Book Description
Written originally as a series of entries in a travel diary and now considered one of the most important memoirs of our time, Sketches from a Life is George F. Kennan's peerless, impressionistic record of his experiences with twentieth-century history. Beginning with his first foreign service post in 1927 and ending seven decades later, Kennan's account is rich with the insight of a major historical participant. Whether relating the perils of Hitler's Germany or revisiting Kennan's days as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Sketches from a Life is as riveting as great literature, and one of the most invaluable documents of our time.
Customer Reviews:
He had an interesting life, and the book shows it.......2007-02-23
I guess if you want to write a book on sketches of your life, you've got to have lived an interesting one. And Mr Kennan did.
He lived most of his adult life abroad, mostly in Europe, with a focus in the Eastern part. This allows him to give a nice perspective of life in the Old World versus America. Also, because he lived to be 100, he can give a very good perspective timewise (he wrote the book when he was in his 80s). He comes across as a nostalgic, but it is hard not to be one when one is old, I guess.
One reviewer said that Kennan is the kind of man who owes everything to his position in an organization. It seems to be true. In the book, he is extremely passive and seems to go with the flow. He also seems not to like much interaction with people and shows more emotion about a work of art or a beautiful building than real people. He doesn't even talk much about his wife.
Nevertheless, this does not diminish the pleasure of reading the book, if you prepare yourself to a pleasant tale of distant places, both in space and time. He has been there, he has done that, that's what matters.
Kennan's "Sketches from a Life".......2006-08-16
"Sketches from a Life" is a series of meditative reflections written by George Kennan during his long career in the foreign service and academia. To an extent the sketches tread ground made familiar to readers of his two volumes of memoirs, but I was impressed by the immediacy and eloquence of these diary-like texts. In many cases, Kennan's writing would be perfectly suited to the novel format.
Kennan's years in Europe and his proximity to the destruction of World War II deepened and confirmed what I suspect was an already ingrained melancholic and pessimistic character. The tone of many of these sketches is therefore quite bleak. There are several haunting scenes set amidst the ruined cities of post-war Europe; in one, Kennan sees a few young Berliners wandering in the wreckage of a bombed-out cathedral as a symbol of "man's lost and purposeless state, his loneliness, his helplessness, his wistfulness, and his inability to understand."
I was also impressed to see Kennan's thoughts on Los Angeles; specifically, his concerns regarding America's growing reliance on the automobile and dependence on oil, which were written with great prescience in 1951.
Customer Reviews:
1782 look at Pennsylvania farming.......2002-12-14
this book is filled with personal correspondence between a pennsylvania farmer and england in the first years of America. A wonderful journey thru time . Filled with details of life and the area and the wonders of america . Written in the words and style of a lost time . From the way he writes about his wifes daily chores to the hardship tragedy and beauty of his new home you can not but feel you are truly getting letters from a friend . fabulous read
Fascinating glimpse into late 18th C. American life........1999-01-09
These original essay length letters composed by an intelligent and imaginative immigrant offer us a fascinating glimpse into life in early America. The letters chronicle his travels across the thirteen colonies in the years leading up to the revolution. With pathos and humour he gives us an intimate look at family life in the whaling ports of Nantucket and Marthas Vineyard. We visit with John Bertram, the celebrated botanist on his Pennsylvania farm. We are escorted through the middle colonies to Charelston for a first hand look at the opulent lifestyle of the planters. Our guide points out the absurdities he confronts while chronicling the beauty and diversity of the natural landscape. This book provides a wonderful and historic experience.
Customer Reviews:
A lesson.......2004-09-19
Simply, one of the greatest book ever written. Turgenev's style is wonderfully evocative, and yet it has not an ounce of sentimentalism: its depictions of natural landscapes are incredibly lucid, almost detached, in a sense; today, we could say his writing has a "zen-like" clarity. His human character are little parts of this whole, but Turgenev's panteism has nothing of the desperate, ferociously ironic pessimism of, say, Thomas Hardy; his vision is perfectly impartial, and yet sympathetic: each of his characters appears in his fundamental, intact dignity of human being. I'm not myself a starry-eyed dreamer: but reading this book, with its wonderfully easy and aimless wanderings, is like psychoterapy; you can't get out of it but feeling calmly hyper-oxygenated, as it were; you can't read this book but thinking that this man, Turgenev, mysteriously understood what it is like to be fellow sharers of this strange place, Earth, and of this strange thing, life. If something like "occidental buddhism" does exist, this book is a lesson in it.
Turgenev, sportsman and ardent liberal.......2003-11-18
Turgenev effectively invents a new form -- the literary sketch -- to impart a new kind of content. What is brilliant about these sketches which are in part nature meditation and in part biographical sketch is how Turgenev allows each character to speak for themselves. As a result we feel like we are hearing something we have never heard before -- the natural voice of the people. By allowing people to speak for themselves Turgenev gives us a truer and more genuine idea of how people -- serf and gentry -- really think and relate. Each sketch begins with a detailed description of the natural surroundings he is walking through and these descriptions give us insight into Turgenev's cast of mind which is infintely receptive, and discerning, even romantic and delicate at times as when he describes staring up through the forest canopy and imagining he is staring up at the world from beneath a vast body of water. These magnficent introductions set the mood for the character sketch to come. When he meets a serf it is as if he is merely continuing his communion with nature for the serfs live at one with the land. When he meets one of the gentry, however, and passes time in their company he feels removed from the natural settings and people he so values. It is a fascinating and very subtle technique but Turgenev makes the landowners seem like unnatural creatures who are disturbing the natural order. Though he is one of the gentry himself Turgenev hunts with the serfs , he values their company and conversation, and he values what they know. He knows them as individuals not just as serfs and so we too come to know them as individuals, each with their own personality and ideas about life and story to tell. Since we know these sketches are from real life we listen more carefully to them than we would if they were mere inventions; real life has a resonance that fiction does not. Given the choice of spending the day with a either serf or a landowner Turgenev would choose the serf. The serfs have not received an education and their opinions are often shaped by superstition, and yet it is these very superstitions that make them such colorful characters, the gentry may be educated but they are full of self-importance and affectations and see everything through the limited scope of their own self-interest which is merely another form of ignorance. Turgenev's most effective weapon is not bitter invective but irony. He never comes out and says serfdom is bad because the landowners are in some cases such vile creatures that there is no need to. By simply quoting them and describing their manners and actions Turgenev allows the landowners to do a fine job at condemning themselves.
The most profound sketch to my mind is "Yermolay and the Millers Wife" which relates the harsh treatment doled out to a beautiful serf woman merely because she wants to get married, and a close second is "Bezhin Lea" about a group of boys telling ghost stories around a fire as they tend a herd of horses grazing at night. The former sketch pefectly conveys what absolute power the landowners have over every aspect of the serfs life and the latter sketch perfectly conveys how the serfs pass down their own particular brand of wisdom from one generation to the next. Perhaps the most famous sketch however is "Khor and Kalinych" which juxtaposes two kinds of serfs--one resigned to his lot and the other who despite his status as serf finds his own kind of freedom by wandering the countryside. "Kasyan and the Beautiful Lands" is perhaps the most unusual story as it presents a sage-like man who speaks as though he were a living oracle. Deprived of education the serfs remain in thrall not only to the landowners but to ignorance as well; nonetheless there is a beauty and tragic grace in the voices of these serfs that remains in memory long after you have read these sketches. The sketches are complex and layered enough to invite you back to them again and again.
The biggest joy of the sketches is their casualness. Nothing is ever overly stated or stated in black and white but everything nonetheless appears clear as day. It seems at times as if Turgenev is the only enlightened soul in Russia and yet he is absolutely civil even when with a pernicious landowner because he innately knows what is right and he trusts that we know as well. Turgenev reminds me of Thoreau in his devotions which are equally divided between nature and the forwarding of liberal ideas. Though Pushkin and Lermontov both came before him Turgenev was the first Russian writer to achieve fame outside of Russia. Fathers and Sons is considered his masterpiece but these sketches stand as something unique in all of literature.
Lessons from a Master.......2002-06-18
It's taken me until now to get to Sketches From A Hunter's Album. Now I have finished it and now I am grieving. It will stay in my nonlending collection so I can savor it even after the surprise has gone. It's like losing a friend.
Turgenev calls these 'sketches' rather than stories. It's a good distinction. More story writers should concentrate on their sketch pads. The sketches are of places and people in the rural south of Russia in the 1840s. Each is strung thematically on Turgenev's wandrings through the countryside while hunting for game birds. Each begins with a mention that he was hunting in a certain place. He goes into lovely thoughtful and surprising descriptions of the woods or marsh, the sky, the smells, the sounds, the light. Even in translation, these are exquisite. He speaks of shifting light shining through the leaves onto the forest floor, or unbreatheable noonday heat, or changing skies at the advent of a storm, a dawn, or a sunset; he calls up moments from your own life that you thought could not be shared with anyone who wasn't there and he makes you relive those moments as if he had been there with you.
For anyone who has spent time out of doors, these little Aldo Leopold nature essays standing alone would be reason enough to read the 'Sketches', but these are just hors d'uvre to his descriptions of the persons he meets while hunting. When sketching people, Turgenev does gracefully what Dickens tried to do and did clumsily; that is, he describes the physical characteristics of a person and gives you a fully formed description of their character as well, and he does this without sounding forced and without showing himself. (And you will burst out laughing at the sudden recognition that, indeed, someone does look 'like a root vegetable'.)
"Sketches" was published twice in Turgenev's lifetime and in the second edition he added to it. In the earlier sketches, Turgenev brings a character to life in a description; the character may speak a few words, and disappear from the scene, as people do in real life, leaving the reader to speculate what became of him. Yet, Turgenev has given us enough insight into the character that we think we know what probably happened next, and so the story is complete. These are elegant Aristotelian constructs with the action taking place offstage, and, oh elegance! with the final action taking place in the reader's imagination after the story has ended. If my description leaves you wondering, read them! (Would that I could spur you to act as Turgenev spurs his readers to think. Ah, but it's too much... .) This is what Turgenev does. He starts you thinking, but requires you to complete the story. In the later sketches Turgenev is just as deft in his descriptions, but perhaps to satisfy the market or his editors he adopts a more plot driven model. These later contributions can more truly be called stories rather than sketches. They are equally well-crafted, but they demand less of the reader. Curiously, they give us less as well.
The hunter's travels theme gives the collection an interrelatedness, almost like a picaresque novel. As in Huckleberry Finn or Don Quixote, neither the author nor the protagonist directly express opinions, but as stories accumulate the reader acquires the author's strong politicized view. We meet the aristocrats and peasants of rural Russia. The serf-holding system had been 'liberalized' in the early 19th century, but it is revealed as the unnamed slavery it was. Landlords control peasants' rights to marry; they name the persons to fill regional conscription quotas; they assign agricultural and residential alotments; and thoughtless and uncaring aristocrats use these powers carelessly or maliciously to destroy lives. Liberal aristocrats fare no better than traditional feudalists, as Turgenev details social reformers' well-meaning disasters which beggar both for the peasants and the bumbling aristocrats who direct them.
America often forgets that its civil war was part of a European pandemic of peasant revolts driven by the extended logic of the Enlightenment. As masters and slaves in the United States were struggling with the immorality of a divine order handed down from a prior age, the masters and servants in Europe did the same. The 1840s, 50s, and 60s were tumultuous times in central and eastern Europe. Turgenev, arrested and exiled in 1852 because of the 'Sketches', has an historical place akin to the American abolitionists of the same day, however, unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, Turgenev draws his characters in three dimensions with humanity, with love and understanding even when he does not forgive them their moral failings. The 'Sketches' would be an interesting book to teach alongside Huckleberry Finn.
A Collection of short stories for those who don't like them.......2001-12-06
I don't like short stories, never have and I don't know why. I had to read this collection for a course and found it pretty good. The professor told us that this was Hemingway's favorite book which Hemingway had read over and over. In fact, Hemingway modeled some of his own stories on those here, particularly the Hemingway stories where nothing happens except someone might make a pot of coffee. But let's face it, these are not so much stories (narrations of events in time) as sketches of characters. Any plot would be too much plot and would interfer with the general effect, which is to show us the life and times of Russians before the liberation of the serfs. I liked "The Singers", as other reviewer have, but the true masterpiece, worth the entire price of the book, is "Living Relic." Nothing happens in that story except we learn again the beauty and strength of the human spirit and in the process the redemptive nature of true literature.
Cor!.......2001-10-18
In giving this book only three stars, I'm not rating Turgenev but rather the translation. I'm not a translator myself, I'm sure it's very difficult rendering dialogue from another time and place, etc., etc. but I finally couldn't abide the translator's choice in this case to render the voices of nineteenth century Russian peasants in Cockney (or other English) slang.
Examples: "He was a right pain to his peasant girls." "They felt right idiots." "He's not a gent, is he?" "Help us, mate." "Judge for yourself, mate." "He's the soul of kindness, he is." "Gavrila comprehended-like how to get out of the wood." The use of "'cos" for "because." The use of "gotta"--"And I've gotta tell you this."
And what was for me the last straw, in the story Bezhin Lea, "Cor!" and "Cor, stone me!"
If you like this kind of thing, you'll love the book. For Russian lit in translation, give me Constance Garnett (and her Edwardian diction--which works so well, perhaps because it seems natural in contrast to the forced quality on display in "Sketches") or else the current team of Pevear and Volokhonsky.
Book Description
Our Nig is the tale of a mixed-race girl, Frado, abandoned by her white mother after the death of the child's black father. Frado becomes the servant of the Bellmonts, a lower-middle- class white family in the free North, while slavery is still legal in the South, and suffers numerous abuses in their household. Frado's story is a tragic one; having left the Bellmonts, she eventually marries a black fugitive slave, who later abandons her.
Wilson combined and subverted two literary styles, the sentimental novel and the slave narrative, in writing Our Nig, which was drawn from her real-life experience. Her sardonic treatment of abolitionists in the novel has long perplexed scholars and readers; Foreman and Pitts explain this puzzle in their Introduction and recount Wilson's life and career after the 1859 publication of Our Nig.
Customer Reviews:
Slave of Northern Abolitionist but free.......2007-05-07
This book was written by a woman who was supposed to be a free Black woman. In fact she was treated like a slave, a Black wage slave. She was oppressed by a family of who were Northern Abolitionists. Yet, she was treated like a slave. Succeeding generations of whites studying the book denied her and her class the ability to write such a book: they claimed the book had to have been written by a white person and that it was a novel, not real.
Millions of Black women who have slaved in white kitchens and cleaning white homes during and since slavery have a spokesperson in Harriet E. Wilson. This book helps us understand not just to pity them, but to understanding their ability to fight back with their minds.
buy it with the Foreman & Pitts introduction.......2005-05-08
Though I currently have the 1983 edition with the introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (whose name is in the introduction for almost every important Af-Am text in circulation, it seems), I plan on getting this latest edition.
Until recently, biographical details on Wilson were limited. Indeed, they seemed to trail off soon after the publication of her book (a death certificate for her son six months after its printing has suggested to some that her call for support went unheard). This introduciton offers new and happier information, showing that Wilson lived a long life--in part as a successful lecturer on the Spiritualist circuit.
In any edition this is a great book. Really, "great" isn't superlative enough to cover how important and interesting it is. But if you're going to buy it, get this edition.
The North Wasn't Much Better.......2000-09-15
The female child of a white female outcast and a black freeman, the author gives a detailed account of what it was like being raised by a white family in the pre-Civil War North of the United States (a household where she was abandoned by her mother at 3). This biography gives a general idea of what a Negro's life in the North was like -- and it was not much different from that life of a slave in the South. The mistress of the house was brutal beyond measure, but many of the other family members were reasonably kind (though not kind of enough to put a stop to the abuse), and it makes one shudder to think of what could have happened in a family who had nothing but Negro-haters in it. Still, she recounts how she got a small measure of schooling, and how she eventually became a Christian (something which the lady of the house -- a Christian herself -- opposed) and her eventual marriage. An upsetting story, it is nevertheless of much more value than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it was told from the point of view of the victim and not a sympathetic white.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent series.......2006-12-01
We have owned this 3 book series for about 15 years or so. BTW, they are still in print and available from the publisher, iblp. All our children have grown up on them and love them. We are a home educating family and our girls always said this was the painless way to get nature science. These books help form a great foundation for education, as character is the foundation for learning. Now our grown children are desiring their own copies for their homes and children.
Excellant.......2004-07-02
This is one way to get children really interested in learning about God and His character. I recommend this to homeschool parents and anyone with children who love animals (what child doesn't?). We love this book!
A Word of Warning.......2002-06-08
Character Sketches from the pages of Scripture, illustrated in the world of nature, is a wonderful book about nature. But, I've owned this book since 1976 and have just begun to question some of the character sketch portions. For example, the character sketch about Abigail (page 301) states that she made a wrong choice by initiating her own course of action when her husband made the foolish choice of rejecting David's request for modest provision. David and his men had been protecting Nabal's flock and when his request was rejected, David immediately set out to take revenge. You can read the story in I Samuel 25. A reading of this passage in the Bible shows that Abigail saved her entire household from destruction and kept David from sinning by wisely taking immediate action. She clearly acted in faith. Abigail's story speaks to Christian women today. We need to boldy use God's wisdom in protecting those under our leadership and care.
A Word of Warning.......2002-06-08
Character Sketches from the pages of Scripture, illistrated in the world of nature, is a wonderful book about nature. But, I've owned this book since 1976 and have just begun to question some of the character sketch portions. For example, the character sketch about Abigail (page 301) states that she made a wrong choice by initiating her own course of action when her husband made the foolish choice of rejecting David's request for modest provision. David and his men had been protecting Nabal's flock and when his request was rejected, David immediately set out to take revenge. You can read the story in I Samuel 25. A reading of this passage in the Bible shows that Abigail saved her entire household from destruction and kept David from sinning by wisely taking immediate action. She clearly acted in faith. Abigail's story speaks to Christian women today. We need to boldy use God's wisdom in protecting those under our leadership and care.
Well-written and beautifully illustrated.......2002-03-06
Biblically-based nature correlations. My 5 year old, nature boy, loves the animal facts about racoons, bears, geese, osprey, shrew and others. These are related to scripturally-based lessons (24) in four sections on loyalty, responsibility, courage,determination, initiative and decisiveness. This is Vol. 1, there are 2 more, all are coffeetable-worthy. A wonderful way to share faith through stories with readers of all ages.
Book Description
In 1892, a stocky Danish immigrant named Magnus Jensen rode into south-central Montana. He liked what he saw and staked his future on the ranch he would carve there.
Today, DAN AADLAND and his wife Emily live on the ranch built by Magnus Jensen, Emily's grandfather. More than a century has passed, but the nature of ranching in Montana is little changed. Sensitive to the timelessness of the land, author Aadland approaches his ranching life as Thoreau approached life at Walden. On the framework of one recent year, Aadland brings ranching to life. In simple but moving prose, he evokes the harsh beauty of the West, writing with as much elegance about breaking a colt as he does about the inner lives of cattle, the way his pickup handles in the snow, and how the relationship between a man and his horse often defines a good day on the ranch.
Beautifully illustrated, and lovingly told, SKETCHES FROM THE RANCH bears poetic witness to the myth and reality that is the West.
Customer Reviews:
The year's round of seasons on a Montana ranch.......2003-05-29
Montana has produced so many fine writers. Here's another one. Aadland is the son of a Lutheran minister, growing up in south central Montana between the Beartooth Mountains and the Crow Reservation. His "memoir" is mostly about the present, with flashbacks to the past, which include stories of his wife's forebears, who emigrated from Norway in the late 19th century to set themselves up as ranchers. And there are memories of his boyhood, working as a hired hand, a tour of duty in Vietnam as a marine, and raising a family.
The particular achievement of the book is its description of daily life on a modern-day ranch. Of the many books on ranching, this one conveys better than most the seasonal routines of labor from spring calving and breeding to fall roundup, sale barns, and feeding during the months of snow. There are descriptions of haying, fieldwork, irrigation, keeping machinery running, and visits from the vet. The book also describes well the evolution of ranchwork from when ranchers used horses and hired men to get the work done, and neighbors pitched in to help each other with harvesting. Today, much of the work is mechanized, ranchers work alone, and the undependable seasons, slow markets, and razor-thin profit margins require second incomes for both rancher and spouse. Besides raising cattle, Aadland and his wife are school teachers. He travels 60 miles each way to the high school in Bridger (pop. 724), and in winter months sees the ranch in sunlight only on weekends.
He's also a horseman, raising and training walking horses, and much of the book is devoted to this subject. There are descriptions of patiently working his horses, including a team he uses to harrow a field for no other reason than to experience the pleasure of this old-fashioned method of farming -- no deafening engine to block out the sounds of the natural environment, or to damage hearing. He's a literate rancher, quoting Robert Frost and Thoreau, and both thoughtful and articulate. He's also informative. You learn about practices of breeding horses and cows and how a vet tests for pregnancy. You learn the tentative relationship between weather forecasts and the timing of cutting and baling hay. He has a steady eye and a sense of pacing that makes his book a graceful and unhurried cycle through the seasons. You become so intimately involved in Aadland's life that the sudden tragedy that occurs in the final chapters is both a jolting surprise and thoroughly heart-breaking
It should also be mentioned that this is a handsomely designed book, illustrated with many fine drawings of ranch life by artist Nik Carpenter. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in working ranches, the Big Sky country, horses, and the making of not just a living but a life. As a companion volume, I suggest "Some Horses" by Thomas McGuane, another Montana writer, as well as Linda Hasselstrom's "Windbreak," which recounts a year on a cattle ranch in South Dakota.
An engaging compilation of the thoughtful writings.......2002-08-06
Sketches From The Ranch: A Montana Memoir is an engaging compilation of the thoughtful writings of Dan Aadland. Sketches From The Ranch is about living on a western American ranch (which was founded in 1892), experiencing the turn of the seasons, rejoicing in the birth of colts and calves, embracing simple means of life even as Thoreau did at Walden. Superb black-and-white sketches by artist Nik Carpenter add a visual and emotional touch to this moving memoir.
A moving memoir.......2002-07-11
Sketches From The Ranch: A Montana Memoir is an engaging compilation of the thoughtful writings of Dan Aadland. Sketches From The Ranch is about living on a western American ranch (which was founded in 1892), experiencing the turn of the seasons, rejoicing in the birth of colts and calves, embracing simple means of life even as Thoreau did at Walden. Superb black-and-white sketches by artist Nik Carpenter add a visual and emotional touch to this moving memoir.
An intimate and engaging view into ranching life.......1999-09-02
I am an unlikely reader of a book about ranching, a city professional within minutes of the Mall of America. Yet, Dan Aadland brought me intimately into his world and not only let me taste the experience of ranching, but like all good writing, let me feast on life. The sensual quality of the author's writing moved me to respond with my senses. For example, I found that I most enjoyed reading the book on my deck overlooking the woods, feeling the breeze against my face. It was in this setting that I read about cattle buying. Here is a subject I definitely would not have pursued on my own. But Aadland brought the scenes and participants to life and had me so engaged, it was one of my favorite "sketches." I relished his description of the feast he prepared on his private moose hunt. As he wrote about storytelling over Yukon Jack and grapefruit juice, I was compelled to pour my personal version: Cuervo Gold on the rocks with lime juice. I sipped as he told his stories. Dan Aadland not only illuminated the world around him. He effectively brought me into his private world of thought and emotion. I felt right with him as I read his disclosure, "I wonder what I would be psychologically without this space around me, shudder, and force myself to think happier thoughts." I shuddered with him. His emotional honesty was particularly striking as he describes an emotional catharsis toward the end of the book. Aadland's ability to expose the most private--and enlivening--aspects of human experience helped me to identify with him and feel less alone. This was particularly poignant when I recently experienced an emotional reaction similar to the author's. I called up the experience of the author and felt soothed. The isolation-breaking quality of Aadland's writing is a real gift to his readers. I came away from Sketches with a deep respect for ranching, and for a life well lived.
Another excellent book on western life by Dan Aadland........1999-08-31
Dan Aadland's memoir includes many wonderful stories of hard work accomplished in the beautiful ranchlands of Montana. I enjoyed learning about the true bravery required to bring a string of ponies hundreds of miles over wild terrain. The joys and sorrows of daily ranch life are artfully depicted, along with the history and culture of southern Montana. An excellent read.
Customer Reviews:
good quality,quick delivary ,high reliability........2005-08-07
the book was at good condition,delivered quick,although the first book had been returned back to the vendor-the second shipment arrived quickly.I'll continue to by from Amazon. Thank you Amir
The best ever intro to Mark Twain.......2005-01-11
My dad had the original hardback edition of this book in the early 60's, when it was first compiled. I read this book dozens of times, to the point where the covers were torn off and pages were missing.
This softback is the reissue, and is marvelous. It is a compilation of short sketches taken from his novels, newspaper articles and other published sources.
If you are only looking for the "funny stuff" from Mark Twain, without reading the accompanied novels it is all here. "Curing a Cold" is an early stand alone sketch, while "Guying the Guide" comes from "Innocents Abroad." Both of these are worth the price of the book. After reading this, you might consider "The Unabridged Mark Twain, Vol. I and II."
A great companion to this book is the "Complete Essays of Mark Twain." You'll find much less familiar material of a mostly serious nature. Great essays dealing with mental telepathy, international events and one brilliant, touching essay called "The Death of Jean," Mark Twain's thoughts when he found that his adult, epileptic daughter had died.
These two books together make reading in short bursts very meaningful when you don't have the time to read the entire novel. They serve to document the genius of a writer only America could have produced.
A distressingly funny book, inappropriate for quiet areas.......1999-04-16
This collection features stories so humourous that there should be a warning for heart patients. Ranging from advice for "Curing a Cold" to an angry article "Concerning Chaimbermaids", this set of articles will provide so much laughter aerobics will be unneccessary during the duration of the reading.
Average customer rating:
- Tender, fun, and touching
- If you can't go to Paris (or even if you can), read this book!
- Parisian anecdotes told with American-style intimacy
- Grand Deception
- Paris, the French, love, and travel -- and eventual loss.
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Our Paris: Sketches from Memory
Edmund White , and
Hubert Sorin
Manufacturer: Ecco
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ASIN: 0060085924
Release Date: 2002-04-30 |
Book Description
What happens when one of our most celebrated writers combines talents with a French artist and architect to capture life in their Parisian neighborhood? The result is a lighthearted, gently satiric portrait of the heart of Paris -- including the Marais, Les Halles, the two islands in the Seine, and the Châtelet -- and the people who call it home. It is an enchantingly varied world, populated not only by dazzling literati and ultrachic couturiers and art dealers but also by poetic shopkeepers, grandmotherly prostitutes, and, ever underfoot, an irrepressible basset hound named Fred. The foibles and eccentricities of these sometimes outrageous, always memorable individuals are brought to life with unfailing wit and affection.
Below the surface of the sparkling humor in Our Paris, there is a tragic undercurrent. While Hubert Sorin was completing this work, he was nearing the end of his struggle with AIDS. The book is a tribute to the loving spirit with which the authors banished somberness and celebrated the pleasures of their life together.
Customer Reviews:
Tender, fun, and touching.......2007-09-19
Immensely readable, thoroughly enjoyable, and ultimately poignant. White puts it best in his bittersweet, fresh-wound of an afterword: "Despite the catty sound of this book, its name-dropping and archness, I hope at least a few readers will recognize that its subtext is love. Hubert loved me with unwavering devotion . . . I loved him, too, in my cold, stinting, confused way. I wanted to keep him alive as long as possible. This book gave us something to do while waiting for the end."
If you can't go to Paris (or even if you can), read this book!.......2005-07-13
A delightful book about White and Sorin's life in Paris, with an inevitable undercurrent of sadness, because Sorin is dying. Yet his inability to practice his work as an architect led him to develop the "unique, exuberant drawing style" that illustrates this book.
Here you will meet all sorts of interesting people. The concierge, Madame Denise, and the coiffeuse who tries out all the latest hairstyles on her. Father Pierre Riches, the "kind and elegant" Catholic priest whose hair had been stroked by Cavafy and whose photograph had been taken by Mapplethorpe. Billy Boy, the jewelry designer with 16,000 Barbies (who, tiring of them, invents a doll called Mdvany, a trendy Parisienne who "will not have unlined skirts like certain dolls we could name . . .". PIerre Guyotat, who wrote in a "strange subvocal language of his own devising, one that omitted vowels among other unnecessary luxuries."
And the places in Paris! How nice to live above a bookstore, especially one that revels in the splendidly punny name, Mona Lisait. To write at the Café Beaubourg, where the waiters will be equally attentive to you and your dog, and where the "tabletops were all painted by celebrated French artists but not signed lest they be stolen." To wander the Marais with its delicatessens and seventeenth-century townhouses, its "Kiki Boys" and dogwalkers.
If you have visited Paris, this book will bring back memories. If you haven't, you may find yourself calling a travel agent!
Parisian anecdotes told with American-style intimacy.......2003-01-30
I picked up this little book for a return flight from Paris to LA. It looked like perfect plane reading -- short, gossipy, topical. And although it lived up to each of those expectations, the devastation implicit in the book (and explicit at the end) hit hard. The book is not easily forgettable -- and probably no less memorable for the passengers and crew of American Airlines flight 45 who watched me become a sniffling, tear-stained disaster.
It's very intimate, shockingly un-French. White and Sorin invite you into their lives. You feel as if you're at a dinner party listening to them recount(even bicker a little about) their recent mundane adventures. But this intimacy also means that you feel very close to the heartbreaking loss that is the real subject of the book.
It's a beautiful, touching book. The illustrations complement the text (or the text complements the illustrations) perfectly. But if you want to avoid the mess entirely, try The Flaneur.
Grand Deception.......2000-05-10
I love deceptive books.
Example: _Our Paris_, by Edmund White and Hubert Sorin, is ostensibly a series of short essays, written and illustrated in a fairly direct style, pertaining to life in the city. But in a stunning, disarming preface, White alerts us to the real subtext: his partner's slow death from AIDS. It's this subtext that transforms the book from a pleasant travelogue to a devastating account of loss.
Lurking beneath the book's shimmering surfaces, and within its numerous lacunae, is the emotional life of a couple threatened by the fast-approaching specter of death. An attentive reading of White's text and Hubert Sorin's illustrations reveals the mauvaise foi, the daily negotiations, the implicit contract of domestic denial that enables an endangered couple to keep death at bay for just a little longer.
_Our Paris_ looks slight, as if it were merely a pleasant evening's worth of travel anecdotes and gossip. But if you take yourself into this book's confidence, it will reveal unexpected secrets.
Paris, the French, love, and travel -- and eventual loss........1998-01-19
This is a sweet collection of short pieces, quirky and personal, about a tiny Parisian neighborhood, Paris itself, the French, lots of friends, and a great dog named Fred. Most of all: about Edmund White and his lover Hubert Sorin. Economical yet enjoyably gossipy, kind-hearted, opinionated, informative. Achingly sad, though, because Hubert is dying of AIDS, and in fact does die at the book's end. Definitely worth reading -- especially for fans of Edmund White. Engagingly illustrated by Sorin, who was trained in architecture and took up drawing when he became ill.
Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program.
Books:
- Stories on Stage: Children's Plays for Reader's Theater (or Readers Theatre), With 15 Play Scripts From 15 Authors, Including Roald Dahl's The Twits and Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School
- Tad Lincoln's Father (Abraham Lincoln)
- The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life
- The Abundance Book
- The Accusers
- The Adult Years: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal
- The Bedford Reader, Ninth Edition
- The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, the Crossing, Cities of the Plain (Everyman's Library)
- The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House
- The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
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