Amazon.com
Eating clay, drinking urine, applying honey to deep wounds and mere plaster to crushed bones: these are all folk remedies for ailments, passed on through the generations and thoroughly discounted by modern science. It is too bad, write scientist-historian couple Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein, who deplore the loss of proven methods developed without the blessing of the academy, noting that "formal academic systems are only one of many ways in which knowledge is discovered, accumulated, and transmitted." Many scientists are now coming to agree with this view, they write in this fascinating collection of case studies. Researchers have showed that black tea, for instance, has powerful antibiotic properties and that maggots do an extraordinary job of cleaning wounds--as traditional healers have known all along.
Book Description
This book covers remedies from ancient Egypt to the rain forests of contemporary Latin America, and challenges the myth that modern clinical practice is the only effective form of medicine. The authors find that modern research often reveals a rational basis for supposedly outdated ideas. Most important, an increasing number of physicians, pharmaceutical researchers, and scientists are beginning to recognize the wealth of knowledge that can be retrieved from abandoned practices of earlier eras in Western medicine and from outside the boundaries of Western ideas entirely.
Customer Reviews:
Rational, unbiased reports.......2004-05-07
The author has made an extensive research on the remedies written about in his book. At the end of the book, he has also advised on how we should accept or not accept old remedies or even modern or popular medical habits - he does not rule out modern medicines. I think a very rational view and discussion was presented.
Like all views given, of course there will definitely be some people who would strongly disagree and deny the book's integrity outright. However to benefit more from intelligence of this book is to have an open mind. Even at the end of the book, I can't bring myself to agree on the urine remedy - but I accept the clear explanations given.
I don't normally buy books and initially I borrowed it from the library, but I'm buying it because I think it's a good book to have for reference at home.
Historical Medical Evolution.......2003-02-28
Whether or not you buy the conclusions of the authors in regards to the treatments in this book, their discussion and analysis of these treatments in historical context and why the treatments were effective, is extremely important in understanding the evolution of medicine. And if you are someone who is interested in researching folk medicine or discovery of medical treatments, this book is an excellent resource. It certainly presents a lot of information not ordinarily available to the layperson.
Poorly researched. A sounding box for personnal beliefs........2002-01-11
This could have been a good book. The topic is great. Unfortunately, the author allows his personal beliefs to color virtually every aspect of the content thereby allowing the inclusion of many factual errors. No where is this more evident than in the chapter on circumcision. Contrary to the claims in this book, routine circumcision has NO medical benefit. Because it has no medical benefit, NO medical organization in the world recommends it. For example, circumcision does not prevent urinary track infection (urinary track infections are lower in Europe where circumcision is virtually unheard of) and many studies have shown circumcision to increase the rate of HIV infection and the rate of transmitting HIV/AIDS to the female partner (UNAIDS calls using circumcision to prevent AIDS playing Russian Roulette).
Circumcision is not a folk remedy or an old wive's tale. Circumcision was started as a "cure" for masturbation. Since then it has been a procedure in search of a disease. To little attention is paid to the life long harm done to the child. For example, circumcision is now believed to be a contributing factor in male sexual dysfunction since the procedure removes highly sensitive sexual tissue and the unprotected glans becomes desensitized through a hardening of the skin in a process called keritinization.
There are many other sections of this book that are also based on errors or misinformation. See some of the other reviews.
Highly unrecommended.
Shaky science.......2001-05-21
Well, I have to give the authors credit for *some* hard work at least--there are an impressive number of studies reviewed in this book, from what I can tell. I've only had it for a few hours, though, and I've already noticed one huge and glaring factual inaccuracy: in the chapter on contraceptives, the Root-Bernsteins write, "The only exception to this is RU 486, the 'morning-after pill,' which seems to work very much like the menstrual regulators of old." How on earth can an error like that slip into a chapter *about contraception* in a so-called scientific book? RU-486 is NOT the morning-after pill, as any mildly educated person--or woman knowledgable about her contraceptive options--could tell you; it is the abortion pill, which, taken orally, causes the abortion of a fetus. The morning-after pill is a different thing entirely; it must be taken within 48 hours of unprotected intercourse, and rather than killing an already-growing fetus, it prevents the implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterine lining. I am not a scientist. I am not a health worker. I am not a science writer authoring a chapter on contraception, and yet I know this and they apparently do not. What gives?
This is really a minor detail, but its inaccuracy leads me to doubt the accuracy or thoroughness of any other "facts" cited in the rest of the book. It doesn't mean that the book is not entertaining and interesting; I would just take the Root-Bernsteins' science with a grain of salt, and read this book more as entertainment than as a learning experience.
Cool study of nexus 'tween folk remedies and science.......1999-05-01
Although not being a medical or scientific type, I found this a fascinating book. Some of the behaviors described -- drinking urine or applying it to wounds, placing maggots on festering skin to draw out the dead and dying cells -- possess a horrid fascination for the lay reader, but the authors describe quite dispassionately the possible scientifically valid reasons behind them. Very interesting stuff.
Average customer rating:
- A complete waste of time, great start - worthless ending
- Another challenging story by John Fowles
- A very well-written book
- Fascinating book...
- So...This Was About...What? Time Travel? Anyone...?
|
A Maggot
John Fowles
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| Classics
| Contemporary
| General
| Historical
| Humor
| Letters & Correspondence
| Middle
| Old
| Poetry
| Renaissance
| Shakespeare
| Short Stories
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Literary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Historical
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Fowles, John
| ( F )
| Authors, A-Z
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Look Inside Fiction Books
| Trip
| Specialty Stores
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Literature & Fiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Mantissa (Back Bay Books)
-
Ebony Tower, The (Contemporary Classics)
-
Daniel Martin (Vintage Classics)
-
The Magus
-
The French Lieutenant's Woman (French Lieutenant's Woman)
ASIN: 0316290491 |
Customer Reviews:
A complete waste of time, great start - worthless ending.......2007-05-21
When I first started reading "A Maggot" I was enthralled. I found it hard to put the book down. The tale was great, interesting, well written...and I was so excited to find out what the mystery was. But there isn't one. SPOILER: It ends up being a quasi historical novel that details (very inaccurately) the events leading up to and the conception of Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers. The end of the book is just incomprehensible nonsense. A mishmash of futuristic time travel drivel and the rantings of a religious fanatic. The tragedy lies herein: this could have been a great novel, a wonderful story. But it isn't. It ends up being a train wreck at the end...and I felt very cheated. It is not great literature, not good literature. A book to be read and forgotten, as soon as you get over the feeling of being conned to finish the horrid thing. You'll wish you had put it down and forgotten about it before you read it, before you waste precious hours of your life being tricked into finishing a book that really is about nothing. That's the only compelling conclusion I can come to - this is a book about absolutely nothing.
Another challenging story by John Fowles.......2007-05-14
What a strange book. Having just finished this story, I find myself being unsure entirely what to make of it, I do not entirely think that it is successful, but it is imaginative and inventive and it goes to places which I was not entirely expecting.
To give an overview of the story, five people ride into a town in Devon in 1736. On first appearance they are a wealthy elderly gentleman, his young noble but poor nephew, a man servant and ladies maid and a guard on a mission to secure the nobleman an income via an assignation with a local woman. Several days later the man servant is found hung and the rest of the travelers have disappeared.
From this point we learn that the nobleman was in fact the youngest son of a very important peer and that none of the other travelers were what they initially appeared. The rest of the story is in the form an investigation undertaken by a lawyer who is an employee of said peer, to determine what transpired on the journey and the ultimate fate of his employers son, a well educated and thoughtful man who had recently been study a range of very esoteric philosophies. In the process of this investigation the lawyer finds and interrogates the three surviving members of the party, each of whom tells wildly divergent stories including a visitation from the devil and what appears to be time travelers in a UFO from an idealistic and peaceful future.
At the end of "A Maggot" many important facets remain unexplained, which is extremely frustrating but in keeping with the logic of the story, given that the three remaining view point characters are poorly educated and steeped in a tradition of explaining all unusual experiences or phenomena from a religious view point. The only person who could fill in the missing pieces is his Lordship, who remains the one participant whose story we never hear.
One of the many interesting elements that Fowles touches on in "A Maggot" is the relationship between his Lordship and his mute servant Dick, who it is suggested are the two disconnected "Manichaeist" halves of a single human nature with his Lordship being that which is spiritual and intellectual while Dick is the primal, base material side of our nature.
A stimulating is ultimately frustrating story.
A very well-written book.......2007-01-05
I have read just two books by Fowles: The Magus and A Maggot. Contrary to some reviews here, I find the Maggot better than the Magus. The Maggot has a better, more straightforward plot and a smaller set of characters. All the characters are pretty well described and the period setting is well done, often quite informative. Truly, it has some supernatural or theatrical elements woven into the plot, but this books lacks all the too many, confusing argumental twists of The Magus.
Fascinating book..........2005-11-21
such a book like A Maggot is rare and hardly found through our shallow life. I was mesmerized and chilled when I read what Fowles has described over heaven-like city, the people living there,the serenity he made readers felt. Perhaps he created an utopic world rather than offering a heaven to the readers in conventional way, and there forced them to take a breath . his imagination is far deep and above of any auhtors, and, to me, yet no one has reached the breadth of his achievement. read this book and see why
So...This Was About...What? Time Travel? Anyone...?.......2005-09-02
The vividly literate John Fowles is a fine writer but what ON earth was this book about? I read an interview where he commented that one day he would like to create "a maze constructed of literature" and perhaps that's the explanation for A Maggot, a novel that seems to begin as a straightforward, near-perfectly written tale set in the eighteenth century (roughly halfway between the Glorious and French Revolutions) but eventually becomes a science fiction-ish brain tease that doesn't exactly make much sense.
I THINK this was the story of a young 18th century Lord, a man steeped in occult and arcane lore, who, while mysteriously journeying on the muddy roads of western England with a few of his retainers and a hired prostitute, was taken into the distant, utopian future by a time traveler, and the Lord's father has hired a strong-arm investigator to learn what happened to his rebellious son, but..I'm not sure. This book was THAT nebulous. At first it begins well with its precise descriptions of a traveler's life in the 1730's, but it branches off into asides about civil disturbances in the north of Britain, and then shifts into...whatever it becomes. At the end Shakerism, hardly a world-changing religion, is foretold in an unenlightening aside, and there seems some hint that perhaps either the missing Lord or a man from the distant, peaceful future of earth, fathered, 'Mother Ann,' the founder of that now extinct cult.
Fowles' books always make intellectual demands on the reader, but I fear he may have left too much out in this case for us to piece together what he means.
Read this book, named after an archaic colloquialism for a riddle or puzzle, if you're an ardent admirer of John Fowles, if you like to visit recreations of the eighteenth-century, or if you think anything I've said in this review sounds welcoming, but be advised that this is an incompletely explained story that is frustrating and not wholeheartedly worth the time, sad to say.
Book Description
CAPTAIN HAZZARD - CURSE OF THE RED MAGGOT... Thought to be lost for all time, this classic Captain Hazzard story by Chester Hawks has been unearthed and once more completely rewritten and edited by modern day pulpsmith Ron Fortier! This 1938 exploit that pulp readers never saw is now, at long last, in print!... A heart shaped, blood-red pearl, in the hands of a master criminal has the power to incite bloody native revolts throughout the South Seas. Now, Captain Hazzard and his team of adventurers must travel half-way around the world to put an end to... the Curse of the Red Maggot!... Cover by Mark Maddox, with interior art by Rob Davis, this fantastic book also contains an interview with Rob Davis, which is illustrated with brand-new pin-ups of Captain Hazzard and his entire team! Not to be missed! A Ron Fortier Production.
Customer Reviews:
The New Character Begins to Stand On His Own.......2007-06-01
With this third edition of Captain Hazzard, the character begins to finally begins to settle into his own nitch, and the world of Pulp Fiction is better off for his stories! I still don't care much for the telepathy, but then this isn't my character, is it? Every hero has to have something that sets him or her apart from the herd. The mind is the last frontier. Action is plentiful, and when death is the only way out, Hazzard will deal it.
I wish the prices were slightly cheaper, but I own the three, and would buy others. Pulp needs a few good men...and women! Quoth the Raven...
Amazon.com
Death is rarely pretty. It is decidedly unappealing when a body, made available to nature, is colonized and consumed by insects, worms, and other animals--unless, like Zakaria Erzinçlioglu, you have an appreciation for this "magnificent and highly nutritious resource."
Erzinçlioglu, a forensic scientist with three decades' experience in solving all manner of grisly crimes, gives a lighthanded if sometimes creepy account of what happens to the human body in death, and of how scientists can deduce from the succession of insect life, among other signs, just what happened to bring about that demise. As he ranges across the annals of wrongdoing, crime buffs will learn much from his observations on, among other matters, the outright stupidity of many murderers, who "seem to think that the last place a criminal investigator is likely to look is under the floorboards," and the many odd twists and turns that a scientific investigation can take while ferreting out the truth.
Erzinçlioglu's book makes a sharp-witted companion to such recent works as Jessica Snyder Sachs's Corpse and Richard Conniff's Spineless Wonders, adding to a growing--and oddly fascinating--library devoted to the coroner's art. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Nominated for the British Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger Award, this book uses the science of forensic entomol-ogy to solve real-life crimes. Dr. Zakaria Erzinlioglu has been a practitioner for over twenty-five years and has been involved in more than 500 murder cases. His techniques are modeled on those of Sherlock Holmes, whose fans will love this real-life detective.
Customer Reviews:
Some Specialists SHOULDN'T Write thier memoirs.......2004-04-29
Some years ago I read a very interesting book by the former doorkeeper to the senate of the United States of America.Now keeping the door at the senate chamber may not sound like a very interesting job,nor might it sound like it would yeild up a whole lot of fascinating tales,but the book was great.Being a specialist,in most fields,should provide at least some very interesting material and,if written with style & flair,the collected material should make up an interesting book.
Alas,although Dr.Erzinclioglu does indeed have a lot of interesting material,he is consistently unable to make any of it interesting.In the murder cases he writes about,the good doctor fails to provide much in the way of details except for his own particular field and contribution...this is much like looking a one piece of a jigsaw puzzle,in that one might have a clue as to the overall picture but,without all of the other pieces one cannot fully appreciate it.The Doctor's writing style might best be described as dry...Boring also comes to mind,but,seemingly,the majority of scientists writing memoirs seem not to understand that the mass market audience likes factual accounts to read like fiction.In the case of"Maggots,Murder & Men"the writing is so choppy,so tepid,so infested with personal asides and thinly disguised political opinions,it would seem to me that the writing style,whatever it might be,would not help the book one bit.
Don't judge a book by it's cover..........2003-08-28
The title seemed promising enough. And sure, the beginning was a bit slow...forensic books can be that way sometimes, since there's a lot of technical information to convey. But, Dr. Zak's pompous biography never became even mildly interesting. The language was impossibly thick and the Sherlock Holmes references grew tiresome very quickly. Furthermore, Dr. Zak outlined cases in brief and cryptic passages, faling to inform (I believe I only learned the names of ten or so insects, unlike M. Lee Goff's book, where I found myself bombarded with fascinating information). Dr. Zak is highly subjective, melodramatic and conceited - even outlining cases in which he had absolutely no involvement - and seems like a petty novel compared to M. Lee Goff's "A Fly For the Prosecution".
My advice? If you're truly interested in the field, read "A Fly..." and leave "Maggots" to those who seek boredom, not information.
A Fine Collection of Anecdotes and Opinions.......2002-06-25
The secondary title of Maggots, Murder, and Men by Zakaria Erzinçlioglu is accurate-- Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist. Dr. Zak, as he is known to those unwilling to pronounce his name, has compiled an anthology of anecdotes and opinions accumulated over his long career of examining bugs for the British criminal justice system. I chose to read this book because I wanted to learn more than I already knew about forensic entomology, but I did not want to shell out the bucks to purchase an appropriate textbook. Maggots, Murder, and Men is a fine introduction to the basics; Dr. Erzinçlioglu explains quite nicely the logic of using flies, fly larvae and other creepy-crawlies to determine the time of death of a body. He provides a bit of the fly life cycle and discusses the ecology of various species, but the entomology ends there. There are no identification keys or the like.
The book is well written and entertaining. Besides bug stories, there is also a fair bit of exposition on such subjects as the criminal justice system, hypothesis testing, shady people (from both sides of the law), and Sherlock Holmes. I am quite sure that while one is picking through many tedious piles of insect samples a jillion odd thoughts pop to mind. I am thankful that Zakaria Erzinçlioglu chose to commit some of his to posterity.
"Maggots, Begetter Flies & Etc. in the Justice System".......2002-06-17
"Maggots, Murder, and Men"...is a 256 page treatise written by a notable forensic entomologist with more than 25 years of experience with Cambridge University academia, research at Durham University, and administration of criminal law in England.
The book is scholarly and extraordinarily well-written with innumerous factual details on a variety of maggots, begetter flies and a medley of insects which, to the trained scientist, can provided desirous and often crucial information and evidence that otherwise may be lacking regarding the time of day, season and place(s) of death. Such information is often critical in indicting and convicting or dismissing suspects in deaths from natural, accidental, suicidal, unknown, or homocidal causes.
More than a potpourri of intensely interesting forensic cases solved or confirmed by forensic entomology, the author provides 10 chapters which move from discussion of entomology, maggots, flies, to the identification of human remains and the nature of crime, criminals and the justice system. Chapter 4 "Foul, Strange and Unnatural" describes some grisly cases and the author muses about those evils perpetrated today contrasted to those in times long gone and proffers that "meaningless violence now occurs during times of peace and prosperity," and that the modern day vandal "derives pleasure from distress it causes others." He is loathe to openly discuss the feral things he has seen done to children. He is aghast at those who give "serious talk about the 'rights' of paedophiles to indulge their desires" and who assert these paedophiles "are yet another persecuted minority." He is concerned about societal fragmentation by the agency of moral relativism. Dr. Erzinclioglu regards some values/actions as "sacrosanct and inviolable."
Reference is given to the initial application of DNA using PCR in Chapter 7 and of the "coffin" scuttle fly Conicera tibialis which can locate a corpse 6 feet underground, and he provides comnmentaries in Chapter 8 "Past Times" of the four plagues of Egypt (O.T.), and coverage of myiasis (obligate and/or facultative parasitic maggot feeding on live flesh) with specific references to King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Syria), Herod the Great, King Herod Agrippa (Judea), Pheretima, etc., and reviews some of the unique problems of myiasis in domesticated versus indigenous mammals of different continents.
The Medicinal application of maggot therapy is well-covered in Chapter 9 that is replete with major tropical maladies, parasitology, and of the scientists who made discoveries leading to effective treatments and observations of maggot infestation in the Napoleonic, American Civil and the Great Wars.
In the final 25 pages, Chapter 10, the author articulates those perceived flaws and weaknesses he detected within the forensics of the Criminal Justice System (CJS), an adversarial system betwixt barristers. Elements of corruption on occasion were observed within the police system regarding creditability of evidence. The Home Office Forensic Science Service (HOFSS) under the CJS evolved into a 'privatized' FSS agency where cost factor by and by ordained the extent and type of forensic studies available to the prosecution. Frumpy & unqualified "muddy-water" consultants emerged as "specialists", plying their expertise through defence barristers. Since April 1999 scientific witnesses within the British Civil Justice System are no longer adversarial but answerable to the judge alone: This is not yet the case within the Criminal Justice System.
All in all, there is much more to this book than reviewed above. It is a scholarly work, written in a style which does not yield to cursory reading but with provoking commentary on those societal, judicial, and scientific issues that should insure a large audience for this exposition.
I would have liked to have seen a few illustrations of the various commonly encountered flies and maggots that were discussed, but references are provided for me to do so. A mystery to this reviewer is substitution of Pica pica with a member of the Muscidae family. To wit: the book's opening quotation taken from 'Who Killed Cock Robin?' Anon. is given as 'Who saw him die?', 'I' said the Fly...' is at variance with my library version which reads 'I', said the Magpie, 'with my little eye, I saw him die' from "Poor Cock Robin" printed in "Favorite Poems for Children" Ed. by Holly Pell McConnaughy. From cover to cover this is one of those books that simply can't get any better. It is underpriced and a "must read" that puts forensics in perspective.
Dr. Bugs Talks About Shirley Holmes.......2002-05-03
This book was worth the read, but it took a lot more effort to pay attention to than other forensic books I've read. The author is a forensic entomologist meaning he studies the life cycle of bugs on the dead to help estimate time of death and also connect the type of insect with the place of the homicide. This book had very small print and the author tended to refer back to a lot of Shirley Holmes stories (which made me want to buy some Shirley Holmes books because he never finished the whole story). Also, he tended to jump around a lot and not stay focused on one crime scene enough to give good details. The stories of the crime scenes and the insects found were not very detailed, and I really thought he would explain more about the different types of insects and get into more detail about them. The book was definitely worth the insight into the field of forensic entomology, but I just would have liked it better if his explanations of the crime scenes were more detailed and the insect identification was more detailed. Also, there were no pictures at all (other than fly sketches here and there), so that was definitely a bummer. The author is very knowledgable about his field, but book writing and story telling are not his forte.
Average customer rating:
|
Maggots, Grubs, And More : The Secret Lives of Young Insects
Melissa Stewart
Manufacturer: Millbrook Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
Nonfiction
| Bears
| Animals
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Nonfiction
| Bugs & Spiders
| Animals
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 4-8
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Invertebrates
| Zoology
| Biological Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0761326588 |
Book Description
After a decade in one South Seas mission, a London bank-clerk-turned-minister sets his heart on serving a remote volcanic island. Fanua contains neither cannibals nor Christians, but its citizens, his superior warns, are like children—immoral children. Still, Mr. Timothy Fortune lights out for Fanua. Yet after three years, he has made only one convert, and his devotion to the boy may prove more sensual than sacred. Mr. Fortune’s Maggot, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s second novel, is lyrical, droll, and deeply affecting, and her missionary captivated his creator as much as he did her readers.
Long after the book's publication, Warner began the novella The Salutation. Now adrift and starving on the Brazilian pampas, Mr. Fortune is rescued by an elderly widow, who delights in having an Englishman about the house. Her heir, however, may beg to differ.
Brilliant and subversive, Mr. Fortune's Maggot and its sequel are now available for the first time ever in one volume. They show Sylvia Townsend Warner at the height of her powers.
Customer Reviews:
The Love Laws.......2004-01-05
Gay? Or not gay? Let the reader decide. This very short novel about a Victorian-headed missionary who loses his head in the South Seas is a love story. The lover is the British man, the missionary, who gradually loses his balance. This is almost a spoof of "going native," because in this case, the natives are far more sensible and "civilized" than the missionary. The beloved is a native boy who is clueless of Mr. Fortune's torments, the guilts, and anguish. Forget about looking for "the good parts," if by that you mean the parts where they get it on. That never happens. What does happen is love. Mr. Fortune, against his will, loves Lueli, a young man who loves everything around him as easily as breathing and has no concept of shame. The novel invites us to think about guilt itself, about sexuality in any form, and about love. As Arundhati Roy wrote sixty years later, it is a novel about "the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much." Like all of Townsend-Warner's novels, this one reminds the reader of impermanence. "For no reason he could see he had suddenly become immensely popular. And as he walked to and fro in the twilight waiting for his guests to take themselves off he heard his name being bandied about in tones of the liveliest affection and approval. He had one consolation: by the morrow he would be out of fashion again. As for Lueli, they scarcely mentioned him. If he had drowned they would have spent the evening wailing and lamenting: not for him but for themselves, at the reminder of their own mortality, after the natural way of mourning."
Average customer rating:
|
Maggot
Mary Alexander Walker
Manufacturer: Atheneum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
| Baby-3
| Ages 4-8
| Ages 9-12
| Audiobooks
| Animals
| Arts & Music
| Authors & Illustrators, A-Z
| Computers
| Educational
| History & Historical Fiction
| Issues
| Literature
| Obsessions
| People & Places
| Popular Characters
| Reference & Nonfiction
| Religions
| Science, Nature & How It Works
| Series
| Sports & Activities
ASIN: 0689307896 |
Average customer rating:
|
Maggot
Robert Flanagan
Manufacturer: Paperback Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000IRXPPC |
Book Description
In his prize-winning debut collection, Ron Slate seeks out the intersections of art, technology, and humanity with intelligence, wit, and fervor. His unique voice is informed by his world travels as a business executive. As Robert Pinsky writes in his introduction, Slate "brings together the personal and the global in a way that is distinctive, subtle, defying expectations about what is political and what is personal." In Slate's words, "Is this the end of the world? / No just the end / of the language that describes it." Recently published in The New Yorker, Slate has been praised by James Longenbach for his ability to "make the known world seem wickedly strange a poetry that is utterly of the moment, our moment, because it sounds like nobody else."
Customer Reviews:
Half sublime, half half-baked.......2007-08-04
I've been reading through Ron Slate's first collection, "The Incentive of the Maggot", and what's striking besides the overwrought awfulness of the title, is that Slate hits the ball about half the time. Pinsky regards him as a second coming of Frank O'Hara, and I suppose he would be to someone who can't live without that good poet's name being invoked every other instance, but Slate is way too tense to pick up where O'Hara left off. O'Hara was relaxed, crazed, ecstatic, full of the mess and grace his enthusiasms brought to his verse. He never seemed as if he slaved over a foreign word or academic term, or strained to make the mundane world seem a mere disguise cast over a backlog of history. O'Hara's poems were full of the stuff in the world he lived, actually lived, and he addressed history, irony or political justice in ways that came to him in flashes, stolen moments.His poems , long and short, are records of intense feelings, recorded in whatever direction they might happen to fly.
O'Hara had a natural ear, tuned to music and melodic formation, and the lilt and swing and swagger of the musical phrase never left his lines; there is musicality even in the lesser work.Slate I think is a good poet who had not yet a full collection of finished poems by the time Maggot was published, and what ruins the book are so many poems that divert into mere knowingness, fancy asides where irony is used ham handedly and the larger associations , the flights of metaphor , are angry tirades against eternal injustice and the continuing triumph of the corporately mediocre. Slate is drawn between two schools of American poetry, The New York School with it's vernacular cityscape, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, who cannot discuss a poem without indicting a whole generation of poets that came before them. There is a goodly amount of confessional poetry too, and sometimes it works, but more often than not Slate's writing loses it's pitch and goes off key, plays atonal, goes too quickly from Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor.
Enjoyable........2007-01-26
Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot (Houghton Mifflin, 2005)
The Incentive of the Maggot, Ron Slate's first book, is very good at what it does. While you may have a slightly difficult time figuring out what, exactly, that is without having a go at Robert Pinsky's introduction, that should take nothing away from the poems themselves:
"Terraces of granite rose from the sea.
On the heights each watery quarry had a name
and a legend, atomic creatures, gangland
graves, a kid who dived and disappeared in 1959
but died in Quang Tin from a punji spike.
When we got to the quarry, our towels rolled, the police
were taking names. Someone was missing.
Would you like a bowl of cold borscht,
asked my grandmother, listening to my story.
Beet-red, sour cream swirled it out of plasma.
History begins with indignation
because it's so hard to remember
what's been remembered...."
(from "Granite City")
What I feel is the book's biggest (I was going to write "major," but really, it isn't) flaw isn't capable of being shown with any excerpt that wouldn't start pushing the boundaries of copyright law, because Slate's poems, like those of many poets who have worked for many years before publishing their first full volume, are all quite wonderful when taken separately; it's when you gather them together that they start to lose their meaning. Reading an excerpt, or a few poems at random, you'll still get the full effect of Slate's intricate, deliberate poems, pieces that demand careful reading and study (and actually give you something in return, unlike those in the Seamus Heaney book you can find reviewed elsewhere in this issue). When you assess a full book of them, however, they tend to flow together, and I don't mean that in a good way.
Don't get me wrong, this is a good book, and one I'm sure I will be returning to many times over the coming years, but I'll always be doing so for a single poem or a small selection, rather than a return journey through the entire volume. Taken in small doses, this is great stuff. *** ½
Compellingly Integrative.......2005-11-24
The last book of poetry I truly enjoyed was "Seven Years from Somewhere." This award-winning volume, heralded for its integration of art, technology, and humanity, is also praised for its integration of the global and the local.
This is a thinking person's book of poetry. It is a thin volume, ideally suited for a long airline trip, or for leaving by the fireplace to read one poem a night before going to sleep with the verses in mind.
Books:
- Hopscotch (Pantheon Modern Writers Series)
- How to Act Like a CEO: 10 Rules for Getting to the Top and Staying There
- If Only He Knew: What No Woman Can Resist
- Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader
- Italy: The Best Travel Writing from the New York Times
- Jaco: The Extraordinary and Tragic Life of Jaco Pastorius
- Jane Austen: The Complete Novels
- John Coltrane Solos
- John of God: The Brazilian Healer Who's Touched the Lives of Millions
- Keith Richards: Before They Make Me Run
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Kalooki Nights: A Novel
- Brother Odd
- The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels
- The New Hugo Winners IV
- The Photographer's Eye
- Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
- A Room of One's Own
- Tales from the Edge: True Adventures in Alaska
- The Richest Girl in the World: The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke
- How 10: Handbook for Office Professionals
RESPeRATE Blood Pressure Lowering Device
Airborne Effervescent Health Formula, Original Orange, 10 Tablets (Pack of 3)
![The Body Farm [Scarpetta]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0002EAU7M.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)
