density of simultaneous sung quotations will increase in moments of great emotion; spareness and "white space" become more common as hope recedes. We gradually get a sense of the composer as one who had already withdrawn from the world, allied only with the woman he loved. And we see what is left for him once he has lost her.

This edition is signed by the author, and is limited to 50 copies

]]> 167199 4.05 41 9 2007 296364 1879193051 9781879193055 0 <![CDATA[In Candyland It's Cool to Feed On Your Friends]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482857m/296364.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173482857s/296364.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296364.In_Candyland_It_s_Cool_to_Feed_On_Your_Friends 3.75 4 167199 4.05 41 9 1997 670585 1879193000 9781879193000 1 <![CDATA[Our Plague: A Film from New York]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176978548m/670585.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176978548s/670585.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/670585.Our_Plague_A_Film_from_New_York 2.67 3 167199 4.05 41 9 1993 7416756 1845119401 9781845119409 0 <![CDATA[Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7416756-projecting-empire 0.0 0 167199 4.05 41 9 1647099 0.0 0 0 2009 7312338 186064158X 9781860641589 0 <![CDATA[The British at War]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7312338-the-british-at-war 0.0 0 167199 4.05 41 9 175580 3.00 1 0 1998