Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: criticism

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  Sexual Personae

  Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

  by Camille Paglia

  From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.
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  Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll (Vintage)

  by Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus

  Vintage presents the paperback edition of the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs--the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s--edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rack critics, Greil Marcus. Advertising in Rolling Stone and other major publications.
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  Regarding the Pain of Others

  by Susan Sontag

  One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. Images of atrocities have become, via the little screens of the television and the computer, something of a commonplace. But are viewers inured -- or incited -- to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the... (more)
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  Will in the World

  How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

  by Stephen Greenblatt

  A brilliant reading of Shakespeare's world yields a new understanding of the man and his genius. A young man from the provinces — a man without wealth, connections or university education — moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he... (more)
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  A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

  Essays and Arguments

  by David Foster Wallace

  In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his... (more)
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  Amusing Ourselves to Death

  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

  by Neil Postman

  Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death ... (more)
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  Orientalism

  by Edward W. Said

  The noted critic and a Palestinian now teaching at Columbia University,examines the way in which the West observes the Arabs.
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  How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays

  by Umberto Eco

  A collection of absurd and playful potshots by the author of The Name of the Rose includes essays on militarism, computerese, art, bureaucracy, health, airplane food, bad coffee, taxi drivers, fax machines, porno films, football fans, and other intriguing topics. 30,000 first printing.
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  Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems (Vintage)

  by Camille Paglia

  America’s most provocative intellectual brings her blazing powers of analysis and appreciation to bear on the great poems of the Western tradition, and on some unexpected discoveries of her own. Combining close reading with a panoramic breadth of learning, Camille Paglia refreshes our understanding of poems we thought we knew, from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73” to Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” from Donne’s “The Flea” to... (more)
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  The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews, 1971-2000

  by Martin Amis

  This is a stunning collection of essays.
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  The History of Western Philosophy

  A History of Western Philosophy And Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

  by Bertrand Russell

  Since its first publication in 1945, Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy has been universally acclaimed as the outstanding one-volume work on the subject -- unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, its clarity, its erudition, its grace and wit. In seventy-six chapters he traces philosophy from the rise of Greek civilization to the emergence of logical analysis in the twentieth century. Among the... (more)
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  Very Short Introductions: Book 4

  Literary Theory

  A Very Short Introduction

  by Jonathan D. Culler

  What is literary theory? Is there a relationship between literature and culture? In fact, what is literature, and does it matter? These questions and more are addressed in Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, a book which steers a clear path through a subject which is often perceived to be complex and impenetrable. Jonathan Culler, an extremely lucid commentator and much admired in the field of literary... (more)
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  The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

  by Milan Kundera

  “A magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight-errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose.” In this thought-provoking, endlessly enlightening, and entertaining essay on the art of the novel, renowned author Milan Kundera suggests that “the curtain” represents a ready-made perception of the... (more)
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  The Painted Word

  by Tom Wolfe

  "America's nerviest journalist" ( Newsweek ) trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this "masterpiece" ( The Washington Post ) Wolfe's style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. This is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and... (more)
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  Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays (Vintage Original)

  by Camille Paglia

  A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America.
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  The Gutenberg Elegies

  The Fate of Reading in a Electronic Age

  by Sven Birkerts

  A reissue of the book that first examined the future of reading and literature in the electronic age, now with a new introduction and Afterword  In our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies , he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing... (more)
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  How Fiction Works

  by James Wood

  What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works , the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings —Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by... (more)
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  The Heroine's Bookshelf

  Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

  by Erin Blakemore

  The literary canon is filled with intelligent, feisty, never-say-die heroines and legendary female authors. Like today's women, they too placed a premium on personality, spirituality, career, sisterhood and family. When their backs were against the wall, characters like Scarlett O'Hara, Jo March, Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet fought back — sometimes with words, sometimes with gritty actions. Their commonsense... (more)
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  The Lost Art of Reading

  Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time

  by David L. Ulin

  Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions — why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or... (more)
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  The Elizabethan world picture

  by E. M. W. Tillyard

  This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medieval idea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyard in the process of its various... (more)