This is a brilliant encapsulation of the rage of the artist. He has a contempt for mankind, society, it's progress, and yet can't escape society. He can be a "..." as artists where called back then, refuse to live a middle class existence, live a life of drunken debauchery, and yet that is just another societal role.
His imagery is powerful, his language self-deprecating and insanely sincere. It draws you in with its suffering.
At the end he finds his life as an artist, his passion, empty. It all ended with the gunshot to the hand that ended his affair with Verlaine. In short, he equates his artistry and homosexual affairs with hell, and a return to society redemption. This explains how he became a materialist later on in his life, a trader, even considering trading slaves.
It is a sad fate for someone who had such a poetic gift.
I still enjoy reading A Season In Hell, even after having read it many times. Ultimately, the work is flawed; it has a little too much affected insanity, angst, the sign of an adolescent work, but it is also full of pure poetry and promise.

These are the brilliant and mystical hallucinations of the original "enfant terrible" and his visionary raptures about poetry, innocence and guilt. Verbal deliriums suffused with pain and hatred, remorse and desperation, but also with a parodic, pathetic and fatalistic megalomania. The "mystical rage" transformed into pyromaniac wording. Poems in prose, of very high quality, which reflect the fury of the love-hate relationship of Rimbaud with life and Universe.

In the collection of prose poems and verse fragments that make up the short book A Season in Hell, begun in April 1873 in an outbuilding at Rimbaud's family farm at the village of Roche and completed by the end of August, he looks back in despair over his life as a poet. In one of the fragments, titled "Ravings number two" he talks about "the history of one of my follies. I invented the colors of the vowels!" he claims, and goes on: "I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible...to all the senses...I expressed the inexpressible. I defined vertigos...I ended up regarding my mental disorder as sacred."

Rimbaud draws a picture of his affair with Verlaine in cynical terms, painting Verlaine as a weak and foolish virgin and himself as an "infernal bridegroom," a monster of cruelty. It wasn't far from the truth.

The last chapter of A Season in Hell is titled "Farewell." It has an air of exhaustion and relief about it. "I have tried to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new tongues. I believed I had acquired supernatural powers. Well! I must bury my imagination and my memories. A fine fame as an artist and story-teller swept away! I! I who called myself magus or angel, exempt from all morality, I am given back to the earth, with a task to pursue, and wrinkled reality to embrace. A peasant!" A Season In Hell was finished in August 1873. Rimbaud somehow persuaded his thrifty mother to pay to have the book printed in Belgium. He sent his six author's copies to his friends and to men of letters in Paris. Many people see this manuscript as his farewell to literature. It certainly reads like that, although Enid Starkie believes that it was Rimbaud's farewell to a certain kind of literature--visionary, mystical, growing out of the selfish and hallucinatory lifestyle that had crashed to a halt only a few months before with his shooting and the jailing of Verlaine--and a commitment to something more humble and realistic. "Well, now I shall ask forgiveness for having fed on lies," Rimbaud wrote. He hoped that the French literary world would offer him the forgiveness that he was now prepared to seek, and give his book favorable reviews. He the proceeded to Paris to see how his book had fared.

Favorable reviews? He must have been mad. To those literary men, the dilettantes Rimbaud had mocked and despised a year or two earlier, Rimbaud was the insolent catamite who had destroyed their old friend Verlaine: sponged off him, wrecked his marriage, corrupted his soul and ruined his life, and then, when he had used him up, had turned him in to the police to face hard labour in a Belgian jail.

We have an eyewitness account of Rimbaud on the day when the last door in Paris had been slammed in his face, at the moment when he realized that the literary career he'd embraced so passionately was over. It was the evening of the first of November, 1873, a holiday, and the cafés and restaurants were crowded. The poet Poussin had joined some writer friends at the Café Tabourey. He noticed a young man alone in a corner, staring into space. It was Rimbaud. Poussin went over and offered to buy him a drink. "Rimbaud was pale and even more silent than usual," he later recalled. "His face, indeed his whole bearing, expressed a powerful and fearsome bitterness." For the rest of his life Poussin "retained from that meeting a memory of dread."

When the café closed, Rimbaud--who hadn't spoken to anyone all evening--set out to walk home through the late autumn countryside. It took him about a week. When he got to Charleville he built a bonfire and burned all his manuscripts. He didn't bother to collect the remaining five hundred copies of his book from the printer--they moldered there until they were discovered by a Belgian lawyer in 1901. That should have been the end of it. But Rimbaud couldn't quite let go. The following year in London he carefully copied out his prose poems, gathered together under the title, Illuminations. The year after that he tried to get them published. For the anguished but brilliant Rimbaud, giving up poetry must have been akin to weaning himself from a potent drug.

First appearing in 1950, and a hilarious 1974 introduction by the redoubtable Arthur C. Clarke, pioneering literary agent Scott Meredith's (I923-1993) Writing to Sell is an excellent tool for the aspiring writer. Meredith has a deep understanding of the marketplace (although some of his observations have become dated), as well as of what makes plots work (his original aspiration was to be a science fiction writer).He generalizes the successful plot as one in which an initial conflict is complicated to a climax, makes useful distinctions (e.g., between "incident" and "story") and gives many practical suggestions on novel writing and revising. (There is one chapter devoted to nonfiction.) Perhaps reflecting Meredith's financial success, there is a tendency to equate literary success entirely with sales reminiscent of Mickey Spillane's comment that what intellectuals don't understand is more people eat peanuts than caviar-or Tom Clancy's comment not to "commit art." Meredith's clients have included Norman Mailer, Ellery Queen, Robert Silverberg, and Philip K. Dick; and he was mentor to many agents and editors. With the qualification that his "just-sell-it" tonic may quash artistic originality, there is a lot to learn from his distillation of the American writing experience-which is no doubt why this book remains in print with Writer's Digest Books half a century after its initial publication. From the need to start off in a recognizable genre, to the importance of not skimping on the first draft and presenting likable characters with seemingly impossible problems, Meredith's work is a highly readable primer on the basic attributes of a salable novel. In short, although somewhat mercantile and dated,Writing to Sell is an excellent craft of writing work.

When I first read this book, I was expecting it to be about writing stuff that publishers would buy. Well, it had that all right, but not until it went through what they ARE buying, what other genres there are, how others broke in to the business, etc. In other words, stuff you could find pretty much any other place you look. On the other hand, when it does get into the actual "writing" of the book, it gives good information and good techniques that I believe any good writer could use. Whether or not you actually want to get published is beyond the point - you can skip that part if you want to.

When I was given this book, I had never been paid for my fiction. Now I make a living at it; in fact, since I started applying these principles to my fiction, I've never FAILED to sell a novel. I've sold nine so far.

This book contains everything you need to know.

The Mystery of the Silver Spider is in many ways the quintessential Three Investigators book in my mind, mainly because this title stands out the most from my childhood memories. It really is a good, exciting story, full of political intrigue, international espionage, a dastardly conspiracy, very real danger, a mad flight to safety, and other thrills along the way. After a chance meeting with the young prince of Varania, the boys find themselves invited to the prince's coronation in his home country. They are ostensibly contracted by the U.S. government to serve as secret junior agents--while the feds know some type of trouble is brewing in the small yet important European nation, they have been unable to ferret out the information they need themselves and thus turn to our intrepid young heroes for help. Once in Varania, the prince confides in them the fact that the invaluable silver spider, the symbol of Prince Paul, the most important leader in their history, and the symbol of the very nation, has been stolen and replaced with a fake; without the true silver spider, the prince will be disgraced and his coronation will be postponed--perhaps permanently. Much to the boys' surprise, Bob finds the precious spider stashed among his handkerchiefs. Realizing that the evil plotters mean to blame them--the young prince's friends--for the theft, Jupe, Pete, and Bob are forced to make a run for safety; fortunately, they are aided by some Varanians loyal to the young prince. Poor Bob bangs his head during the escape and cannot remember where he stashed the real spider. As events build to a climax, the boys race to free themselves from capture and somehow alert the Varanian people to the prince's danger. With Bob still suffering partial amnesia, it is up to Jupiter to find the silver spider and thus save not only the prince but the entire nation of Varania.

This one is action-packed from front to back and may well be the best book in the series. If you have not yet been introduced to the Three Investigators and are wondering which book to try reading first, I would recommend this book. You might as well buy the other available titles, though, because you are surely going to want to keep reading these adventures. For the life of me, I can't figure out why there has never been a Three Investigators movie--this story in particular would be terrific on the big screen.

The Three Investigators and Mystery of The Silver Spider is great. It has full of suspense and plot twists. It is my favorite Three Investigators book. The book is written by Robert Arthur, the origanal Three Investigators author. His three investigator books are better than the ones written by the later ones.

This was an excellent novel by Arthur and one of the best in the series. It details the exploits of the three sleuths as a chance encounter with royalty leads them to another nation where they become embroiled in an attempted governmental coup. Everything hinges on the Silver Spider--the key to the throne--and the suspense is immense when the only one who knows where it is can't remember! Mystery,suspense,and more action than in most of the books, The MYstery of the silver SPider takes you on a rollicking ride that culminates in an explosive climax.It will keep you glued to your seat and sweating with the characters!

Absolutely reccomended.

Maverick

Written as a response to sladerous accusations of lying and insincerity, Cardinal Newman composed one of the best autobiographies in the English language. To properly defend himself, he develops the history of his religous opinions from his earliest memories, through Oxford movement and finally to his conversion to the Catholic Church. Along the way he gives the reader some of the best prose that has been employed to descrbe religious experience. The book concludes with a point-by-point refutation to the arguments of Rev. Kingsley, that incidentally contains some of the best arguments against Sola Scriptura and other guiding principles behind Protestantism.

After publication, Newman's Apologia helped raise the esteem of Catholics in the eyes of the English people and helped make him a Cardinal. I whole-heartedly recommend this to anyone looking for a moving spiritual autobiography.

There are few autobiographies as moving and eloquent as Newman's "Apologia." This is his "defense" of his life's choice to leave the Church of England and "go home to Rome." It's a moving testament to an individual's struggle with spiritual issues and theological dogmas and how they inform our lives. I know of no other spiritual autobiography of such importance other than Augustine's "Confessions."

Yet, for all these superb reasons to read this spiritual autobiography, perhaps there is one "secular" reason to read Newman: His command of the English language. Newman has an excellent command of rhetoric, logic, and exposition that makes him a stellar example of Victorian belle letters.

I'd recommend the Norton Critical Edition over the Penguin edition, obviously, not for the "translation," but for the criticism that helps put the issues involved in context for the 20th century reader.

since the "Confessions" of St. Augustine of Hippo 1600 years earlier.

In this book, John Henry Newman, in order to defend himself from (rather unfair) charges of insincerity, outlines the history of his spiritual development, from his beginnings as a liberal thinker, to his conversion to the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, to his ordination as an Anglican priest, to his gradual move toward Catholic thought, practice and worship in the Church of England, to his leadership in the so-called "Oxford Movement" and its call to holiness and Catholicity in the Church of England, and finally to his ultimate submission to Rome.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with Cardinal Newman theologically; whether one can accept his particular conclusions is not important to the enjoyment of this book. It is an honest account of a spiritual journey, written by an articulate man, which should prove inspirational to all persons of faith, and to all on a spiritual pilgrimage.

I bought this as a present for my brother, a Metallica fan and accomplished guitarist. This is a very attractively formatted book which Metallica fans that play or want to play guitar will enjoy. There is a well written introduction section with an interesting interview with Kirk. There are diagrams of the scale boxes that Kirk most often uses -- *if* these are accurate reflections of Kirk's playing (yes I am a little sceptical) then it is very interesting. According to this, he uses mainly 3 or 4 common scales, including the Minor Pentatonic and Dorian scales -- the other(s) was/were probably Major scale, aeolian and/or blues scale, I forget -- mainly centered around the most common position...although with some interesting extensions at both ends. The scale diagrams are very clear and well presented. The rest of the book has detailed breakdowns of Kirks solos which was of little interest to me and seemed a little dry, but this would presumably be quite interesting to a fan (pity they haven't done "the Art of Brian Robertson" yet!!Hint. Hint.) Some more desciptive text later in the book may have improved things for non-fans.

This is a fine book for diving into the art of Kirk Hammet. Soloing, signature licks, and an interview; they are all there to give you some of meaning of the man, Kirk Hammet.

When it comes time for the Metallica fan in all of us to reach out to the music, we get a guitar and lay down our best attempt at doing that. That is where this book will come in handy. Great and renowned solo's monopolize the book. Including a small comment on the solo strait from Kirk and the author.

Not really a beginner book, but it was for me, well I would still buy it even if you are a beginner. You will find very much to keep you busy, promise.

Everything in this book is right. The tab to all his solos is here and spot on with no errors to be seen. It has all his solos from the early albums (Kill 'Em All, Ride The Lightining) to the newer albums (Load). Some of the better solos include Seek and Destroy, Fade To Black, One, Blackened, Battery, and Enter Sandman. It also includes an interview with Kirk, his gear setup, photos, and scale diagrams. Along with the solos it also includes some of Kirks licks. This book is not for everyone however, as anyone who has listened to Kirk play knows that his solos are fast and flashy for the most part, and no beginning guitar player will have the skill to play like this yet.

Overall this is a great book for the advanced guitar player. If your interested in learning how to solo this book is for you too. It has helped me learn how to craft my own solos, as well as help me gain playing speed.

This book has it's moments but quite frankly did not reach it's potential. I was riveted by the frankness and the seriousness of the safety and a few other chapters in this book, But on a whole it is better suited to the large bore african hunting safari big game buff.
I being the owner of rifles which are lighter in calibre than what the A-Square company specialises in put me at a distance to what the Authors talk about at times. The subject of bullet expansion was fasinating but also the likelyhood of me using a monolithic solid projectile on varmints is highly unlikely.
I though at first that this would be an excellent read but it started to wain in it's appeal after the Authors spoke about Terminal Ballistics and there after Bullet Expansion and Sighting in a Rifle. Don't get me wrong there were like I said some awsome third party stories and information but I was none the less dissapointed.
In a nutshell If you use big guns I mean BIG .338, .460, .577 you will find this a pleasure to read but if you go for game that is a bit smaller than Eland and Elephants then you are better off looking for another read. I for example live in Australia and I hunt Kangaroo, Feral Cats, Wild Boar, Feral Dogs, Rabbits, Hares and Foxes. This book talks about much larger game that is way out of my calibre and I mean much larger game.
Nice book to add to my collection but relevance to my situation is much desired and not met in this book. The principals I will admit are relevant to any shooter but I will not be trying to knock off a white rhino with my .243 Winchester after reading this that is for shure.

Col. Alphin's 'Any Shot You Want' is extremely accurate, informative, and written to comprehend. Having served in the military with Col. Alphin (2nd Armored Division - 1975) as his M-60A1 Tank gunner, I am not at all surprised at the devotion to detail nor his passion to share his vast expertise with both novice and expert firearm enthusiasts. He is well-known and respected throughout the world as a 'hunter's hunter' having gained practical knowledge in the field allowing us to benefit from his experience! Kudos to you, sir, ..."Buffalo"!

This is a must read for any serious firearms enthusiast. From the big time stuff, to the venerable 30-06, the book is informative and entertaining. I wish the A-Square company the best and can't wait till the next revision!

The only thing good about this book is the cover.

After 30 years experience in the Space Program, NASA, and deep Space probes, I have to say this is one of the more intellectuall accurate, and stimulating stories I have read. I am an Clarke fan, having read 2001 when it first came out in 1968, but the combination of Clarke's vision and Preuss's writing skills makes this Venus Prime Series a set of books you will not be able to put down!

Sparta is the name of a bio-enahnced young woman. She wakes everyday, knowing nothing of the day last past. Then one day Sparta's keen senses trip a deep mechanistic response to escape where she is. Only minutes later she finds herself in a mega-fast mega-powerful attack helicopter; somehow, she knows exactly how to fly it... From then on she will have to assume a new identity - hiding in the open as an elect officer. She knows only that she's looking for her true self - she will solve many other mysteries along the way. This is a fantastic trip and an excellent read! Also, it is difficult to get all six (6) in the series - if you find them (all) BUY THEM AT ONCE! It has taken me three years to collect them all.

My daughter absolutely adores this book. Like another reviewer, my only complaint is the sturdiness of the play people. Once I'd taped Arthur's head on for the second time, it occurred to me to laminate 'em! That's what I'll do when I get our backup version of this. So that's the ticket. Other than that, she loves this book. She'll sit forEVer putting the guys in and taking them out. I've not seen her concentrate and work so hard at anything else yet.

Our two year old absolutely loves this book. We've given this book as a gift to all the two year olds we know, they all like it a lot. We purchased our daughter a new book. She had torn the figures and slots they go in on the old book because she plays with the book daily! We had the figures laminated so they would hold up longer, it cost @$2 at a printing shop. One problem with some of the books is that the pages come apart, they need more glue inbetween!

Over the past two or three years my five-year-old daughter has worn out two copies of this book. I am ordering a third. She never gets tired of moving around the punch-out characters, talking to them and for them.

This book gives a logical delineation of the human Astral Principal (Body) and also its relationship to the Earth's Astral Light. I'd recommend it to anyone who wishes for some original research in the area, together with a plausible hypothesis. Certainly better then much New Age claptrap - i.e. material that would rather teach you how to 'Astral Project' instead of imparting a fuller vision of what you truly are.

This book is a classic, written in the 1920s, but still valid today. The astral plane is talked about and lectured on in New Age groups everywhere. It is a feature of teachings in the modern Wiccan movement and most occult schools of today. However, the ideas of the astral world were first put forward as a result of the late 19th century Spiritualist and Theosophical groups. There were many well-reasoned books written by early theosophical society members, notably by Leadbeater and Besant, but others too. Arthur Powell has done us all a great service by collecting many of the published tales and insights and putting them into this volume. It is well written, and contains most of what is still current knowledge on this subject. The astral plane is where we go in dreams, and also in life after death. There are all kinds of stories about ghosts and spirits nowadays which can be explained using material from this book. The book explains the Christian Heaven, Purgatory and Hell realms as being various astral worlds. It also describes the American Indian's Summerland. I've seen many books relating astral experiences, but Powell's book is often used as the definitive text.

Like the reader from California, I, too, thought I could obtain all the information I needed by reading newer, more modern books. I was mistaken. These old Theosophical texts contain important information that is ignored in contemporary books on the subtle bodies and metaphysics in general. Powell sifted through the voluminous literature available to him at the time and organized it in a fashion which reads clearly and logically. Especially important is his book "The Causal Body and the Ego" - material which is of central concern to any explorer of the subtle bodies - and which is rarely even mentioned in works by modern authors.

This slim volume may serve as a excellent introduction to the life of TR, or as a bracing romp through familiar landscape for devoted TR aficionados. The book itself is a little pricey for what you get, however (I hope a paperback edition of this American Presidents series is made available eventually), and it is pretty evident to the informed reader that Auchincloss is merely reviewing the conclusions of previous biographers. Auchincloss does attend to a particularly interesting period of TR's life, i.e. his decline and fall. From TR's impulsive public declaration not to seek a "third" term, the bloodletting in Africa, his quixotic Bull Moose campaign, the misadventure in the Amazon, to TR's death shortly following the death of his youngest son in WWI ("poor Quinnikins"), Auchincloss's volume was for me a tantalizing foreshadowing of what is certain to be a grand event in biography -- the third volume of Edmund Morris's TR trilogy. This book should help keep you satisfied (if only for a few hours) until the release of Morris' next volume. And after you read Auchincloss's TR, you should read his THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN if you've never done so, and also Edward Renehan's THE LAST LION (excellent mini-biographies of TR's sons, fascinating characters in their own right).

This book serves as a good introduction to Theodore Roosevelt to either satisfy or stimulate one's curiosity before indulging in a lengthier biography. This is a "short" bio, and not meant to be a treatise on T.R. The author was better with his Penguin Lives book on Woodrow Wilson, but he seemed to have more fun with Roosevelt.
As a subject T.R. is especially enjoyable, but more for his forceful character than for any of his objective accomplishments (for which the author notes several, e.g., negotiating the peace between Japan and Russia, and his national conservationist orders, etc.).
The author addresses Roosevelt's sense that his presidency was relatively unspectacular, and since war time presidents receive the most historical attention (e.g., leading to positive evaluations for Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but negative for Wilson due to his post war failures), Roosevelt felt himself cheated from his place of greatness due to being a peacetime president.
As this author notes, many of T.R.'s beliefs had long lasting value (especially, I feel, his beliefs on the limitations of capitalism as spoken by a pro-business chief executive). Those who followed him, though, soon abandoned these attitudes. The reason for this seems to rest with T.R. He accomplished much emphasizing the forcefulness of his personality and took credit for improvements as being uniquely his. Since he can be the only T.R., his philosophy could not be transmitted to others. When out of office, he was no longer "T.R." and his so-called system collapsed as with a deck of cards. He was ultimately left a shell of his former self.
What if Roosevelt had toned down some of his tendencies? Might he have extended his influence over the next administrations and the country? If so, might this have led to a different result in how America influenced the developing European disputes that resulted in the First World War? These are some of the questions that remained with me from reading this book.

This is the second volume in the new American Presidents series edited by Arthur M. Schlessinger, and like the first on James Madison, provides excellent, although brief insight into one of America's most fascinating characters. The prime focus of this book is on TR's presidential and post-presidential years. Limited space does not allow for anything more than a brief summary of Roosevelt's early life, which may actually be his most interesting period. Still there is enough to give the reader a basis for understanding Roosevelt's revolutionary power-expanding actions as President. Auchincloss does a wonderful job of filling this short volume with all of the important events of Roosevelt's life while keeping to a very enjoyable and readable style. It is a good introduction to Roosevelt and will leave you wanting to learn more.