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Contract Law
The Textbook series offers a comprehensive range of clear, direct and stimulating texts for LLB and CPE students, as well as those approaching the subject for the first time at undergraduate or postgraduate level, including non-law students in related fields. The texts adopt a contextual approach, with in-depth analysis and discussion and sufficient depth of coverage to serve as a main course text for any modular course. The series covers a range of core subjects and popular options offered at undergraduate level.
554 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2001
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March 31, 2013
There are, in life, these things we like to call moments. Sharp, fleeting embers of understanding, which rise upward from the flame of experience, illuminating, for the briefest of moments, the darkness of ignorance and mystery and misapprehension; carrying us ever upward, toward a common humanity; toward life and love and beauty and truth.
What triggers these moments differs from person to person, place to place. It may be the vastness of the Atlantic on a stormy December morn. It may be the smell inside the Sistine Chapel; the sight of the bulls at Pamplona; or the birth of one's first child. The moon landing was, no doubt, a generational moment. But, like it's unassuming [though illustrious] author, my trigger presented in a modest guise--paperback, to be precise. Yes, my trigger was George Applebey's "Contract Law" textbook; and I've been fighting to regain the feeling ever since.
Indeed, "Contract Law" is widely regarded as law's pièce de résistance--its greatest achievement; and with good reason. But, given its mellifluous prose and breathtaking range, confining it to the legal realm, and referring to it as a textbook, no less, seems, to me, an indignity of nauseating proportions; a great injustice. It is art; plainly, and simply, it is art. And art transcends barriers; it unifies, not divides; it allows man, momentarily, to revel in the beauty and rhythm of life and love and collective experience; it's an experience. And, indeed, that's what George Applebey's "Contract Law" is all about--the experience. His commentary on the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 was brazen and stylistically daring. His chapter on Privity moved me to tears. Consideration? Genius. Duress? I can't comment; the pain of it being over is too much to bear.
But, alas, some argue that Applebey's publishing career was too short-lived--that, with only one edition, we cannot possibly gauge his Historical influence. I would maintain, however, that sometimes one is enough; that sometimes History requires no more. After all, what would Western literature be without Joyce's Ulysses? Or the Renaissance, without Michelangelo's Pietà? And if these great men of History had stopped there--if, like George Applebey, they'd stopped at one--would their Greatness have been at all diminished? No. Because sometimes one is enough--sometimes perfection needs no encore.
But like the spark that flies upward--flying further and further from the flame; its glow diminishing; its rhythm slowing; faintly flickering before dying with a dying fall--the conclusion of George Applebey's "Contract Law" leaves you in the dark. Not the darkness of ignorance, though. No. Rather, the darkness of knowledge. The knowledge that, in all likelihood, there won't be a second edition; and that, therefore, experiencing "Contract Law" again, as though for the first time--with all its breathtaking highs and earth shattering lows--will always be outside the realm of possibility; always but a mere memory. A happy memory, true; but a memory, nonetheless.
What triggers these moments differs from person to person, place to place. It may be the vastness of the Atlantic on a stormy December morn. It may be the smell inside the Sistine Chapel; the sight of the bulls at Pamplona; or the birth of one's first child. The moon landing was, no doubt, a generational moment. But, like it's unassuming [though illustrious] author, my trigger presented in a modest guise--paperback, to be precise. Yes, my trigger was George Applebey's "Contract Law" textbook; and I've been fighting to regain the feeling ever since.
Indeed, "Contract Law" is widely regarded as law's pièce de résistance--its greatest achievement; and with good reason. But, given its mellifluous prose and breathtaking range, confining it to the legal realm, and referring to it as a textbook, no less, seems, to me, an indignity of nauseating proportions; a great injustice. It is art; plainly, and simply, it is art. And art transcends barriers; it unifies, not divides; it allows man, momentarily, to revel in the beauty and rhythm of life and love and collective experience; it's an experience. And, indeed, that's what George Applebey's "Contract Law" is all about--the experience. His commentary on the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 was brazen and stylistically daring. His chapter on Privity moved me to tears. Consideration? Genius. Duress? I can't comment; the pain of it being over is too much to bear.
But, alas, some argue that Applebey's publishing career was too short-lived--that, with only one edition, we cannot possibly gauge his Historical influence. I would maintain, however, that sometimes one is enough; that sometimes History requires no more. After all, what would Western literature be without Joyce's Ulysses? Or the Renaissance, without Michelangelo's Pietà? And if these great men of History had stopped there--if, like George Applebey, they'd stopped at one--would their Greatness have been at all diminished? No. Because sometimes one is enough--sometimes perfection needs no encore.
But like the spark that flies upward--flying further and further from the flame; its glow diminishing; its rhythm slowing; faintly flickering before dying with a dying fall--the conclusion of George Applebey's "Contract Law" leaves you in the dark. Not the darkness of ignorance, though. No. Rather, the darkness of knowledge. The knowledge that, in all likelihood, there won't be a second edition; and that, therefore, experiencing "Contract Law" again, as though for the first time--with all its breathtaking highs and earth shattering lows--will always be outside the realm of possibility; always but a mere memory. A happy memory, true; but a memory, nonetheless.
Displaying 1 of 1 review