1 comments about Mozart's Don Giovanni (Dover Opera Libretto Series).

1. Don Giovanni is a simply wonderful opera, but for this single-language speaking gal I was at a loss for understanding. I looked high and low for a good translation, finally deciding on this which has side-by-side readings of the opera in itallian and english.
   
   It's easy to read. It has a good introduction and great footnotes that give you a little extra information to take with you as you read. Unlike other companions, it includes every word spoken, so you don't get lost when they repeat themselves!
   
   There's really not much to say about it -- simple, straightfoward, and worth the money.

2 comments about The Bare Truth: Stars of Burlesque From the '40s and '50s.

1. this is a very informative pictoral of burlesque dancers. From the top stars and their chorus line partners of the stage, how they dressed and their routines. It was an era I just missed. Too young for their heyday and dead by the time I left the military service when I was of legal age. I am doing some research to see what I missed.



2. Rothe presents a wonderful photographic collection of some of the great stars of burlesque's golden era. Most of the photos appear to have been promotional photos for display on marquees or in hallways of burlesque houses. All of the women are beautiful and must have been fabulous to see in performance. Rothe worked in the entertainment industry and it would be interesting for him to record his memories of these women. But until then, these photos will serve as reminders of a generation of beautiful performers.

5 comments about Shadowlands.

1. Even most well-written plays are an absolute bore to read. But William Nicholson's SHADOWLANDS (title taken from the final chapter of the final book in THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA) may present a different case to C.S. Lewis fans the world over.
   
   Fans of the movie will be pleased since they are already familiar with the lines spoken by the characters. But all Lewis fans will be fascinated because this play gives the reader a front row seat (no pun intended) to the life that Jack and Joy had together. Even though the story does take certain liberties (for instance Joy Gresham had two sons, the elder named David), it's still a rewarding way to spend one's time and is short enough (100 pages) to read in one sitting.
   
   If you're looking for a more factual account of C.S. Lewis's life with Joy Gresham, I would recommend the book LENTEN LANDS by Douglas Gresham.



2. This is a great play, but an earlier review incorrectly identifes Lewis as the author of the "Alice In Wonderland" stories, when he wrote the Narnia Chronicles.



3. When I first read this book and my husband and I first watched the film together, he was well, and we were very happy. It was a second marriage for both of us, and we planned on making up for time lost in, unsuccessful, unhappy marriages for both of us, with another twenty or so years of happiness together. He has since passed away after we fought his Cancer together for almost two years. Obviously, the story of Shadowlands has taken on new meaning for me. I have, since his death, read "Grief Observed" by C. S. Lewis, and I would recommend that anyone reading "Shadowlands", also read this essay. It isn't very long, and it helps incredibly to bring some meaning to these tragedies of life.



4. William Nicholson's Shadowlands (adapted for a radio theater production by Jenny Sullivan and Martin Jarvis) is the story of C.S. Lewis and the American poet Joy Gresham. Lewis, famous for his "Alice In Wonderland" fantasy for children, was a teacher at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and an avowed atheist throughout his early life. But in 1931 Lewis converted to Christianity and became an outspoken defender of the faith until his death in 1963. Shadowlands is based upon this his meeting Gresham and how their lives became entwined with a shared love that transformed all of Lewis's relationships, including his relationship with God. A full cast that included Martin Jarvis as C.S. Lewis and Harriet Harris as joy Gresham, under the direction of Jenny Sullivan, makes Shadowlands a superb acquisition selection for personal, professional, academic, and community library collections.



5. Shadowlands is my all-time favorite play to read on a rainy day, on a lazy Sunday, and even on a rainy, lazy Sunday! The story of the famous Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, moves the reader to tears, laughter, and reminds us that life is a precious gift. Lewis marries a divorced woman named Joy, which creates a conflict with his solid religious beliefs. Joy's severe case of bone cancer causes Lewis to question the God in whom he has so firmly belived, despite his famous speeches written about the purpose of pain and suffering. As Lewis is forced to grow up through experience, one can share his emotions and close the book with renewed faith and hope for our own lives. Nicholson writes eloquently, bringing to life Lewis' speeches on pain and suffering within the play. The play is based on the actual lives of Lewis and Joy.

2 comments about Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret.

1. Two profs write 211 pages describing the details including the antics of this fabulous Key West club at the 801 Cabaret. The narratives are descriptive of the relationships between the drag queens, the personal histories of each of them, and vivid descriptions of their performances. You'll be entertained, however, I personally wish they went into more complex detail as to their repeated reiterrations at the end of each chapter that drag queens are questioning gender, femininity, masculinity, etc. We already know this. How about breaking down what all this means instead of quickly glossing over it in the last chapter?



2. I just finished reading this book and was very impressed with how well the authors bring you into the lives of the draq queens at the 801. I have been to Key West many times and have been to several of the drag shows at the 801. While reading the book I felt like I was there sharing in the experiences and lives of the 'girls' who do so much good for their community and for the gay community. This book is a must read for all people...gay, straight bi etc. (especially if you don't know much about this facet of the LGBT community). You will get a kick out of all the antics, gain a better understanding of drag queens, and will grow to appreciate & love all of the girls covered in this book. Also...If you love Key West then you will love this book. The authors really express the mood and spirit on this island that makes so many tourists wish they were locals.

5 comments about The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play.

1. The Palm at the End of the Mind is the book referenced by Harold Bloom in his great study: Wallace Stevens, The Poems of Our Climate. Bloom's book attempts a full commentary upon nearly all of Stevens' poetic canon, and might prove to be helpful to understanding this difficult poetry. Palm does contain works not found in his Collected Poems, and it seems to be much cheaper in used condition than when I bought it years ago. If you want to undertake this journey: get Palms and Bloom and good luck -- the journey is worthwhile.



2. Stevens is an uncommon writer in that much of his greatest work he produced late in his lifetime. Perhaps its depth, maturity, and beautiful language result in some part from this fact. His poetry is delightful to read and hear, wrought with powerful imagery and provocative questions about art, the world, and reality. I find myself reading certain poems regularly, over and over again.
   
   The Palm at the End of the Mind is a great collection, though it includes little more than Stevens' selected works - nothing in the way of comments, direction, or information about particular poems nor about Stevens and his views.



3. If poets aren't interested in being understood, they will have to resign themselves to being read by no one except English Lit drones. There was a time when poetry was so popular in the USA that many daily newspapers had daily poems and the average worker with a grade school education could recite several great American poems by heart. That was also the time when poets wrote about things that people experienced and could relate to. I love Whitman. I have a Masters degree. I can read Spinoza and the Greek dramatists and poets with pleasure. I started this book because Stevens was said to be a great poet. After forcing myself through twenty of these poems I still had no idea what any of them were about. I might as well have been reading Icelandic for all I got out of them. Here's an example of how Stevens unnecessarily obscures his poetry: in one poem, he refers to "the halo-John." This phrase never occurred before Stevens used it. Its appearance stops the reader as abruptly as if he had driven into a brick wall. Who or what is "the halo-John"? The reader searches through the rest of the poem for clues. Ok, it is a religious poem so maybe he means St. John the Evangelist because saints have halos. But why not just say "St. John"? "The halo-John" doesn't add anything to the poem. In fact, it detracts as the reader has to stop reading the poem in order to do the equivalent of a crossword puzzle exercise in order to proceed further. If the reader isn't christian, he may be completely out of luck. Stevens doesn't just do this sort of thing once or twice; his poems are full of this sort of nonsense. If a poem needs a commentary in order to appreciate it, the poem is a failure because this sort of poet is incapable of speaking to the reader without an intermediary, a literary priest to offer sacrifices for the poor, ignorant layman who has insufficient piety and intelligence to approach the divine mysteries of poetry on his own. The reader has his revenge, though. Poetry is unread. Poetry becomes irrelevant. Poets must either scrap with each other for literary prizes that mean the difference between starvation and three steady meals a day or slog away at teaching jobs since no one will buy their work. My copy of this book of poetry will meet its end in the dumpster.



4. I was totally ignorant of Wallace Stevens until I came to Yale and took Professor Harold Bloom's course "How to Read a Poem." American poetry, as I, a Chinese student of a non-English major, understood it, is Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. In contrast, Wallace Stevens's name was strange to most Chinese intellectuals till recently. Even in his native country his rise to a canonical status was not immediate. Eliot's The Waste Land and Stevens' Harmonium debuted around the same time, but the former took all the spotlight. A mysterious "X" recurs in some of Stevens's letters and poems. This "X" refers to no other than Eliot, which may reflect a degree of frustration on the part of Stevens. Not until his late years did Stevens slowly but surely receive the recognition he deserved. A lagging effect in cross-lingual translation and interpretation may explain Stevens's relative invisibility to the Chinese audience. In addition, Stevens, especially in his later years, was highly meditative and philosophical, at times difficult and obscure, which also affected his accessibility to foreign readers.
   
   Professor Bloom's class first initiated me into the force and beauty of Stevens's poetry. What intrigues me is that Stevens lived a double life. He was an insurance lawyer in profession and a poet in private, and seemed to have no difficulty alternating between the two seemingly incompatible roles. Just like his work is so original that they defy any easy label, Stevens's life is so eccentric that he contradicts the stereotype of what a poet is supposed to be like. This is particularly astonishing in the eyes of the Chinese, for in our tradition commerce and poetry have very little in common. Chinese poets are easily associated with scholars, officials, hermits, monks, artists, but it is hard to think of any example of successful poet-businessmen.
   
   I especially love "The Poems of Our Climate," a short piece written in 1938, when the poet was 59 years old. It was a number of years on from "The Idea of Order in the Key West." For Stevens, it was a central poem. Stevens's poetic odyssey spanning over half a century was punctuated by two puzzling breaks: in 1898-1900, Stevens, a Harvard student poet, contributed regularly to Harvard Advocate. After he left Cambridge for New York, his poetry writing stopped short. After a complete silence of seven years when Stevens was struggling with his business career, in 1907 he began to present love songs to his muse Elsie Moll, and his creative faculty seemed to return. In 1923, Stevens, at the age of 44, finally published his first volume of poems, Harmonium. The book's poor reception and its author's growing domestic and corporate responsibilities almost led him to abandon poetry again. For four years Stevens published little. Not until 1929 did Stevens resume poetry writing. Like the Irish poet W.B.Yeats and the Chinese poet Du Fu, the bulk of Stevens's best work was not done until his late years. Interestingly, these three literary lions unanimously fall in love with the fall season: Yeats admires the trees in their autumn beauty in "The Wild Swans at Coole"; Du Fu composed a cycle of regulated poems under the general title of "Autumn Meditations"; Stevens' last major poetic endeavor is no other than "The Auroras of Autumn." These pieces actually reflect the poets' "autumnal personality." As they are approaching that season of their life, their works become increasingly sophisticated, retrospective and sublime. The following lines from John Keats' "Ode to Autumn" might be particularly pertinent to their situations:
   
   Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
   
   "The Poems of Our Climate" was written in this "autumnal period" of the poet's life, thus belonging to the poetry of maturity. It is in three numbered sections. There is a break between each of the sections.
   
   I
   Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
   Pink and white carnations. The light
   In the room more like a snowy air,
   Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
   At the end of winter when afternoons return.
   Pink and white carnations - one desires
   So much more than that. The day itself
   Is simplified: a bowl of white,
   Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
   With nothing more than the carnations there.
   
   Stevens's difficulty often lies in referentiality. The first section seems to have nothing to do with the title. There is no direct reference whatsoever to either "poems" or "our climate." Ostensibly the poet-persona is watching a Japanese flower arrangement. Stevens had a passion for oriental arts and philosophies. He was a close reader of Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913), and his library was full of all kinds of books about Japanese flower arrangement. He was not only deeply read in this subject, but also had a habit of ordering fresh flowers from shops. The opening sentence introduces the image of flower arrangement by creating a pleasing word picture of balance, harmony and form. "Clear water" seems to be redundant, yet this rhetorical excess emphasizes the crystalline transparency of water. "Brilliant" etymologically means "to emit light, to reflect light," thus accentuating the shiny surface of the container. The combination of "pink and white carnations" brings a festival of inviting colors and textures that are traditionally associated with feminine innocence, charm and gentility. The origin of the word "carnation" in Latin confirms the connection between the flower and human flesh. Behind this image of sexual provocation is a male observer's voyeuristic and fetishistic desire. The first sentence sketches the key components of a flower arrangement (through three nouns: water, bowl and carnations), with an emphasis on their optical and chromatic effects in the eyes of a spectator (through four adjectives: clear, brilliant, pink and white), and thus anticipates the "light" in the following sentence. "[...]. The light / in the room more like a snowy air, / Reflecting snow" embraces and extends the aura around the flower arrangement: the interior light is not like snow falling, but rather like air reflecting fallen snow. The observer is so subtle that he cannot help but elaborating the snow image: during the winter the afternoons have been very brief; but now, with afternoons elongating, winter is near the end and somehow meets early spring, and a fresh snow lies immaculate on the ground, like a breathtaking artwork of Nature, which gives a pure, refreshing and ethereal tone to the air reflecting snow. This late-winter scene suggests that the observer, like "the snowman," wants "a mind of winter," but not a mind of deep winter. The light that gives luster to the flower arrangement, like the rainwater that glazes a red wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams, "A Red Wheelbarrow"), works beautifully on both formal and metaphorical levels. It represents a natural light, but as part of an art world it also becomes an aesthetic light.
   
   So far the language is very pictorial, in the manner of a still life. When Stevens portrays an object, he often builds a simple yet powerful image, omitting all insignificant details. Therefore, his image is at once concrete and abstract, familiar and unfamiliar, and appropriately distances itself from reality. In the first stanza of "The Poems of Our Climate," the image is very concrete and real: this is about a Japanese flower arrangement. Meanwhile, there is no extravagant description of the object, but a word picture almost in the style of a Chinese xieyi ("to convey the spirit") painting. It highlights the principal components of the flower arrangement (water, bowl and carnations), and throws away lesser details (such as the spatial disposition of flowers, the effect of foliage). The aesthetic atmosphere is not only created by the description of the object itself; it is also a product of the language. To use minimalism to achieve maximal effect - this is also the case for the language. The diction is basic English words, mostly monosyllabic and disyllabic. Stevens only suggests and expects the reader to complete the picture by himself.
   
   "Pink and white carnations" recurs verbatim in line 6, implying that the observer moves his meditative eyes back to the core image. Then the poem abruptly takes another direction: "One desires / so much more than that." This jump from imagistic to argumentative language is visually strengthened with the use of a hyphen to connect a noun phrase and a full sentence. Meanwhile, "desire" corresponds to the etymological hint of carnation, and the whole question about desire will continue to inform the rest of the poem. "The day" is in opposition to whatever "in the room," designating the world external to the flower arrangement. Thus "[...] The day itself / is simplified" suggests that art reduces the outside world. "[...] a bowl of white, / Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, / With nothing more than the carnations there." Once again, Stevens returns to visual imagery, but this is not a wanton repetition of the earlier lines, but rather a repetition with nuanced variations or a deliberate revision, as if the observer observes through a closer perspective. "Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round" introduces new details about the container and unmistakably echoes the "cold pastoral" in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." While "a bowl of white" seems a neutral description of what is seen, the "cold porcelain," just like Keats's cold urn, implies that this is a lifeless, artificial work. Although Stevens appreciates the aesthetic effect of the flower arrangement, subliminally he is not satisfied with its lifelessness and otherness to human world. He desires more: in the closure of the next stanza, he will repeat the word "more" thrice, where "more" becomes almost obsessive.
   
   Now, get back to the title. How to justify "The Poems of Our Climate"? There are poets whose titles are throwaways, but not Stevens. Stevens cares a great deal about titles. His titles are always precise and integral to his poems. The first stanza seems to totally leave out the title, yet on a deeper level flower arrangement is a metaphor for poem writing. Metaphor is not an ordinary association of one object with another, but a figuration or trope which suggests the essence of one object by identifying it with certain qualities of another. Like Whitman, Stevens has an amazing command of figuration. For him, metaphor is a powerful means through which imagination imposes order on reality. "The Poems of Our Climate" opens with an objective description of clear water, brilliant bowl, pink and white carnations, and snowy light. As the poet is projecting his imaginary magic on those things, they will go through a metamorphosis and become metaphorical references to poetry writing, for both are the objects of formal arrangement, and both use delicate minimalism to achieve elaborate effect. Because this transfiguring act of mind is rooted in an objective world, the aura of duality shines through the images: they are at once flower arrangement and poetry writing. Indeed, what makes this poem "poetic" is the dynamic shifting back and forth between the real object and the metaphorical meanings it prompts.
   
   II
   Say even that this complete simplicity
   Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
   The evilly compounded, vital I
   And made it fresh in a world of white,
   A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
   Still one would want more, one would need more,
   More than a world of white and snowy scents.
   
   Stevens desires "complete simplicity," but such "simplicity" is a trope for reduction and deprives him of the necessary pain and suffering in writing a poem. The capitalistic "I" is arresting, since Stevens always uses the impersonal "one" ("one" occurs four times in this stanza and six times in the whole poem), yet here he says "The evilly compounded, vital I." In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," "I" stands out again: "What am I to believe? ..." There is rhetorical power in the Stevensian "I," which is almost electrifying. It recalls Whitman's "real me" or "me myself" in "Song of Myself," for all these terms suggest a self that is one's consciousness but is a deeper and unknown part of one's consciousness. Stevens was very evasive about Whitman, one of his prime precursors. He never had anything good to say about Whitman in prose. Actually he blamed Whitman for Whitman's tramp persona. Yet, as Harold Bloom observes, "Whitman is a deeper and darker presence/absence in Stevens's work." Good poetry in any language always depends on allusiveness. This stanza echoes a couplet in "Song of Myself":
   
   Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me,
   If I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me ...
   
   As self-contradictory as the Whitmanian "real me" or "me myself," the Stevensian "I" is both "evilly-compounded" and "vital" (this word is never negative). Bloom unravels the paradox by arguing that "The `Vital I' is compounded evilly only because it is compounded at all." In other words, Stevens is talking about a radical duality of self or even a plurality of selves, on which he will not give a stable judgment. "Vital" is also to find its compelling resonance in "the never-resting mind" in the succeeding stanza. A critic believes that Stevens's inward peering "I" also implies its externally seeing homophone "eye." I agree with this insightful reading, for the whole poem is built upon the act of looking and seeing. "Still one would want more, one would need more, / More than a world of white and snowy scents" builds a crescendo of "mores" and reinforces the theme of desire. Stevens was from New Jersey and in his native language "scents" allegedly sounds like "senses," so here he might be making another homonymic pun.
   
   In this stanza, "a world of white" recurs once more. This time, it is the word "brilliant-edged" that unfolds new information. The edge is between what two sides? Japanese flower arrangement draws materials from nature; meanwhile, it is cut and placed by people. Thus, it is a product of setting art against nature, so is poetry. The edge makes clear the dichotomy of art vs. nature. Fundamentally, high literature, especially poetry, is a continuous tradition. This poem explores a single motif that emerges again and again in a succession of strong poets - the relation between art and nature. Stevens is concerned with creating some shape of order in the wilderness and chaos of reality. On the other hand, he refuses to transform and harmonize reality at the cost of making violent imposition upon it. Shelley, in "A Defense of Poetry," realizes that "even the greatest poetry will, through time, become nothing more than signs for classes of thought, loosing its poetic edge as a result." To find the finer edge of words, Stevens urges us to get rid of the illusion of things and get to the truth. In Stevens's own words, "the hum of thoughts evaded in the mind." ("Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction")
   
   This stanza is syntactically distinguished from the other stanzas for a single sentence runs through all seven lines, creating an extended "suspension system." The effect is to have the completion of meaning constantly delayed, and to make the delay a means of defamiliarizing the process of conferring meanings. "Say even that," like "more like" in line 3, is an American idiom, meaning "granted that." It introduces a concessive clause and distantly echoes the adverb "still" five lines later. This pair of connectives frames the whole sentence or stanza. While in the first stanza, imagery is the dominant device and noun structures prevail, this stanza is characterized by strong statements and powerful verbs. "Stripped," "concealed," "made it fresh" are positioned either at the beginning or the end of lines, and in sequence they make a set of structural parallels. This compels us to recognize their weight in the meaning-making process.
   
   III
   There would still remain the never-resting mind,
   So that one would want to escape, come back
   To what had been so long composed.
   The imperfect is our paradise.
   Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
   Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
   Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.
   
   If the last stanza closes with a litotes or an understatement in which one's desire is expressed by negating its opposite ("a world of white and snowy scents"), this stanza will directly address that keen desire of "the never-resting mind": "one would want to escape, come back / To what had been so long composed." Again and again in this poem, Stevens plays upon opposition and apposition. We have encountered "Stripped" and "concealed," "evilly-compounded" and "vital" before, and now the oxymoronic "escape" and "come back to" again force us to pause and think hard. "What had been so long composed" sounds like a Nietzschean cosmos, whose nut is hollow and lacking any purpose or unity. It also reminds us of the Shakespearean motto: "This is an art, which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature" (Winter's Tale).
   
   "The imperfect is our paradise" invites multiple readings as well. The first thing comes to mind is the famous biblical allusion. Since the fall, Adam and Eve had been expelled from the perfect Eden and living in the far-from-perfect earth. So, from the start human beings are destined to accept imperfection as our living paradise. This sentence also echoes the Robert Browning quote "A man's reach should exceed his grasp," suggesting that poetry writing is a tantalizing project. To achieve artistic perfection, one should attempt even those seemingly impossible things, despite all necessary pains and suffering. Moreover, "imperfect" in Latin means "unfinished." By brings back the etymological meaning of "imperfect," Stevens revisits the Whitmanian theme: "Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end."
   
   This imperfect world demands an imperfect language, that is to say "flawed words and stubborn sounds." The closing sentence starts with an imperative expression "Note that" and takes on the tone of an academic lecture. The shift of pronouns from "one" or "I" to "our" or "us" strengthens this sense of reaching out to others. As the poem moves towards closure, it is getting more and more disturbing, and the reader can feel a profound malaise on the part of the poet. Again, "bitterness" and "delight" are set in opposition, suggesting a puzzling psychic construction. "The imperfect is so hot in us" means the desire for imperfection is so fierce in us. "Hot" is used to contrast the earlier "cold" ("Cold, a cold porcelain"), and both words can apply respectively to their core meaning and extended meaning. "Lies" is an even more intriguing polyseme: delight tells us untruth in flawed words and stubborn sounds, and also consists in such words and sounds. In "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," Stevens brings forward three fundamental functions of poetry: It Must Be Abstract; It Must Change; It Must Give Pleasure. So, he shares Shelley's view that joy is what poetry emanates from ("A Defense of Poetry"). Yet such a joy is achieved by flawed words and stubborn sounds, in other words, the stylistic eccentricity and strangeness in Stevens's word choice and his experiment with the musical quality of poetry.
   
   Finally, in what sense do we know Stevens? Stevens is a poet of profound subjectivity. He is always working on wordplays, suggestions and subtlety. He is endless. We go down and down and down, and cannot reach the bottom, and would still want more and need more. He carries us so deep into nature and art and their intricate interplay.



5. Wallace Stevens is one of those rare writers who had a golden touch with words -- musical words, spellbinding imagery, and no boundaries to keep anyone from enjoying it. "The Palm at the End of the Mind : Selected Poems and a Play" brings together many of his best works, starting early in his writing career and stretching through the years.
   
   Over his lifetime, Stevens wrote several books of poetry, but his exquisite poems are best taken by themselves: the languid splendour of "Sunday Morning," the spare eloquence of "Man With A Blue Guitar," and the hymnlike grandeur of "Le Monocle De Mon Oncle." ("I know no magic trees, no balmy boughs,/No silver-ruddy, gold-vermilion fruits./But, after all, I know a tree that bears/A semblance to the thing I have in mind.")
   
   This volume also contains his little-known one-act play, "Bowl, Cat and Broomstick." Like many of his non-poetic works, this play deals with the nature of poetry, and is in the form of a dialogue between three seventeenth-century characters. It's part parody, part analysis. And while it's a bit weird, it's certainly worth reading.
   
   Wallace Stevens began publishing poetry at an importance time in writing history, when the older styles were falling away. But instead of ignoring one type of poetry in favor of another, he took the best of all kinds -- his verse combines Victorian opulance with the more modern free-form verse.
   
   Though he isn't as well known as Yeats or Williams, Stevens' poetry is one of the few kinds that is both technically good and emotionally rich. His poetry can be whimsical ("Every time the bucks went clattering/Over Oklahoma/A firecat bristled in the way"), but it is also meditative and philosophical, even tackling the nature of reality.
   
   If nothing else, Stevens' writing can be read just because it is exquisitely beautiful. He lavished details all over almost every poem he wrote; his style tends to be a bit on the ornate side -- Stevens freely uses the more exotic terms -- such as "opalescence," "pendentives" and "muleteers" -- wrapped up in complex verse, sometimes with a rhyme scheme and sometimes free-form.
   
   "The Palm at the End of the Mind" is a wonderful collection of Wallace Stevens' most significant long poems, his underrated play, and his equally important smaller ones. A must-have.

5 comments about American Cinema/American Culture.

1. Halfway through my third year of college, this is the worst textbook I have ever had for any class. It's the first time that the choice of text actually makes me wish I hadn't taken the class. The material is very fascinating, but the book is written very, very poorly. I encourage anyone who has this is as a required text to consider registering for a different class.
   
   At least half of the text is simply summarizing movies, and that's the biggest flaw. If you haven't seen these movies it can, at times, be very difficult to follow. I honestly cannot fathom any possible reason for these summaries, other than to spoil the plot and outcome of many great films. The few decent pages in this book are due to the author lacking consistency -- on occasion he slips and goes a page or two without summarizing the plot of a film, and on those rare occasions the reader may actually learn something, but don't count on it happening too often.
   
   This is the first and only occasion in which I wish I wouldn't have taken a class based solely on the weakness of the text.



2. So, I expected this book to be a bit more fun. Unfortunately, the fun element is missing. However, in fairness, the book serves as a thorough textbook for the history of American Cinema and its techniques and various genres. I did enjoy reading about the early studio system and the vast amount of control this oligopoly held. There were some very good critiques and studies of specific films, and a bit about specific actors and actresses. Even a bit about directors. Though packed with information, the book just lacks an entertainment value that it could and should have pulled off based on the subject matter.
   
   The different genres studied include:
   
   Westerns
   War Movies
   Silent Films
   Film Noire
   Screwball Comedies
   
   As well as an overall dissertation on Classical Hollywood Style and its various techniques.



3. I got this book for a class on the history of cinema. Unfortunately, as the title implies, it only deals with American Cinema. If this is a book for school, check out the class to see if foreign films and film history will be discussed. This book is, again, as the title implies--one-sided. Most of the movies it discusses, gives away crucial plot-points and endings. Some movies that I've been dying to see were ruined in just one or two sentences. This book is also very puffed-up and biased (I don't know any other way of explaining it). Many times throughout the book, Belton seems like James Lipton of "Inside the Actor's Studio", and goes on and on about the greatness of Hollywood, actors, director's, and films with nothing negative to say. It's not at all critical of anything and the author frequently inserts his own interpretation of films into the general text, which I found a little pompous. The book does offer up some interesting facts about the early history and the birth of cinema, but there's something about the way this book was written that makes it hard to stay interested. I think the chapters about film genres exaggerate the importance of some of them, and neglects other genres completely, ie. Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Sci-fi, Animation, Epics, etc. Again, question the instructor and/or look at the class syllabus before siging up if this is the only book for this class. I don't believe this is a comprehensive and unbiased view of cinema and it's history.



4. Years ago I took an intro-level film class at a community college. This was the text for the class. It was accompanied (at least in my class) by a PBS video series that combined film clips with interviews and historical information. Going into the class I had little more than a passing interest in film and film history. But after taking that class, my passion for film has grown exponentially with each year. But back to the book, I really liked this book and highlighted my way from the front cover to the back cover. There are of course limitations to this book. Firstly, it deals only with American films. Secondly, this book barely breaks the 300-page mark - hardly a comprehensive volume. You aren't going to get any information on John Cassavetes here or anything. Now if you have a chance to use this book in conjunction with the PBS films, I think you'll do much better (in fact I think the vids even give a nod to Cassavetes), but even then please note that this material is for an INTRO-level film class, and won't be much good for someone who already knows a fair amount about American film. But with that in mind, the book still has a lot to offer someone looking to introduce themselves to film history.

   The first third of the book starts with the birth of film, moves quickly on to the Hollywood studio system, and walks us through the basics of film style (camerawork, lighting, editing, etc.). The second third covers the basics of film genre; there is a chapter about film noir, one on comedies, one on war films, and one on westerns. This second section was particularly useful to me. I could read each chapter, jot down a list of promising titles, hit my local video store, and I was good to go. The third section covers American film after World War II. In this section things seem a little compressed. 110 pages for 50 years of film? A lot is lost on the cutting room floor. But there's lots to dig into all the same. There's a chapter on Hollywood during the McCarthy years (yikes!), one on film's evolution during the emergence of television, a chapter on 1960s counterculture films, one on the film school directors of the 1970s and 1980s, and finally a pretty weak chapter on film in the 1990s. Oh yeah, and at the end of the book there's a handy glossary (in case you're ever stuck on what point-of-view editing is) and a pretty thorough index.

   Again, not a book for someone who already has a good feel for film history. But definitely a great resource for someone new to film studies, or for someone who has trouble finding a movie at Blockbuster on Fridays. It did a great job getting me excited about movies, and I imagine its done the same for others.... A good companion to this text (or possibly an all-out replacement of it) is Scorsese's VHS/DVD, "A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies."




5. This would be a great book to read if you have no intention of watching the films discussed within, or if you've already seen them. On quite a few films, it tells the whole plot, in detail, from opening to end credits.

   I also don't like the prose of the author, as he excessively uses sentences "in quotations". The writing structure is very formulaic and boring. The "5 paragraph essay" format is good for high school students learning to write, but imagine an entire book written that way. I can only read it for 15 minutes before losing interest.

   The book does, however, provide plenty of examples from a variety of films.

   This book is a companion piece to the PBS series by the same name. The series is much more interesting. Don't bother with the book. A much better film text is "Film: An Introduction", by William Phillips, ISBN: 0312258968.

5 comments about Film Art: An Introduction.

1. After spending 3 years as a film major, I was cornered into the Intro to Film studies class that worked out of this absurdly expensive book. 95% of the material we covered I already understood, but reading them in Film Art and trying to understand what the heck was going on made me want to drop out of college. This text manages to take the simplest of film theories and misconstrue them into boring, dense readings using some of the strangest (not the best, by any means) examples from films, some of which you might have seen, others probably you've never heard of (and never will again, even if you're in the field).
   
   For the love of sanity somebody write a better film textbook, this one is horrible. You're much better off reading A Guide to Writing About Film and Film: An International History of the Medium. Professors, please stop assigning this book, trying to plow through this text alone has turned a lot of people I know off of film studies.



2. This was assigned in my film history class; but I plan to read the whole thing again later, because it is not only informative but it's also a very good read. It's well organized and puts together a cohesive look at how films go together. I don't give it full marks because it does have the usual murky areas and overly textbook-ish spots. It's also way overpriced for something that isn't available new and yet is not a 'vintage' book.



3. I'm learning film in the first year at college, and this text is proving its worth. It's got all the basic and major theory concepts, with bucketloads of examples, film stills and diagrams to back up the theory, so you never feel like there's no practical application for what you're learning. Most of the time, the examples are from popular and/or classic films, so you're bound to know what Bordwell and Thompson are talking about as they introduce new ideas.
   
   Nowdays I can't watch films or TV shows without noticing how obvious some of the techniques described in this book are. It's really quite satisfying knowing how to 'read' the language of film, and having an edge over your friends when you go to the movies :)



4. This book serves as only a general intro. to film, but even at the level of general intro., Bruce Kawin's How Movies Work or Louis Giannetti's Understanding Movies is better than this one in many respects, particularly Kawin's.

   Bordwell is often hailed as the giant of cinema studies. Yes, the guy has watched literally a lot of movies, but apart from his Narration in Fiction Film, which is a respectable work in its deployment of Russian Formalism, his other stuff is just commonsensical view. I personally don't find his books argumentative enough. Planet Hong Kong, for instance, although well-researched, is an extremely limited view of Hong Kong cinema and pays no attention to understand the philosophical complexities of Wong Kar-wai's movies, not to mention his ignorance of some truly innovative directors such as Fruit Chan, whose postcolonial sensibility has yet to be acknowledged.

   His recent book Post-theory is anti-psychoanalytic, a move that is a disgrace to students/lovers of film theory. I am not saying that only psychoanalysis (if you read Joan Copjec's essay Orthopsychic Subject in Read My Desire, you will know that a lot of people thinking they use psychoanalysis properly to "do" film studies are wrong) and other structural / poststructural discourses are the only ways to understand films, but they are more academic and serious ways to make an argument that would expand our horizons. The film world is now more interested in Deleuze and perhaps other Lacanian concepts such as the real, Bordwell's work is really dated and anti-intellectual.




5. This book is useful as a university textbook, but is also excellent for filmgoers who would like to understand a bit more than the average audience.

1 comments about Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic.

1. This is a complex and subtle book that deals with consistent intelligence on the importance of tragedy. It also shows what is simultaneously Eagleton's great virtue and great vice, an obsessive and all-powering love of paradox. In small doses Eagleton's constant emphasis on irony is stimulating and properly dialectical. Over three hundred pages, the length of this book, it can be repetitive and overly mechanical. There is something a bit predictable in Eagleton's constant desire to be original and stimulating. And yet it is worth it to work their way through this book. Eagleton starts off by dealing with two common ideas of what is tragic. The first is that tragedy is something that is very sad. This is considered by many academics to be trite, and they present the second, more pernicious view that tragedy is something of great import that happens to sufficiently great people and in doing show vindicates the justice and morality of the natural order.

   Eagleton is properly critical of this and much of the book is an acute critique of those tragic theorists who seek to resolve the cruelty and horror of life into convenient didactic messages. Noting C.S. Lewis' passing reference to the fundamentally untragic quality of everyday life and ordinary people, the "uncouth mixture of agony and littleness" Eagleton notes that Lewis' own writings on his wife's premature death "do not seem to view the event as dull and uninteresting, though other people's real lives are perhaps much more uncouth than one's own." Commenting on Martha's Nussbaum's argument that Antigone shows the sterility of a conflict-free life Eagleton notes that is akin to arguing that "the lesson of the Illiad is that the ancient world needed a United Nations Organization." A.C. Bradley, George Steiner and Karl Jaspers are also rebuked for rhapsodizing Tragedy. Throughout the book Eagleton constantly swerves through a panopoly of Scyllas and Charibdeses. On the one hand we must beware those who conservatively and callously invoke reactionary assumptions of a "human nature." On the other hand we must not accept those shallow post-modernists who assume that all change is good, and that one should be hostile to whatever is permanent, unalterable or historical. On the one hand it is callous to assume that suffering is ennobling and tragedy great for that purpose, since most people are clearly not redeemed that way. On the other hand one must not be so sceptical as to reject hope altogether or simply assume that is naive to possess it. Eagleton notes Franco Moretti's provocative comment that the modern world prefers unhappiness, because assuming the worst is likely to occur makes it easier for bourgeois society to forgive itself for not providing the best or the adequate. On the one hand the didactic and teleological aspects of Kant appear crude, while on the other hand the primitivist and simple-minded valorization of "life" itself in Nietzsche and Lawrence are callous and cruel in their indifference to others.

   After discussing the weakness of tragic theory, Eagleton goes on to discuss the value of agony. He then goes on to discuss tragic theory from Hegel to Beckett, and then discusses the problem of heroes in tragedy. There then follows a long discussion of freedom, fate and justice which includes, not always productively, a discussion of the problems of determinism. Yet Eagleton points out that tragedy, which supposedly vindicates the moral order undermines it by showing so much gratuitous injustice and cruelty, a problem much tragic theory cannot really grasp. There is then a chapter on pity, fear and pleasure, which includes a passage on incest and also raises the question of whether are pity is a scarcely concealed sadism at the fate of others. There are then a chapter on tragedy in the novel and the interesting relationship between tragedy and modernity. Tragedy can be dismissed as archaic, yet arguably the experience of modernity is itself tragic. Although critical of Lukacs and of the pessimism of much Western Marxism, Eagleton praises it for recognizing the essential truth of modernity, that is both a "revolutionary advance" and "one light nightmare of butchery and exploitation." There is then a chapter on the nature of evil and the emptiness of the demonic. In this chapter and in the concluding one about sacrifice and Thomas Mann one occasionally feels that Eagleton is pushing the logic of official rites not only farther than the officials want, but also farther than anyone would normally like to push it. Eagleton is a former Catholic and often notes the similarity of Marxism and Christianity in the way they can combine deep pessimism with a sense of ultimate hope. As a Jew myself, I don't find this comparison entirely kosher, but this unpromising theme repeats itself through the book. It is perhaps appropriate then that Eagleton concludes his work by arguing the Left must go beyond the rhetoric and pragmatism and culturalism. Instead of a Catholic or a Protestant, Eagleton quotes Kafka and his final metaphor is the last thing Joseph K sees before he dies.

1 comments about Argumentation and Debate (with InfoTrac ) (Wadsworth Series in Communication Studies).

1. When I learned debate, it was the 1996 version of this book, but it has gotten better! This is a great book whether you are a beginning novice debater wanting to learn how to compete in academic debate or an experience debater looking to solidify your theory arguments.

5 comments about The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930.

1. "The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution" examines the rapid transition from silent to sound films that transformed the American film industry between 1926 and 1930. In just 4 years, Hollywood witnessed "the extermination of an art form at the height of its power -something unprecedented in history", as the booming business of silent pictures was replaced by talkies, and the nature of films, filmmaking, and the film business were reinvented. Early talkies weren't nearly as good as their silent competition, but audiences enthralled by the new technology didn't care. They wanted sound. And movies as we know them emerged triumphant.
   
   Scott Eyman presents the upheaval in five parts, each dedicated to one year in Hollywood's transition period. The occasional digression brings us up to speed on the technologies and people central to the drama, including a history of the efforts to synchronize sound with film, from 1905 until the invention of sound-on-film in 1913. By this time, no one in the film industry was interested. In 1926, only Sam Warner of Warner Brothers and William Fox of Fox Film believed that sound could be profitable. Warner adopted the Vitaphone system, which uses an accompanying 33 1/3 RPM record. Fox adopted the sound-on-film Movietone system. And the race was on.
   
   "The Speed of Sound" describes the production of the first feature-length talkie, "The Jazz Singer", in 1927. Although it was only 15% sound, the movie's popularity sent a message to studios that sound had arrived. It also follows the production of the last great silent films, F.W. Murnau's "Sunrise" and King Vidor's "The Crowd", alongside that of major early talkies by Warner, Fox, Paramount, MGM, and Universal. Eyman debunks the notion that silent actors and actresses were inarticulate clowns. Instead, he claims that many could not make the transition to sound films, because their voices -which can now be heard on recovered Vitaphone records- didn't fit their onscreen images.
   
   The most fascinating comparison of silent and sound films is how the new constraints of recording sound set the art of cinematography back and mandated at least a couple years of bad movies, until how to "show" as opposed to "tell" was rediscovered. Movies became more literal, less visual, more talky, less musical. Their component part became the scene, whereas for silents, it had been the shot. Theater actors, writers, and directors flooded in from New York, along with sound technicians and elocutionists, actors were practically tethered to microphones, cameramen confined to airtight "iceboxes", and directors' power were supplanted by producers and sound men.
   
   Part 5, which is supposed to be about 1930, reads more like an epilogue. But I guess there isn't much to say. Although many movies were being shot in both silent and sound formats for overseas release, silent films were all but dead by that point. Scott Eyman refers to Albert Warner as both "Abe" and "Al" in different places, which is confusing. But, apart from that, he has made a lot of technical detail, business analysis, and cultural study very readable, accessible, and sometimes absurdly funny. "The Speed of Sound" is essential reading for anyone interested in film history. It gave me a greater appreciation of the silents and a greater understanding of the current state of film as well.



2. This book goes above and beyond the call of duty in writing about, primarily, the very turbulent years of 1926-30 in the American film industry, during the transitional period between silence and sound. It covers everything--the technology behind these new innovations and the technology of silent film-making, the business and financial aspects, the artistic angles, and the human aspects. Most people who aren't familiar with this era in cinema tend to believe a lot of myths and clichés about it, all of which Mr. Eyman destroys in his quest for the truth about this era. For example, while a lot of people seem to believe that talking pictures didn't exist until 1927, the truth is that there had been experiments ever since the 1890s, though none of them caught on, and most of them had very crude and impractical technology. Many people also seem to believe that after 'The Jazz Singer' (which is actually about 75% silent, with most of the sound being songs instead of dialogues), the entire industry turned to sound overnight. Such a massive sea change did not and could not have happened overnight. Most people believed it was just a novelty and that before long films would go back to being silent, or perhaps would only use sound selectively, as in the transitional period of the late Twenties, or there would be films that were both sound and silent instead of all one or the other. This new technology developed by William Fox (Movietone) and the Warner Brothers (Vitaphone) happened to come about at just the right time for it to finally not only be a lot more practical than the various systems invented previously, but also at just the right time for the public to be ready for it. Other stories include both famous ones, such as the one about how poor Jack Gilbert did NOT have a high-pitched voice and was NOT laughed offscreen after his first talkie, and lesser-known ones, such as how there were still a fair number of theatres not wired for sound by 1930, the stories behind the creation of some famous early talkies and late silents, the slow progress on improving the primitive sound recording technology, how most silent stars actually had hugely successful talkie debuts, if only because their fans wanted to hear their voices, how film-making took a big step backwards in time when sound came in and took awhile to recover (and as many people who were there felt, the romance of making films came to a crashing halt when these sterile foreboding sound stages came in, together with how movies became less subtle and artistic in ways), and how silent actors were saying actual lines in an actual script and usually had good voices, contrary to the modern-day myth of how they just said any silly thing that came to mind because the audience couldn't hear them, and how they all had these horrible voices.
   
   Mr. Eyman really knows his subject, and pays respect to the silent era instead of treating it like some silly embarrassing clunky inferior relic of a distant past, as well as treating the early sound era in a balanced way, pointing out all of its shortcomings as well as the good things about it, how sound did make possible films that could have never been as good in the silent era. He almost puts one in the mindset of someone who was there when it happened, when all of these amazing changes, not all for the better, were taking place seemingly overnight, and when all of these historic films, such as 'Don Juan,' 'The Jazz Singer,' 'The Crowd,' 'Sunrise,' and 'The Lights of New York' came out, seeing the art of silent film-making at its greatest heights and then replaced by transitional hybrids that encorporated sound at certain points, and finally all of these crude clunky early talkies that nevertheless thrilled the audiences because they'd never heard and seen movies at the same time before. My only complaints about the book are that it kind of perpetuates the decades-old rumor about Marion Davies only having her career survive because of her association with William Randolph Hearst (not mentioning how she probably would have had an even more successful career if she hadn't been his consort, since non-Hearst owned papers also gave her great reviews, and it was actually due to his mismanagement of her career that she wasn't as successful as she could have been, since he insisted on putting her in serious costume pictures and dramas instead of recognising her proven forte of light comedy), and that, as other reviewers have noted, it does give a surprisingly short schrift to comedy, barely even mentioning people like Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin, and not even mentioning a lot of other hugely popular comedians, like Lloyd Hamilton or Charley Chase, at all.



3. A history of the transition from silent cinema to sound, this book was much better than I expected, mostly because Eyman spends a lot of time on the technical details, which of course I enjoy. My work in film/video production from the time I was a teen to the digital technology I use no for my class Websites, make me very aware of the most complex and troublesome of issues--synchronization. Eyman's book does of course go into the personalities of the transition, from the movie Mongols like Fox and the Warner brothers, but the book never sinks into gossip. I was most impressed with Eyman's grasp and appreciation of the film art form and how that was forever lost, replaced with talking that often explains rather than do. That criticism is true right up to today's Hollywood movies that spend so much of their time explaining!



4. Scott Eyman's masterful research of the Talkie Revolution is a must-read for silent-film and early sound-film fans. He covers early unsuccessful sound-film attempts, some of the last great silent film classics like THE CROWD and SUNRISE, Warners' and Fox's different sound systems, and many other topics. The main scope of the book is the period from 1926-1930. The focus of the book is on how the business of filmmaking and the art of filmmaking was completely changed with the coming of the talking movie. Careers were born and destroyed overnight. Sometimes a performer's voice was a problem in sound films. In other cases, like John Gilbert's, the studio thought that he was too expensive and the type of film that was his forte became passe. For a couple of years, the sound-man was the most important person on a movie set.

   Eyeman's book is comprehensive, but not comprehensive enough. Curiously, he gives short shrift to some comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Raymond Griffith. Except for a brief mention of the British change-over, the book focuses exclusively on Hollywood studios. He covers all of the bases such as legal wrangling over patents, financial profits and losses, the problems that studio artists encountered in making sound films, and the many poor films that were produced in the early sound era. If you like classic films, you will love this book.




5. If you have a passing interest in this period, this is not for you. It is a very detailed -- often overdetailed -- history of the coming of the talkies. Everyone who writes on silents tends to overpraise them,and Eyman is no exception, but this is not a screed and not overly nostalgic, just a good revealing history of the the time.