Hanumān, the red-faced monkey chief and ninth grammarian of Hindu mythology, is the protagonist of this dazzling narrative--a mind-journey to the temple city of Galta in India and the occasion for Octavio Paz, the celebrated Mexican poet and essayist, to explore the origin of language, the nature of naming and knowing, time and reality, and fixity and decay. *Selected Review:The very concept of grammar - a system in which language can be fixed, structured and therefore transformed - is one of the great achievements of Indian culture. In the past 50 years philosophers and linguists have devoted enormous intellectual energies to the investigation of how the concept was developed among the thinkers of ancient India, for whom the idea became a central problem in their philosophical tradition. Was language, our faculty for naming objects, given by God or did man invent it, either on his own or with powers borrowed from the divine realm? Through a species of time-space journey akin to Hanuman's, Octavio Paz explores this dilemma: ''What is language made of,'' he asks, ''and most important of all, is it already made, or is it something that is perpetually in the making?'' (New York Times)*About the Author:Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City. He wrote many volumes of poetry, as well as a prolific body of remarkable works of nonfiction on subjects as varied as poetics, literary and art criticism, politics, culture, and Mexican history. He was awarded the Jerusalem Prize in 1977, the Cervantes Prize in 1981, and the Neustadt Prize in 1982. He received the German Peace Prize for his political work, and finally, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.About the Translator:Helen Lane was the preeminent translator of French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian fiction. Among the long list of authors she translated are Augusto Roa Bastos, Jorge Amado, Luisa Valenzuela, Mario Vargas Llosa, Marguerite Duras, Nélinda Piñon, and Curzio Malaparte. Views: 100
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them. Views: 99
From the popular, "fresh, funny, and highly readable" (Bustle) dating columnist for New York magazine and the New York Post comes a whirlwind memoir recounting countless failed romances and blackout nights, told with Mandy Stadtmiller's unflinching candor and brilliant wit.My story is not standalone. Single girl comes to New York; New York eats her alive. But what does stand out is my discovery that you can essentially live a life that appears to be a textbook manual for everything one can do wrong to find love—and still find Mr. Right. Mandy Stadtmiller came to Manhattan in 2005, newly divorced, thirty years old, with a job at the New York Post, ready to conquer the city and the industry in one fell swoop. Like a "real-life Carrie Bradshaw" (so called by Jenny McCarthy!), she proceeded to chronicle her fearless attempts for nearly a decade in the Post, New York magazine, and xoJane. But there was... Views: 99
"Oz lifts the veil on kibbutz existence without palaver. His pinpoint descriptions are pared to perfection . . . His people twitch with life." — ScotsmanIn Between Friends, Amos Oz returns to the kibbutz of the late 1950s, the time and place where his writing began. These eight interconnected stories, set in the fictitious Kibbutz Yekhat, draw masterly profiles of idealistic men and women enduring personal hardships in the shadow of one of the greatest collective dreams of the twentieth century.A devoted father who fails to challenge his daughter's lover, an old friend, a man his own age; an elderly gardener who carries on his shoulders the sorrows of the world; a woman writing poignant letters to her husband's mistress—amid this motley group of people, a man named Martin attempts to teach everyone Esperanto.Each of these stories is a luminous human and literary study; together they offer an eloquent portrait of an idea and of a charged... Views: 98
From one of the preeminent intellectual figures of the twentieth century, a highly personal testimonial of what Canetti himself chooses to term "notations," bits and pieces: notes, aphorisms, fragments. Taken together, they present an awesomely tender, guiltily gloomy meditation on death and aging." A mosaical portrait of an old body's mind determined to do its exercises and not lose a step—and fascinating for that." - Kirkus Reviews Views: 98
The bell had clanged and the gates of the stockade were closed. There were some houses on the outside; there was not so much fear of the Indians here, for the French had the art of winning them into friendship. Farms were cultivated, and the rich bottom lands produced fine crops. Small as the town was twenty years before the eighteenth century ended, it was the headquarters of a flourishing trade. The wisdom of Pierre Laclede had laid the foundation of a grand city. The lead mines even then were profitably worked, and supplied a large tract of the Mississippi River east and west. Views: 98
Product DescriptionInsolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece. Language NotesText: English, French (translation) Views: 97
My dear Anne, When I was upon a visit at your good mamma\'s, I promised to make you a present. Now a present for a girl of your age (if I only considered your age) is easy enough to find; but when I think on your good sense, I cannot reconcile myself to buy for you what I otherwise should. Not to keep you in suspense, I have at last found out a present, which I hope will be agreeable to you. Attend to the following adventure: I was walking, about a week ago, in the fields adjoining my house at Croydon. The evening was so delightful, I wandered insensibly much farther than I at first intended to go. The prospect was so charming, and the hay smelt so agreeably, that I never thought of returning, till I found myself rather tired, so sat down by one of the haycocks to rest myself. After having sufficiently rested, I made the best of my way towards home; when, (guess my surprise!) putting my hand in my pocket, I felt something soft, which seemed as if it moved, and pulling it out, I found it to be as pretty a Squirrel as you would wish to see. He ran round the table several times, and giving a good spring, seated himself on the dumb waiter. I immediately said to one of my servants: "I wonder how this squirrel got in my pocket," when my surprise was greatly increased by hearing it say, "If you will use me kindly, I will relate my history, and then you will learn what made me get into your pocket." My dear Anne immediately came in my mind, for I thought nothing would be more agreeable to her than, "The Adventures of a Squirrel, related by himself." "Come and sit nearer to me," said I, "that I may hear better all you are going to relate." After having seated himself once more, he began as follows. ADVENTURESOF ASQUIRREL, &c. CHAPTER I. I was born in Caen Wood, near Hampstead. Being taken out of the nest, (in which were my mother and my brother,) very young, I shall begin by telling you, I was carried to the house of him that stole me, which was at Hackney. Here I was tied to a long pole, till he could procure a cage, which was not till the end of three weeks; when (what he termed) a very nice one came home, with a chain to fasten round my neck, with a padlock, when I came out of the cage. The chain he fastened on me directly, and it remained on, till my house was properly aired. When he thought I might with safety enter my house, he took off the chain, and carried me, exulting in his prize, to his sister; for he had kept me quite secure, till he could present me to her politely. She thanked him for his kind present, and then proposed making a trial of my abilities in the exercising way. You, perhaps, may wonder what this exercise was. My cage was made to go round upon wires, so that whenever I moved it went round, and caused a tinkling with some bells that were fixed for that purpose. At this exercise I remained nearly half an hour, and whenever I attempted to stand still, they pricked me with a pin. Luckily the dinner bell rang, or they might have kept me at it half an hour more. I will now give you some account of my master and his family.... Views: 97
In a debut novel as radiant as it is caustic, a former influencer confronts her past—and takes inventory of the damages that underpin the surface-glamour of social media.At 19, she was an Instagram celebrity. Now, at 35, she works behind the cosmetic counter at the “black and white store,” peddling anti-aging products to women seeking physical and spiritual transformation. She too is seeking rebirth. She’s about to undergo the high-risk, elective surgery Aesthetica™, a procedure that will reverse all her past plastic surgery procedures, returning her, she hopes, to a truer self. Provided she survives the knife. But on the eve of the surgery, her traumatic past resurfaces when she is asked to participate in the public takedown of her former manager/boyfriend, who has rebranded himself as a paragon of “woke” masculinity in the post-#MeToo world. With the hours ticking down to her surgery, she must confront... Views: 96
