I received this book as a child while living in Japan. It is wonderful book! The pictures and stories are Great! It is an insite into Japanese folklore.

LOVE AND DEATH IN NEW ORLEANS . . .

"I am conscious they are only trivial," wrote Lafcadio Hearn from New Orleans in 1880 to his friend H. E. Krehbiel, speaking of the weird little sketches he was publishing from time to time in the columns of the Daily Item, the New Orleans newspaper which first gave him employment in the city where he spent the ten years from 1877 to 1887. "But I fancy," he goes an, "that the idea of the fantastics is artistic. They are my impressions of the strange life of New Orleans. They are dreams of a tropical city. There is one twin idea running through them all - Love and Death. And these figures embody the story of life here, as it impresses me."

36 stories by Lafcadio Hearn

Introduction by Charles Woodward Hutson

Other books in the Wildside Fantasy Classics series (all highly recommended) include:

The Witch of Prague, by F. Marion Crawford One of Cleopatra's Nights, by Theophile Gautier Some Chinese Ghosts, by Lafcadio Hearn The Well at World's End, by William Morris The Phantom Ship, by Capt. Frederick Marryat

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is generally known for his groundbreaking work on the culture and folklore of Japan.

Less well known, despite the fact that it has been just as influential in its way, is the body of Hearn's Louisiana work. "Inventing New Orleans" -edited by S. Frederick Starr and published by University Press of Mississippi - is an admirable collection of Hearn's writings from the decade he spent in New Orleans prior to leaving the U.S. - first for Martinique and then, ultimately, Japan. From 1878 until 1888 Hearn lived in The Crescent City, and through a series of news articles, editorials, reviews, literary sketches (most published in the New Orleans "Daily City Item" and the New Orleans "Times-Democrat") and two studies of Creole culture, fashioned the romantic idea of New Orleans as a city of mystery, magic and wantonness that has endured to the present day. Nothing short of prolific, Hearn also translated books from the French and penned stories, poems, belles letters and a novel while in New Orleans.

"Inventing New Orleans" includes a small (considering Hearn's output) but thoroughly enjoyable selection of this material. The book is comprised of four sections as follows:

I.The Outsider as Insider: Impressions
II.From the Land of Dreams: Sketches
III.Of Vices and Virtues: Editorials
IV.Reports from the Field: Longer Studies

Sections I and II, each very similar in style and subject matter, are my personal favorites. Here, Hearn describes and discourses upon a variety of subjects pertaining to the City Care Forgot in a slice-of-life literary manner. Hearn's first impressions of New Orleans, famous residents of the city (the most well known of which is no doubt Marie Laveau), legends, traditions and myriad topical observations will be found in these pages.

Section III consists of a selection of editorials written for the "Daily City Item" and the "Times-Democrat". It is here that we see Hearn exercising his judgmental pen against political agendas to which he did not subscribe and social ills which he felt to be harming the city. He could not have been popular with the New Orleans police, for instance, judging from the scathing indictments against their alleged corruption to be found in this section.

Section IV includes selections from Hearn's two studies of Creole Culture: "La Cuisine Creole" and "Gombo Zhebes: Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs. . .". I personally found the former, essentially a cookbook, to be rather dry reading. Those interested in culinary arts will no doubt find much of interest here. The latter is a collection of Creole proverbs, as the title implies, and is a joy to read for those interested in language and a glimpse into the social mind of the lost Creole culture.

All of this is preceded by an erudite introduction (written by the editor) which provides an overview and definition of Southern writing as well as an excellent thumbnail biography of Lafcadio Hearn.

If you are an admirer of Lafcadio Hearn or simply one who has known the haunting charms of The Crescent City, "Inventing New Orleans" will provide you with pages and pages of reading delight.

As others have noted, this book is particularly helpful when trying to understand Flaubert and his other works. The popularly read Madame Bovary in particular features a character, Homais, who continually tries to impose his own ideas about religeon on people who aren't even interested in listening... it is interesting to see, though, where views similar to Homais' come out in the Temptation of St. Anthony.

The work itself is written like a play, though to do this on stage would be an interesting feat. It would perhaps better take the form of film, such as Bunuel's Simon in the Desert.

For those interested in getting in to studying early Christian movements following the death of Christ, although this will hardly serve as a textbook, Flaubert seems to have had a broad repetoir of little known (today, at least) historical facts and facets that will help point an aspiring student in the right direction.

Though hardly light reading, and probably of little appeal to those who do not have an interest in either Flaubert, French literature, or religeon, the trials and tribulations Antony is subjected to through one night of temptation will be at the least entertaining, if not enlightening, to a few.

This is a work that should not be neglected by those interested in Flaubert or by lovers of French Literature. It's format resembles an old-fashioned cyclorama, which was basically a revolving canvas, portraying various interpretive images to an audience that would be seated in the middle of a room. Or it may recall the same period's "magic lantern" which would produce a similar effect, projecting a series of images on a flat wall, the precursor of modern cinema.

Flaubert ushered in an entirely new sensibility to the world of letters. He reinvented the concept of the literary artist as word-and world shaper. The word is the world and vice-versa. No writer ever engaged in such a Herculean struggle to shape every word, every sentence, every image, every assonance or consonance to perfectly conform to his intention.

Flaubert engaged in a kind of ascetisism his entire adult life, which is hardly news, but is central to an understanding of this work and to his attraction towards St. Anthony for a protagonist. Flaubert was for many years a kind of hermit in his study at Croisset, where he retired to his study to read books and write novels. He had contact with his mother and adopted niece and wrote letters to a mistress (Louise Collet, and later to George Sand) along with a few male friends. He would make brief sojourns into Paris, but for the most part, stayed to himself in his provincial hideaway. What he dreamt of there, besides his most famous works (Madame Bovary and L'Education Sentimentale) were reveries such as this novel and Salammbo, another book set in the Near-East and equally evocative in terms of his treatment of that region's sensual and Byzantine richness.

"The Temptation" sparkles with some of Flaubert's most carefully and lovingly constructed imagery. It is the author's own homage to the fertility of his imagination. He never fathered a child literally that we know of, but this work and Salammbo were his ways of saying that he was fertile in all other respects. Each passing personage or creature is a seed sewn by this father of imagery.

One of the most senseless and ill-informed utterances in the annals of criticism is Proust's comment that Flaubert never created one memorable metaphor. Flaubert's entire cannon is one vast metaphor. They are evident in every sentence and every passage of every novel he ever wrote. This is particularly true in this work, as any informed reader will no doubt conclude after reading it.

One other area of recommendation extends to students of Gnosticism. Flaubert encapsulates much of the central theories of the early Gnostic Fathers and Apostles in a few well-delineated characterisations and brush strokes. I would also recommend the Penguin edition, edited and translated by Kitty Mrosovsky, for her introduction and notes. The only drawback I have with her is that she portrays Henry James as denigrating Flaubert's work, where in fact he generally effusively praises it. To those who can read it in its original text, I can only say I envy you and wish I were there.

This is a startling and brilliant piece of prose poetry that deserves to be more widely read; just don't expect anything like his more conventional novels. Indeed, don't read it expecting a novel at all; it reads more like a cross between modernist poetry and Medieval vision literature.

The funny little woman and her strange counterparts might throw adults into somekind of frenzy but kids will recognize the funniness of the situation.This book isn't scary but hyper and totally amusing.Recommended to people who who like weird and wonderful tales.

This children's book, retold by Arlene Mosel based on a story by Lafcadio Hearn, is about a Japanese woman who falls into a cavern and is forced to bake rice cakes for some underground demons. Her ability to laugh enables her to find a way to escape. The book was illustrated by Blair Lent and it won the 1973 Caldecott Medal for best illustrations in a book for children.

I was in the first grade when this book was released. I must have read it hundreds of times. I'm pleased to discover it's still in print. It has an indescribable quality that has stuck in my memory for thirty years: the warm but mysterious Asian elements, the damp green rooty feel of the pictures, the light and quirky text. I plan on reading it to my four year old--hundreds of times.

This collection of 17 old stories from Japan was collected and translated by a well-known ethnographer, and first published in English in 1904. The tales are old folk stories (urban legends if you will) mostly dealing with ghosts and the spirit world. Many feature the theme of a spirit who takes a human form to disguise their true nature. Another common theme concerns the uneasy spirit who must be appeased in some form. They are fairly charming old-fashioned stories, which vary considerably in length. The final three sections ("Butterflies," "Mosquitoes," "Ants") are more like meditations on the three subjects and don't really fit into the ghost story theme of the rest of the book. Four of the tales were made into an excellent Japanese movie in 1964.

Lafcadio Hearn is well-known in his Japanese name, Koizumi Yagumo. Actually, I never doubted that Koizumi Yagumo was a born-Japanese. His famous Kwaidan, or Japanese ghost stories are so "Japanese" and it really scared me. When my brother told me that Koizumi Yagumo is actually a Western people, I didn't believe it at first... He was born in 1850 in Greek, his mother's country. Educated in his father's country, Ireland, he went to USA when he was 19 years old. He worked as a journalist in New Orlens, then came to Japan and became an English teacher in Matsue, Shimane prefecture in 1890. He married with Yae Koizumi and got Japanese citizenship. Kwaidan includes ghost stories lik Earless Ho Ichi, a Biwa (Japanese PiPa) player and story teller of famous Heike legends, who was possesed by Heike (the warrior family once governed Japan then defeated) warriors' ghosts because of his talent, and Mujina, bewitched racoon dogs which scare people to death. Koizumi Yagumo is more Japanese than Japanese... Koizumi Yagumo is still popular in Japan (and I believe a lot of people still believe that he is a born-Japanese...). When I searched Koizumi Yagumo in Japanese Goo, it hit 422!

"The Boy Who Drew Cats" is based on the famous Japanese legend about the celebrated 15th-century artist Sesshu Toyo, who ink drawings at a Zen monastery were said to be so realistic that they would sometimes spring to life. As adapted by Margaret Hodges, this story tells of a young boy who lived in a small village and was sent off to become a priest, since he was very clever but quite weak and small. However, while the boy quickly learned what the priest had to teach him, he one small problem. He could not stop drawing cats and not because he was a bad kid but because he really could not help it. Drawing all those cats got the young boy into trouble but one terrifying night they miraculously proved their worth. This is a simple little story and the chief charm of "The Boy Who Drew Cats" is the artwork Aki Sogabe created with cut paper, watercolor, and airbrush. But the story can also convince you that cats, who tend to live in this world as if they ruled it, can be quite useful when necessary. This book is aimed at younger children and if they like this story you can find other versions of it in collections of classic Japanese fairy tales.

I must admit that this review is tainted with bias. I read this book after staying in Izumo and Matsue on a week long trip to visit a good friend. In Matsue, Lafcadio is probably the most honored celebrity to have ever resided in the city. Statues, posters, honorary names of places abound with his image. I toured the house he lived in and describes in the book, and I became curious about this man I knew only in name.

So a week later I bought this book. It is a collection of his writings from 1891 and his first days in Japan to when he left Matsue just a few years later. The stories range from his personal favorite of telling ghost stories and fables of old, to his traveling adventures, which usually involve temples and festivals. Some stories are really edifying (especially when I had been to places he described), but I must admit that many times my attention was stretched thin and I grew bored.

Many moments in the book are enlightening and offer a glimpse of Japan and offer insights into the culture, but now after spending over a year here, I have to admit that most of these insights are a part of the past. Most of what is written is no longer around. Maybe it is because@I spend my time in Tokyo, but I feel somehow disconnected to the tales of festivals and people that filled Lafcadio's life over a hundred years ago.

But that is to be expected I guess. The true complaint I have is that after a few temples and shrines, every place seems the same in its confusing description, and it gets, if not redundant, old. The use of the Japanese language will prove confusing for people who have not studied the language. Even I, who is still slowly but surely learning, was stopped occasionally at a word thrown here and there. Also Lafcadio really does have a love for Japan. Sometimes it is easy to see why. Yet even though he never brings himself to admit it, he will often defend Japan at the expense of all things western. (The most foreboding was where he praises the loyalty of the common Japanese for their Emperor and how wonderful it is. Something that just 50 years later would be exploited and manipulated to horrific degrees.)

This is what half of the book is like. Other times there will be captivating stories that transcend time and bias and are completely absorbing. Lafcadio's prose are fluid and natural and I must admit make me jealous that I lack any such writing skill. It is captivating for exactly what the title says. It offers a glimpse into Japan that frankly does not exist anymore, at least that I know of.

"In Ghostly Japan" is a collection of old ghost stories, traditions dealing with ghosts, and personal ruminations on the afterlife by the turn-of-the-century Japanese scholar Lufcadio Hearn.

Much of the collection is short essays on Japanese traditions such as "Incense," and how incense relates to ghosts in terms of the Shinto and Buddhist religion. There is a true story of an accurate fortune teller know to the author, in "A Story of Divination." "Bits of Poetry" and "Japanese Buddhist Proverbs" translates and teaches several bits of Japanese lore as they relate to the world of the dead.

Some essays, such as "Silkworms," are pure conjecture, relating the human ideals of paradise to the daily lives of silkworms. "Suggestion" is a conversation between the author and a monk on the nature of gender and re-birth in the Buddhist tradition.

Of true ghost stories, there are few. Many of the ghost stories, such as "Furisode," begin with a short lesson about something Japanese, in this case a long-sleeved Kimono known as a Furisode, and then relates a ghost story dealing with the object. Some, such as "Ingwa-banashi," are pure chilling horror that make you cringe. Other true ghost stories in this collection are "Story of a Tengu," "Ululation," "Fragment" and "A Passional Karma."

One of my favorites, a short story called "At Yaidzu," tells of the author swimming out amongst the Obon lanterns, which are put to see to guide home the spirits of the dead, and the feeling he gets being in the Ocean amongst the returning dead. Truly creepy.

All in all, "In Ghostly Japan" is a bit more scholarly than ghastly. The writing style is like many books from the 1880's, a bit dry and non-thrilling. It is a good resource for learning about the Ghostly traditions of Japan, but those seeking a collection of Japanese ghost stories will be disappointed.