false<![CDATA[The Last Samurai]]>http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172551809m/190372.jpg19037216Helen DeWitt's extraordinary debut, <I>The Last Samurai</I>, centers on the relationship between Sibylla, a single mother of precocious and rigorous intelligence, and her son, who, owing to his mother's singular attitude to education, develops into a prodigy of learning. Ludo reads Homer in the original Greek at 4 before moving on to Hebrew, Japanese, Old Norse, and Inuit; studying advanced mathematical techniques (Fourier analysis and Laplace transformations); and, as the title hints, endlessly watching and analyzing Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, <I>The Seven Samurai</I>. But the one question that eludes an answer is that of the name of his father: Sibylla believes the film obliquely provides the male role models that Ludo's genetic father cannot, and refuses to be drawn on the question of paternal identity. The child thinks differently, however, and eventually sets out on a search, one that leads him beyond the certainties of acquired knowledge into the complex and messy world of adults.<p> The novel draws on themes topical and perennial--the hothousing of children, the familiar literary trope of the quest for the (absent) father--and as such, divides itself into two halves: the first describes Ludo's education, the second follows him in his search for his father and father figures. The first stresses a sacred, Apollonian pursuit of logic, precise (if wayward) erudition, and the erratic and endlessly fascinating architecture of languages, while the second moves this knowledge into the world of emotion, human ambitions, and their attendant frustrations and failures. <p> <I>The Last Samurai</I> is about the pleasure of ideas, the rich varieties of human thought, the possibilities that life offers us, and, ultimately, the balance between the structures we make of the world and the chaos that it proffers in return. Stylistically, the novel mirrors this ambivalence: DeWitt's remarkable prose follows the shifts and breaks of human consciousness and memory, capturing the intrusions of unspoken thought that punctuate conversation while providing tantalizing disquisitions on, for example, Japanese grammar or the physics of aerodynamics. It is remarkable, profound, and often very funny. Arigato DeWitt-sensei. <I>--Burhan Tufail</I>3766802000The Last Samuraitotal:747|5:339|4:226|3:124|2:43|1:15|7473072109715153falsefalseTue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006Sat Apr 14 21:25:31 -0700 2007Sun Apr 15 14:45:47 -0700 2007 One of my favorite books ever. I don't know is how time will affect my opinion of it, but I think it could last.
It's a novel about the normal and the eccentric, about learning, about languages, music, art, and Kurosawa. It's about the shape of brilliance. It d...more...]]>
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almost over the top, but fortunately she never goes too far. The characters are all profound and compelling, and deeply tragic in their own individual ways; the themes of connection bet...more...]]>
42falsefalseSun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Mon Jul 09 07:33:33 -0700 2007Wed Aug 15 07:16:11 -0700 2007
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51falsefalseThu Oct 30 00:00:00 -0700 2008Fri Oct 03 23:24:09 -0700 2008Thu Oct 30 14:19:25 -0700 2008 plus, it's the first fiction by a woman since ayn rand that i loved (don't hold that against me. it's like mand...more...]]>
21falsefalseTue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Sun May 13 16:25:53 -0700 2007Tue May 22 15:00:26 -0700 2007 I make it a rule not to read my book jackets ...more...]]>
51falsefalseThu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007Wed Nov 07 16:44:39 -0800 2007Mon Nov 26 10:32:37 -0800 2007
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31falsefalseWed Sep 17 00:00:00 -0700 2008Wed Sep 17 07:53:08 -0700 2008Wed Sep 17 07:53:08 -0700 2008 1 star because her prose is clunky ("He said:... I said:... He said:...") and banal ("The wind is howling. A cold rain is falling.") Because her experiments with form are juvenile and obnoxious. Above all, beca...more...]]>
51falsefalseMon Jun 11 16:27:15 -0700 2007Sat Jul 07 21:20:58 -0700 2007
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31falsefalseTue Dec 23 00:00:00 -0800 2008Thu Dec 11 14:31:56 -0800 2008Mon Dec 29 01:49:40 -0800 2008 interruption by another character
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51falsefalseTue Sep 25 05:51:11 -0700 2007Tue Sep 25 05:51:11 -0700 2007 Entirely unrelated to that movie of th...more...]]>
11falsefalseTue Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005Fri Dec 28 01:22:36 -0800 2007Fri Dec 28 01:27:31 -0800 200750falsefalseSun Dec 07 19:51:29 -0800 2008Fri Nov 21 17:50:26 -0800 2008Sun Dec 07 19:51:29 -0800 2008
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50falsefalseFri Dec 05 00:00:00 -0800 2008Sun Nov 30 09:28:14 -0800 2008Sat Dec 06 13:35:27 -0800 2008 At first I thought it was the book that the Tom Cruise movie was based on, so I didn't read it because I thought the movie was stupid.
And then I read the synopsis, that says it's about a single mother raising a son who ends up searching for his father, and I th...more...]]>
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50falsefalseFri Dec 19 05:17:35 -0800 2008Fri Dec 19 05:31:49 -0800 2008
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50falsetrueFri Jun 15 00:00:00 -0700 2007Tue Jun 30 10:53:06 -0700 2009Tue Sep 08 22:11:08 -0700 20092 It incorpora...more...]]>
50falsefalseMon Feb 25 09:10:34 -0800 2008Sat Apr 19 22:13:09 -0700 2008 I first read The Last Samurai several years ago, perhaps as many as ten? and while I found it fascinating, it was a struggle to finish. Sybilla, the first-half narrator, isn't especially stable; couple that with the fact that she is a gifted acad...more...]]>
50falsefalseMon Feb 25 00:00:00 -0800 2008Thu Feb 14 17:09:18 -0800 2008Mon Feb 25 17:31:54 -0800 2008
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30truefalseFri Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2005Thu Dec 20 09:42:14 -0800 2007Thu Dec 20 10:24:56 -0800 2007
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