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J. R. R. Tolkien, scholar and storyteller: Essays in memoriam

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J. R. R. Tolkien, scholar and storyteller: Essays in memoriam

Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 080141038X

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DIVERS TONES
Greatest Narrative Poem since Paradise Lost
He Was Too Young To Die.

In Memoriam (Norton Critical Editions)
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393979261

Book Description

Tennyson's central poem is presented with an extensive introduction that provides background information on the poet and poem as well as an overview of In Memoriam's formal and thematic peculiarities, including Tennyson's use of the stanza and the poem's rhyme scheme.

The authoritative text is again that of the Eversley Edition of Tennyson's Works, published in 1901—8, which is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations.

"Criticism" contains thirteen essays--seven of which are new to the Second Edition-among them examples of formal (Sarah Gates), contextual (W. David Shaw), reader-response (Timothy Peltason), queer (Jeff Nunokawa), and genre (Alan Sinfield) criticism. A chapter from Christopher Ricks's influential biography, Tennyson, is included.

A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index of First Lines are also included.

About the series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

Customer Reviews:

DIVERS TONES.......2006-08-11

This is a critical edition with a vengeance. By page-count, the 3000-line poem occupies about 100 pages while the critical essays at the back take up about 150, and there is a preface as well. Whether this preface is from the pen of the editor Erik Gray or is by the previous Norton editor Robert H Ross I'm not fully clear, but I don't suppose it matters. For present purposes I am considering this introduction together with the appended essays.

The great and good of lit crit are out in force here. There is Andrew Bradley, there is T S Eliot, there is Basil Willey and there is Christopher Ricks to mention only four of the twelve essayists excluding Hallam Lord Tennyson, son of the poet himself. I myself have a rather low tolerance of literary criticism, much of which candidly seems to me neither here nor there, indeed at times a bit of a self-perpetuating racket. What I look for in it is genuine illumination, and I flogged through the contributions here dutifully if listlessly in search of that. Failing illumination I will settle for good sense, and the main instances of that here are two remarks of the poet's own, to the effect that this is a poem not a treatise, poetry not philosophy or biography. Poetry, said Housman, is 'a tone of voice, a way of saying things'. Earnest analysis of the religious and agnostic elements in the poet's mind is not literary criticism at all, but biography. It is using the poem to illustrate the poet. When this is extended into the further question, as Eliot once allowed himself to extend it, of the relative merits of firm Christian faith vis-à-vis agnosticism, it is simply extraneous philosophy and nothing to do with Tennyson or with his poem at all.

Roughly speaking, the more recent critics keep this basic point in mind better than the earlier do, although often alluding to one another as they go along. The quality of the various contributions does not of course depend on the extent to which they are literary criticism in the proper sense. I genuinely do find illumination here and there along the way, mainly but not entirely in the pieces that seem most relevant to the poem. I found T S Eliot very helpful in his contribution on the dry and academic-seeming issue of the versification, because to me this is not dry but accounts for the extraordinary effectiveness of this great poem to a major extent. To be able to keep a poem of 3000 short tetrameter lines going in their monotonous rhyme-scheme without fatiguing the ear is a phenomenal achievement, and I'm not sure which other English poet could have matched it. Swinburne's anapaests usually have me exhausted after a page and a half, but I can read In Memoriam from end to end at one sitting and finish up not only fresh but elated at its sheer skill and adroitness. On the other hand, Bradley hacks away at the 'structure' of the poem with a determination that leaves me cold. To me, In Memoriam has shape but not structure, in the way a cloud-mass has that. The poet's musings drift through his successive moods as the random thoughts occur to him: Bradley's pedantry would be better suited to some manual.

Perhaps the best essay, at least in the sense of covering the most ground, is by Ricks. However one that is particularly interesting is by Jeff Nunokawa, exploring possible homoerotic elements in the expression. He is very nimble-footed in his approach, wisely not over-committing himself and of course understanding clearly that some of the more amorous-sounding expressions are largely literary convention with a pedigree going back millennia. Tennyson's poetry, to me, doesn't usually convey much erotic impression of any kind, and I sense something else entirely here. What I sense is mental and emotional liberation - after his ghastly upbringing I suspect that Tennyson found in Hallam a window into a better and more beautiful world, and that eroticism may have had very little to do with it. Another aspect that needs and receives consideration from the essayists is the epilogue to the poem, and here again I wonder whether something has been missed. This epilogue is completely at variance with the rest of the great poem in tone and sentiment, and attempts to link it with the frequent expressions of aspiration to a better world earlier in the work, while fair up to a point, seem to me to miss the main point. Go back to old Chaucer and the epilogue to his own great Troilus and Criseyde. There also the poet goes off at a tangent, and I think for the same reason. There is an abstract aspect to poetry just as there is to music, and the soul of literature itself finally trumps all the mundane considerations of beliefs, passions, theories and personal relationships.

I don't suppose I would dare award this production less than the highest rating, but I wouldn't be right to either. My own reservations are mainly subjective, and what does not convince me often has for others the aspect of great and prevalent truth. As a passionate lover of the great English language and its incomparable literature I shunned like the pestilence academic courses in `English'. That is precisely the market this edition is aimed at, it has everything and everyone it should have basically, and the 100 pages of the book that matter to me are beyond the reach of all of them.

Greatest Narrative Poem since Paradise Lost.......2005-10-04

Yes, I mean it.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was definately the greatest poet of the Victorian Age, and in my opinion the greatest English poet of the nineteenth century.

This wonderful Norton Critical Edition presents his masterpiece, the great poetical work which made him poet laureate when it was published in 1850.

In this great work, it is Tennyson analysing his grief over the sudden loss of his friend from Cambridge University, Arthur Hallam, who died of a stroke in 1833. Later that year, Tennyson began his greatest masterpiece.

Definately get this version, if you like it, check out Tennyson's other great masterpiece, The Idylls of the King (1859-1885).

He Was Too Young To Die........2005-09-22

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote:

"Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise."

Zachary writes, "Life without Tristan is like the dark side of the moon. It's been eighteen weeks since I've seen him -- can't think of the last time I hugged him or told him I loved him or was proud of him. All I know is that I failed him, or he'd still be alife if I'd protected him more. This is not a rational thing, I realize, but it's how I honestly feel. I'm editing some of Tristan's poetry. He was more creative and much smarter than me."

"The lesser griefs that may be said,
That breathe a thousand tender vows,
Are but as servants in a house
Where lies the master newly dead;
Who speak their feeling as it is,
And weep the fulness from the mind:
`It will be hard,' they say, `to find
Another service such as this.'

My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are other griefs within,
And tears that at their fountain freeze;

For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit:

But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and think,
`How good! how kind! and he is gone.'

"I still suffer enormously -- it's actually worse now, because the shock and numbness are wearing off." This is a tribute using A. Lord Tennyson's poem in memory of a son by my son.

Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism

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Speak..and Enlighten...Sexual AND Academic Victorian Modes..

Masculine Desire: The Sexual Politics of Victorian Aestheticism
Richard Dellamora
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Beginning with Tennyson's In Memoriam and continuing by way of Hopkins and Swinburne to the novels of Oscar Wilde and Thomas Hardy, Richard Dellamora draws on journals, letters, censored texts, and pornography to examine the cultural construction of masculinity in Victorian literature.

Central to the struggle over the meaning of masculine desire was the institutional politics of Oxford University, where Benjamin Jowett, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and Walter Pater were principal players. As a young man in the 1860s, Pater, the art historian, essayist, and novelist, theorized a place for desire between men in cultural formation and critique. Later, in a climate of growing intolerance, he continued to affirm male-male desire but with increasing attention to the social functions of homophobia. Dellamora shows that discontent with conventional gender roles animated efforts to reimagine the possibilities of masculine existence.

Customer Reviews:

Speak..and Enlighten...Sexual AND Academic Victorian Modes.........2002-06-29

This is an incredibly insightful, well argued, and superbly
interesting study of male desire and its effects on Victorian
culture. A major part of the focus of this study concerns
the interacting awarenesses, defenses, attacks, and
deflections of male same-sex attraction AND desire,
and the various responses to those two factors
in relation to the classical Greek writings and art
as they influenced the thoughts and creativity of
Victorian male lives, especially in the academic
centers of Cambridge and Oxford Universities.
This study is very readable, even though the
first paragraph of the "Introduction" sounds too
"academic," the rest of the Introduction explains
the focus. The author of this work, Richard Dellamora,
is working with or against various ideas
expressed in the writings of Michel Foucault [History of
Sex: Vol. 1 An Introduction; Vol. _The Use of Pleasure_],
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick [_Between Men: English Literature and
Male Homosocial Desire_], Elaine Showalter [_The Female
Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980_;
_A Literature of Their Own_]and other writers on sexuality
and gender, dealing with the Victorian period.
But this is no "he says; she says..." study. It is
truly a remarkable and incredibly insightful and
interesting, well focused and clearly presented work.
It is a very important source of knowledge and study
in its own right--this author has well studied and
knows the people, their works, and the issues and
arguments involved. He clearly and inspiringly explains
the meanings of the works, their major ideas, and the
counter ideas, and where each is focused
in its arguments. But the work is not dry reading.
Dellamora deals with male desire as it is
expressed in the works of both those male writers
whose affections and interests are focused on the male
exclusively, as well as with those males who have
sought the expression of their life association and

sexuality with women,but who have nonetheless been
aware of, been participants in, and been celebrators
of profound male bonding desire,
even if not of a sexual nature. Indeed, Dellamora's
main argument is that the history of the presentation
of male desire in the 19th century English cultural
context transcends the limitation imposed by the idea
that only "homosexuals" would be aware of, feel,
or desire such male oriented caring. That idea breaks
the stereotype and opens up (liberates) the cultural
strictures and impositions that sadly still dominate
willingness to talk of male desire and sexuality in
some academic writings, especially in the United States.
Mr. Dellamora is professor of English and Cultural Studies
at Trent University in Ontario [according to the back cover].
The chapter titles help to show the range and excellent
areas of analysis by the author, who knows and uses the
writings, letters, and sources extremely well. The titles
are: Introduction-Masculine Desire and the Question of the
Subject; (1) Tennyson, the Apostles, and _In Memoriam_; (2)
"Spousal Love" in the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins; (3)
[Walter]Pater at Oxford in 1864--Old Mortality and
"Diaphaneite"; (4) Poetic Perversities of A. C. Swinburne;
Excursus--Hopkins, Swinburne, and the Whitmanian Signifier;
(5) [Matthew]Arnold, Winckelmann, and [Walter] Pater;
(6) John Ruskin and the Character of Male Genius; (7)
Leonardo, Medusa, and the Wish to be Woman; (8) "The New
Chivalry" and Oxford Politics (the contest to elect a new
Professor of Poetry at Oxford; the influences of Walter
Pater, John Addington Symonds, and Jowett);
9)Theorizing Homophobia--Analysis of Myth in Pater;
(10) Homosexual Scandal and Compulsory Heterosexuality
in the 1890s; Afterword--The Subject of Sexual (In)difference.
The Bibliography at the back of this book is
exceptional, interesting, and informative (in terms of
future sources that one might wish to consult or
purchase for one's own use). It is filled with both
essay and book entries, but all of a highly
intellectual and culturally stimulating kind.
Dellamora presents here a thorough, well studied,
well analyzed, and totally enlightening work. It is
well worth the purchase by any reader interested in
the subjects of male desire, cultural impact, and
artistic expression.
His exceptional gift in this work is to use letters
and journals to show the range of feelings and

expressions -- the letters between Arthur Hallam
to Richard Milnes and the expressions between
Tennyson and Hallam are incredibly interesting
(as well as being something one would not be
able to easily access from other sources). The other
personages inovlved in the Apostles and
their interests and expressions and doings
provide great insight also in understanding
more fully the context of the cultural and personal
interactions that were going on at both Cambridge
and Oxford in the 1800s.
[Byron and Tennyson attended Cambridge;
Pater, Hopkins (tutored by Pater), Symonds,
Ruskin, and Wilde attended Oxford.]
Notice: Dellamora uses the words which
the writers of the works and the letters use --
both Latinate and common. The words have both
to do with bodily parts and sexual acts, so the
general reader should be aware. But none of
this is presented in a sensationalist fashion, rather
as an enlightening insight into the thoughts and ideas
that motivated, influenced, and found expression (or
repression) in the lives of the experiencers. This is
NOT a book about sex or about sex acts -- it is about
ideas and desires and their influences on personal
motivations, strivings, and artistic expressions.

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A Heartfelt Look at Grief and Loss
Helped Heal My Heart
After reading this book, I knew I was grieving, not crazy!

In Memoriam
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Manufacturer: Ave Maria Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1594710546

Customer Reviews:

A Heartfelt Look at Grief and Loss.......2004-09-25

IN MEMORIAM could be called Henri Nouwen's version of C.S. Lewis' A GRIEF OBSERVED. Just as Lewis looked at the questions of good and evil, faith and loss in his classic work about the death of his beloved wife, Nouwen looks at these same issues in this work about losing his mother. When IN MEMORIAM was first published, there were some critics who believed that Nouwen was too quick to publish this work and that he still had grieving issues to work out, yet very quickly the book found an audience with people who believed that Nouwen was speaking directly to the heart. To be fair, the relationship between Nouwen and his mother is too idealized, and in later writings he speaks more honestly about his relationship with his mother. Yet this idealization is the honest way many of us feel after an immediate loss. When faced with loss, even the worst of sinners becomes an instant saint. It's only later we look at a person's life in a more realistic manner. Some of his answers about life and death may seem to simplistic, yet readers who know Nouwen's writings know that when Nouwen wrote, he was writing for himself as much as for his readers, and the struggles he tries to help readers understand are his own struggles. In the end, what we discover is a person who tries to look at loss in the light of faith and we do so by reading the words of a writer who honestly shares what he is feeling at the moment of loss.

The power of IN MEMORIAM does not come from Nouwen's insights into death, loss, and grief, as profound as these insights happen to be. Rather in Nouwen's work we find someone who is struggling with these questions and invites the reader to struggle as well. In a sense Nouwen becomes a companion with his readers. He offers a sense of hope, which is what Nouwen attempts to do in most of his writings, and judging from the lives he has touched, obviously succeeds in doing.

Helped Heal My Heart.......2000-05-29

After my mother's death, I felt the deepest pain of my life. This book helped heal my heart. It is impossible to read without shedding many healing tears.

After reading this book, I knew I was grieving, not crazy!.......1999-10-20

This book helped me through the darkest days after the death of my mother. I thought, I was prepared for her death and being without her. How surprised I was to feel such a deep sense of loss and longing. I thought I was going crazy. After reading the author's reaction to his mother's death and how one grieves, I realized with a thankful heart that I was not crazy. I began to start to heal my broken heart.

In Memoriam: A Guide to Modern Funeral and Memorial Services (2nd Edition)

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Funeral Wars
Assistance
interesting

In Memoriam: A Guide to Modern Funeral and Memorial Services (2nd Edition)
Edward Searl
Manufacturer: Skinner House Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155896407X

Customer Reviews:

Funeral Wars.......2007-03-15

Benjamin Franklin once said, "In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes. At least now, thanks to the internet, death doesn't have to be as expensive.

According to AARP, the average funeral in the United States can easily reach $10,000 once a burial plot, flowers and other costs are included.

Educated consumers are no longer in the dark about how the funeral industry works. Big conglomerates are mercilessly buying up family-operated homes with their eyes solely on the bottom-line. Caskets alone average a 600% mark up. They may be the last example of a legal monopoly left in the United States. Mourners are literally gauged, as they haven't the time or presence of mind to comparison shop.

It has always been tradition to call upon the neighborhood funeral parlor, cemetery or monument dealer when a loved-one passes. But, due to the internet, that traditional is starting to change.

MonumentsInStone is the sister company of Interstate Granite, a family-owned, monument manufacturer that has been in business in the Atlanta area since 1916. They have recently launched a website, offering granite headstones, bronze markers and crematory products at a fraction of their retail price. "We have been there." Say the owner, Robert Womac. "And, we want to right an industry-wide wrong."

MonumentsInStone supplies headstones and memorials directly to the consumer. Although cemeteries might not like this, they have to, by law, accept a stone from an outside source. The savings have been a blessing for many customers.

The Funeral Consumers Alliance has many tips that should be followed when planning a funeral. They told us that savvy consumers need to shop around for a grave marker or monument. The Better Business Bureau also warns to resist high-priced sales pitches from funeral industry vendors. They should treat you with compassion; not pressure you.

Perhaps, asking a friend or neighbor to work the phones or search the net would be a good idea. Even a check on Ebay has produced a number of beautiful choices. I found an elegant, Granite Companion Monument for a third of the price my funeral parlor was pitching. A Tombstone on Ebay? I emailed the highest bidder to find out why. "I'm sorry," He told me. " I see no reason to pay top dollar because of some outdated

Assistance.......2004-11-29

If you have ever attended a funeral or memorial service and come away disappointed because you thought it was inappropriate or that the deceased would have hated it, then this book can help. As its title states, it really does provide a guide to selecting the type of ceremony you want. And because it was published by the Unitarian Universalists, it provides a wide range of religious options.

interesting.......2000-11-25

I read it for a class, it was very informative. I would suggest it to everyone who wants to know more on thev subject

I.M. Ischa Meijer. In Margine. In Memoriam.

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Real lover or a real author? I think she's both...

I.M. Ischa Meijer. In Margine. In Memoriam.
Connie Palmen
Manufacturer: Diogenes Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 325723287X

Customer Reviews:

Real lover or a real author? I think she's both..........2006-07-25

I met this book just by chance and had no prior information about the author. As soon as I started to read the book, I realised I found a real author. After finishing the book I found her other 2 books and read them as well (The Laws and the Friendship).

I.M. is a documentary novel which covers Connie Palmen's love affair with Ischa Meier, another publicly well-known figure. The way Connie Palmen tells this heartbreaking but also wonderful story is very intimate and tasteful. By the way, she studied philosophy and this gives an undeniable flavour to the book. At the end you think either she is a real author or a real lover. I thinks she's both.

I definitely recommend this book and also her other books although I think I.M. is her best book yet among those I've read.

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In memoriam

Paramahansa Yogananda: In Memoriam
Self-Realization Fellowship
Manufacturer: Self-Realization Fellowship Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

In memoriam.......2000-06-24

Last days of the Great Guru has been given for the benifit of His friends and disciples

The Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia (In Memoriam, Volume 6)

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The Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia (In Memoriam, Volume 6)
Arturo Beeche
Manufacturer: Eurohistory.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NSH5V6

Product Description

In Memoriam is an exclusive EUROHISTORY royalty series dedicated to the life of some of the most interesting and intriguing royal personalities of the XXth century. Lavishly illustrated with many rare photographs from EUROHISTORY's renowned photo archive - each volume contains more than 130 wonderful images of the person it pays tribute to. We have also included family trees and genealogical information, as well as biography of the person or couple the volume pays tribute to. This volume covers the life of the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia, mother of the country's last Tsar Nichlas II.

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Interesting History, Bad Mystery

Murder in Memoriam (Five Star Fiction)

Manufacturer: Serpent's Tail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

"Murder in Memoriam is the kind of book that begins to restore one's confidence in the detective story."-Nick Hornby

Set against the backdrop of a demonstration in Paris in 1961, in which hundreds of Algerians died, Didier Daeninckx's chilling novel created uproar when first published in France in 1984. Roger Thiraud, a young history teacher, is killed during the demonstration. Twenty years later, his son is murdered in Toulouse. To find the connection between the murders, Inspector Cadin must delve into the secret history and devastating compromises of wartime politics. Murder in Memoriam is a tense and unsettling indictment of France's racist past.

Born in 1949, Didier Daeninckx lives in Paris. Recognized as France's leading left-wing mystery writer, his work is translated into all European languages.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting History, Bad Mystery.......2001-09-19

Daeninckx is apparently a very prolific mystery writer in his native France, and this book won the "Grand Prix de littérature policière" in 1984. Unfortunately for the non-French reader, much of it depends on a knowledge of-or at least a strong interest in-domestic French politics and infighting following WWII. I had originally picked this up because I had liked another of his books in translation, A Very Profitable War, and this one revolves around a murder that takes place during pro-Algerian demonstrations in 1961 (which sounded intriguing). When the murdered man's son is himself murdered some 20 years later in Toulouse, a local police inspector starts trying to figure if there's a connection between the two killings. Mostly this is an excuse for Daeninckx to highlight some of the lowlights in French civil history, mainly bureaucratic zeal in assisting German occupiers with rounding up Jews, and later the massacre (and subsequent cover-up) of unarmed Algerian demonstrators on October 17, 1961 by French paramilitary police. There's actually quite a lot of interesting political history here, but there are no well-drawn characters, nor decent writing to carry it along. A noble effort at exhuming history that many French, one suspects, would rather leave forgotten, but not the most engaging story.

The Call-girls: A Tragi-comedy in Memoriam Messieurs Bouvard Et Pecuchet

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I love Koestler. Don't start here.
Is it live or is it....?
Hilarious Parody of Academic Jet-Setters

The Call-girls: A Tragi-comedy in Memoriam Messieurs Bouvard Et Pecuchet
Arthur Koestler
Manufacturer: Arrow (A Division of Random House Group)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0091369304

Customer Reviews:

I love Koestler. Don't start here........2004-07-08

The Call-Girls is a novel evidently intended as a "popularization" -- since people like to read novels! -- of ideas that Koestler covered more exhaustively in his book-length essays, in particular The Ghost in the Machine and Janus: A Summing Up. The fictional structure is really little more than a skeletal frame into which Koestler has dumped (sometimes verbatim) arguments that he formulated elsewhere: A dozen "quirky" professor-types (one giggles, one blushes, one's outspoken and gay, one does ten things at once, etc.) -- the jetsetting symposia-attending call-girls of the title -- come together in Switzerland to discuss how mankind is to be saved from itself. So that's what they do. As story, this is less than gripping; and either of the abovementioned nonfiction titles will serve as a better introduction to Koestler's ideas, which ARE gripping.

Is it live or is it....?.......2000-07-01

As an academic novel, Koestler's Call Girls has relatively little to recommend it, perhaps in part because it cuts so close the bone. Reading Koester's description of a small conference of academic "call girls" is all too similar to the real thing. The pompous posturing and politicking of such a group is every bit as tedious on the printed page as it is in person. If one is looking for an enjoyable academic satire, try David Lodge's Changing Places or Small World, try Richard Russo's Straight Man, or even try Jane Smiley's Moo; for a somewhat more serious expose, try Carl Djerassi's Cantor's Dilemma.

Not that I wish to dismiss this work entirely; Koestler's novel is far more successful as a bleak commentary on the direction of the human race, mostly due to the two brilliant short pieces which frame the centeral academic tale. These pieces remaing brilliant and haunting despite the dry centerpiece.

Hilarious Parody of Academic Jet-Setters.......1999-09-16

Koestler, best known for "Darkness at Noon", left us a satire of modern academe easily on a par with "White Noise". The book revolves around the smarmy and cynical personalities of several distinguished academics who are attending a conference, and offers readers a novel of ideas which asks disturbing questions about the relationship of intellectuals to society.

Books:

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