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The book focusses on the Craft as practiced in America, but also touches upon the English and Grand Orient Lodges. He reviews the Blue Lodge Degrees (Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason)with just the right amount of detail -- neither glossing over, nor bogging down with the needless repetition often found in "exposes." (The full rituals are readily available from Masonic sources.)
He explains the history of the Blue Lodge, the Scottish and York Rites, the Shrine, Prince Hall Lodges, and other Allied Masonic Organizations. For the most part, he lets Masonry speak for itself; not only does he cite Masonic sources that claim Masonry as a religion of itself, but includes Masonic defenses of its compatibility with Christianity (and other religions).
In his chapter "Catholic Attitudes toward the Lodge," Mr. Whalen presents the objections of the Catholic Church to Freemasonry as consistently taught for nearly three hundred years. Freemasonry represents a belief system that is at best indifferent toward Christianity, and the unique plan of salvation revealed by Jesus Christ.
He also explains the confusion that resulted in the 1970s, after a Cannon Law revision removed the explicit reference to Freemasonry and its penalty of excommunication for Catholics who joined the Lodge. Many Catholics apparently became Masons during this time under the mistaken impression that Church Teaching had changed. (Rome has since clarified this misunderstanding.)
Whalen devotes a chapter to the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox criticisms of Freemasonry, which are virtually identical to the Catholic position.
In his closing chapter "The Christian and the Lodge," the author explores reasons for the decline of Freemasonry in our society, and insists that while "Christians must respect the decision of others to affiliate with the lodge,...[many] have come to realize that the Great Architect of the Universe is not the God Jesus taught them to call Our Father."
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Joe Gould was a well known "vagrant" in New York's Greenwhich Village during the early and mid 1900's. During his years as a bohemian in New York he met many people, some famous (such as ee cummings and Ezra Pound) and many more equally interesting yet unknown people. Through his many friends and detractors he drew the attention of a young reporter, Joseph Mitchell, who interviewed him for a piece in the New Yorker.
The book contains the two pieces that Joseph Mitchell wrote for the New Yorker about Joe Gould and his unpublished work, rumored to be ten times larger than the bible (over 10 million words), The Oral History. The more I read the more I craved to know more about Joe Gould and his life.
I highly recommend this book as it is a true snapshot into the life of someone who deserves to be known. Joseph Mitchell truly captured the feel of New York and inner workings of Joe Gould and his crazy life.
Apparently, 11 dime-store composition books that make up a nearly 150,000-word diary (part of his Oral History)are quietly tucked away within NYU's archives in NYC - I can't wait to get a look at them as well!
Live on Joe Gould!
"Joe Gould's Secret," the book, is an anthology of two New Yorker pieces. The first, "Professor Seagull," ran in the magazine in 1942. The second, "Joe Gould's Secret" (the article) ran in two parts in 1964. The first was an affectionate profile of a Harvard-educated down-and-outer named, of course, Joe Gould, who was a well-known and much-tolerated bum in Greenwich Village. The second piece expanded on the first, again portraying Mr. Gould, but also detailing the strange story of Mr. Gould's "Oral History of Our Times."
Joe Mitchell turns his acute eye for detail (and his remarkable patience) on Joe Gould, and writes with grace and humor. Mr. Mitchell had an acute ear, as well, and let's Mr. Gould speak for himself for page after page. The pieces in this book are exquisitely crafted, and all the more poignant for Joe Mitchell's secret: Not long after publishing the last word on Joe Gould, Mr. Mitchell ceased publishing. He came to The New Yorker every day, and claimed to be working on a long piece year after year, but never ushered a word of it into print. To my knowledge, no one knows (or at least no one has said) what the piece was to be, and why Mr. Mitchell could not seem to finish it.
An extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer.
Mitchell, intrigued by the "Oral History" idea, wrote a compassionate profile of Gould showing much patience and sensitivity in his dealings with his subject with whom he spent an inordinate amount of time. Scruffy in appearance, wearing cast-offs, often unwashed for days at a time, all the time dogged by "homelessness, hunger and hangovers", ("I'm the foremost authority in the U.S.A. on the subject of doing without") Gould's norm was to hang around bars and diners in the Village cadging food, money and drinks from friends, visiting tourists and other regular contributors to the "Joe Gould Fund". He survived on a diet of fresh-air, dog-ends, strong black coffee, fried egg sandwiches and bottles of diner-bar ketchup supped off a plate. ("the only grub I know that's free of charge") Once asked what made him as he is today, Gould answered it was all down to a strong distaste for material possessions, Harvard, and years on end of bad living on cheap booze and grub "beating the living hell out of my insides".
Things took a turn for the better for Gould when a secret benefactor, informed of Gould's plight and worsening health, paid for his room and board at a cheap hotel for upwards of three years. When the subsidy was suddenly cut-off without explanation, however, Gould reverted to the flophouses in the Bowery that were handy for the Village. Thereafter, Gould moved rapidly in a downward spiral. He died in 1957 whereupon Mitchell, who knew as much as anyone about the "Oral History", was persuaded to join a Committee set up to organise the collection of the mass of scattered material that made up "An Oral History of Our Times".
If you enjoy "Joe Gould's Secret", read also "McSorley's Wonderful Saloon", a marvellous collection of profiles of old-time New York characters in a New York that is no longer. Both these books are among my all-time favourites.
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I recommend this particular version of the novella because it contains a variety of essays, which discusses some of the main issues in the reading and historical information. Issues like racism and colonialism are discussed throughout many essays. It also contains essays on the movie inspired by the book Apocalypse Now, which is set against the background of the Vietnam War. I recommend reading Heart of Darkness and then viewing Apocalypse Now, especially in DVD format which contains an interesting directors commentary.
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The book deserve five stars for cogently and persuasively presenting a much-maligned theory which counts among its recent adherents such intellectual lights as Derek Jacoby, Michael York, John Gilgud, Mortimer Adler and Supreme Court Justices Blackmun, Powell and Stevens.
As other reviewers have noted, it does not matter so much whether Sobran's arguments are correct -- this reader finds many of them persuasive -- as that the subject itself warrants serious and sustained attention. At present champions of the orthodox Shakespeare retain their intellectual monopoly within higher education primarily by means of excluding non-specialists such as Sobran from the debate over the Shakespeare question and vociferously denying, against a host of contrary evidence, that the subject even exists.
On the contrary, anyone who cares for the future of literary studies should acquaint themselves with the arguments made in this book. Not all of them are, in my opinion, equally valid. But that is no cause to ignore or belittle Mr. Sobran for tackling an important question which (sorry) ain't going to disappear just because a few powerful Shakespeare industry insiders insist on feeling threatened by it rather than seeing it as one of the greatest boons which could befall a shrinking intellectual discipline.
"Shakespeare" has never been more interesting or more real than he is in this book.
For readers in search of a compact, intelligent, entertaining introduction to the authorship question -- a question which is only now, after many years of suppression and neglect, beginning to come into its prime as one of the great questions of our day -- this book is a great place to begin.
Roger Stritmatter
Oxford's experiences seem to reflect the experiences of the playwright in many cases. Numerous phrases from Oxford's private letters, appear again in Shakespeare's plays. Sobran offers better and more specific arguments than these. If I were a Shakespeare scholar, I would no doubt be angry at any probing book debunking the accepted theory, but this study is a well-made case for the Duke of Oxford.
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