Zurich 1917, a marvellous subject. The meeting point of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries on one side, and of the new « revolutionary » artists, be they James Joyce and the stream of consciousness writers, or Tristan Tzara and the Dada movement.

The first interest of the play is to situate the dynamic of each revolutionary movement very well. Lenin is the figurehead of the revolutionary politicians, James Joyce and Tzara of the modern literature movements.

Then Stoppard makes them meet. In Zurich it is more or less an artificial meeting though they share most of their ideas (the files that are unknowingly exchanged at the beginning and exchanged back at the end show how identical their ideas are) and yet they have styles, general postures that make them unable to have a real dialogue.

Tom Stoppard goes even further by tracing along Lenin's positions on art. He shows the perfect contradiction contained - as Walt Whitman would say - by the man. On one side (Tolstoy), he understands that a work of art is a reflection (hence not a purely identical image) of social contradictions and therefore of society, and also a reflection of the contradictory artist (all artists contain contradictions) and his contradictory position in society (hence in the social contradictions of this society). On the other side, once in power, he condemns, at first, then wavers on the subject, Mayakovsky and the Futurist mocement, and definitely considers intellectuals as bourgeois individualists. But the artists of 1917 represent exactly a similar contradiction between the absolutely nihilistic approach of the Dada movement, and the mentally realistic movement represented by James Joyce. The former rejects all heritage. The latter rearranges the full heritage within a modern man's consciousness, hence within a revolutionary or disturbing consciousness.

The play is at times funny, at times realistic, at times dramatic, according to the points of view, but the essential one of these is the recollections two (minor) characters have of the period sixty years later. We are forced to accept that historical perspective : what it was then and what we can do of it now.

The conclusion of the play is typical perpetual movement, here perpetual syllogism : « Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary... I forget the third thing. » Unfinished of course, like any historical achievement. History is always unfinished, in spite of Marx's dream of a contradiction-free communist society. This is the biggest sham of western philosophy ever dreamed of by a man of the amplitude and intensity of Karl Marx. You can be a genius but reality is more real than philosophy. The proof, as Marx liked to say, of the pudding is in my eating it. Full stop. Period.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

This is probably my favorite Stoppard play. Everything about it is raised to such a level of excellence that it's difficult to imagine how it can be surpassed.

Stoppard showcases his linguistic talents at their most dazzling and expects the reader to keep up intellectually. Not to sound daunting, but in order to enjoy "Travesties" properly, it helps to know some rudimentary German, French, and Russian; be well familiar with Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and James Joyce's "Ulysses"; and also to have a good factual knowledge of the Great War and the Great October Revolution. If you do not have this background knowledge, you risk missing out on most of Stoppard's witty insight and leaving the theatre/closing the book confused and disappointed.

The most important thing to remember about Travesties is that it is essentially Stoppard arguing with himself. This really shines through in his "derailed" scenes, where the characters have to abort a scene half-way through because it's obviously going in a wrong direction. Basically, it starts out with the characters being themselves, but as it progresses, one can see that they are simply two sides of Stoppard's own mind speaking to the audience through masks. And then it's as if the author remembers to keep his distance from the audience and steps back into the shadows. The effect is rather mystical; it's as if we are granted a brief glimpse beyond the fabric of what we take to be reality. What remains unclear is whether we are now looking into the "true" reality or yet another scene setting.

In short, buy the book, read it outloud, amuse yourself, alarm your neighbors.

This is one of my most favorite plays, and I was lucky enough to see it performed on stage. In 1917 Zurich, James Joyce, Tristan Tzara and VI Lenin are all converging on the movements that define their very careers later in life. The tale is narrated by Henry Carr, an actual historical figure, as an old man in 1972, who was with the three celebs as a young man, and his memory is a bit faulty! He once played Algernon in "The Importance of Being Earnest" which required him to buy some new trousers, and he insists that Joyce reimburse him. Thus starts a legal battle.

Travesties is a non-stop energetic creative retelling of history in its most fantastical setting. Read it, and if you ever get the opportunity, go see it!

Henry James' Beast in the Jungle is surely not for everyone, there is little action in the novella (I suppose that is the point actually) and the title could give readers the wrong idea. John Marcher, the protagonist, is re-aquainted with May Bartram, a woman he knew ten years earlier, who remembers his odd secret- Marcher is seized with the belief that his life is to be defined by some catastrophic or spectacular event, lying in wait for him like a "beast in the jungle."

May decides to take a flat nearby in London, and to spend her days with Marcher curiously awaiting what fate has in stall for John. Of course Marcher is a self-centered egoist, believing that he is precluded from marrying so that he does not subject his wife to his "spectacular fate". So he takes May to the theatre and invites her to an occasional dinner, while not allowing her to really get close to him for her own sake. As he sits idly by and allows the best years of his life to pass, he takes May down as well, until the denouement wherein he learns that the great misfortune of his life was to throw it away, and to ignore the love of a good woman, based upon his preposterous sense of foreboding.

James' language can be a bit stilted at times, and some of the dialogue may strike modern readers as out-dated. However James was a master of the novella format, and with The Beast in the Jungle he has written an engrossing psychological drama, which left me speechless at the very end. Pick up a collection that also includes The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller if you haven't already read them, they are accessible (more so than some of James' full length novels) and great examples of the format's potential.

I have never read Henry James before because I have always been told that he is not worth reading. My own teachers have told me that, but they obviously didn't read like I do because I found this story nothing but delightful. Henry James faintly resembles the writing of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. I see the resemblance in James' use of detail, not only in physical descriptions but also in the portrayals of capturing what is happening in the minds of his characters. This can be tedious if a reader is looking for plot, but my own conviction is that good fiction is driven by character, and anything that happens within a plot happens consequently to how characters act and/or think. "The Beast in the Jungle" revolves around only two characters and how their relationship and convictions affect each other's lives. The beauty in this story is the reality within it-a realization of time and how and what it should be spent on. James focuses on human relationships and shows the flaws that can occur within those relationships. John Marcher's selfishness, for instance, keeps him at a distance from May Bartram and her love for him: "Marcher had been visited by one of his occasional warnings against egotism. He had kept up, he felt . . . his consciousness of the importance of not being selfish". This selfishness, which Marcher believes he suppresses fairly well, is what turns out to be part of the Beast he is seeking; the selfishness is what keeps him from loving Mary Bartram simply because he wants her only for what she can do for him: ". . . he had never felt before, the growth of a dread of losing her by some catastrophe . . . that yet wouldn't at all be the catastrophe: partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful to him than ever yet". I enjoyed "The Beast in the Jungle" so much because it took me into the mind of a person who grows throughout the story and learns something that perhaps every human being needs to learn throughout the course of his/her life. I don't find Henry James tiresome or dull at all; in fact, to myself of course, his writing is quite the contrary. I look forward to reading more of him.

Henry James has always been one of my favorite writers even though many readers are put off by his very stylized writing. When I first read "The Beast in the Jungle", I must admit that I was completely blown away by its powerful message. This is a type of mystery that never loses its power although you already know the ending. There is no way to describe certain moments in the story that give us a glimpse into the very soul of these characters that manage to become real to us throughout this story. Marcher's incredible egotism blinds him from seeing the truth in his life and thereby destroying not only his own life, but also destroying the life of the woman who could have helped him learn how to live before it was too late. Henry James was a master writer and to quote the words of T.S. Eliot: "Henry James is a difficult writer for English readers because he is American, difficult for Americans because he is European, and I ignore if he is possible for other readers." Yes, Henry James can be a challenge for many readers, but the reward is all worth the effort.

What a great idea: take nearly every year of human history and discuss the events as they unfold into a chain of causality. The effect on the reader is unparalleled.

However, there are historical innacuraccies throughout the work. The reader is best advised to get a "twenty-thousand-foot-level" view of the era that interests them from which to pursue more exhaustive texts.

Every time I pick up this book I am sucked in, following one historical trail through the years and being distracted by another path, and then another. It is set up so brilliantly, each year broken down by category--politics, music, food, religion, etc--and covering both Western and some Eastern history, that it puts all of history into accessible context and perspective. After looking up a detail in 1099 about English royal politics, it is easy to trace the repurcussions year by year, and to quickly glance at the music, the French situation, the new foods, the new theater, the global exploration, the current Chinese dynasty, and myriad other details all the way up to the present. Or just follow Mozart's career, or the Industrial Revolution, or agricultural innovations. Sure, it is not intensely detailed on each event, but it makes a great jumping off point towards other reference material. It is also the most appreciated gift I have ever given. Let's just hope the publisher decides to reprint!

As soon as you receive this book take a few minutes to reinforce the binding because (a) it's big and thick for a paperback, and (b) you'll find that it will spend very little time closed once it's opened. This book is an absloute necessity for those of us who are fascinated by not only the major landmarks of history, but the everyday flavor of past times. This book presents an eternal well of interesting notes and accounts that are organized ingeniously by subject, within years, across time. The cross-referencing that accompanies most entries makes the book nearly impossible to put down. The thoroughness provides a much needed perspective on almost any of today's pressing issues. The international scope only serves to make it that much more interesting for those with a thirst to know something about everything. Truly, you will learn something new everyday - for a long time.

I enjoyed this book, if only for the different manners in which they approached the role of writer and reader(or non-reader in the case of "The Death of the Lion"). The four stories "The Aspern Papers", "The Middle Years" and "The Death of the Lion" revolve around the extreme devotation of a reader and their relationship with the author. All of these devotees have given up a portion or all of their lives for the author of their admiration. The question is what are their (the admirers') true motives in seeking contact with the authors, and in the case of "The Middle Years" and "Death of the Lion", what is the purpose of the admirer for the author. In "The Aspern Papers" the narrator fights to get ahold of the author's private papers, supposedly guarded by Aspern's one-time mistress. Like "Death of the Lion", it discusses to what extent the narrator or main character can rightfully claim ownership of an author and his or her works. In "Death of the Lion", told from the perspective of an expoitive newspaper man who fell in love with the author and his works, the role of the writer and reader is broken into opposing admirers: Those who admire the writer for his works, and those who admire him for the social status he can offer them. It asks the question who is most deserving of the author's time and respect, if anyone is at all. The Middle Years switches perspectives to that of the author who only now, when the time remaining for him is shorter, has he really learned how to right. He gains a devotee who he sees as a provider of an extension. The story discusses the relationship between the two. Finally is "The Private Life", which revolves around contrasting roles. It discusses characters and whether or not their outward appearances are the true personality.

This is a fascinating, somewhat mystifying story about an American publisher who wants findsome long lost papers of an almost forgetten poet Jeffrey Aspern. The narrator finds his long ago mistress living in poverty in Venice. The reader is not only treated to this rather mysterious tale about the mistress Juliana Bordereau and her equally strange niece,Tina, but to a wonderful picture of l9th centurey Venice. The narrator behaves in a hypocritcal fashion, tryimg to get the papers of Aspern away from these two women. Henry James is his usual rather verbose mode of writing,but I found the book's tale pushing me to the end. 99bjb@mediaone.net

The title novella here is one of the finest examples of the entire genre. The questions underlying the narrator's intended crime (such as the problems of literary propriety, the "hauntedness" scholars feel from their literary subjects) are exquisitely handled... yet even so this story wouldn't be nearly so memorable if its expert treatment of Miss Tina's anguish weren't rendered so vividly. Her confession scene ("I can't go on... I'm too ashamed!") is one of the most moving things James ever wrote, equalled only by her strange surmounting of that anguish later in the book and by the narrator's rueful closing words.

This is an amazing fictional exploration of a very explosive, talented, and contradictory era and place. That is Vienna, Austria at the turn of the century. Hanging over this whole novel is the question of how a city of beauty and imagination could have also been a hotbed of rampant and violent anti-semitism. But what truly sets this novel apart is its brilliant re-creation of the figures of this age: Henry James as a secret reader of potboilers; Edith Wharton the secret writer of pornography; Carl Jung's indiscretions with female patients; and Sigmund Freud's early failures. The author Hill, is at the top of her game though in inverting the Freudian theories of "female hysteria" and the women characters are strong and appealinq.

I wasn't too sure what to expect when I picked up this book at a friend's recommendation. Not having been a Henry James fan, the title simply turned me off. As soon as I'd finished the first two pages, I knew I wasn't going to be able to put this book down without some sort of physical threat to my well-being. Aside from being an exquisitly written novel, it's filled with factual information and characters, social commentary (as applicable to our time as to turn of the century Vienna,) and truely haunting suspense. Plus, it's a bit difficult these days to find a book with truely likeable characters. Hill creates colorful portraits of sometimes bleak historical figures (i.e. Sigmund Freud, Edith Wharton, Carl Jung, and of course Mr. James) with a fabulous array of (possibly) fictional characters that you can't help but feel admiration, adoration, and/or sympathy for. Hill's range of styles and points of view are wonderfully displayed in this fine work that you could read again and again, learning something new everytime.

This book takes you in and interweaves you inside a complex mystery in which no one will ever really know the truth. Questions our notion of mastery and delivers the unexpected. Read this!

Books don't usually show up on your kitchen counter uninvited but this one did with a note tucked inside saying all in the family must read this. One by one we all read "She" reserving judgement until everyone had finished. Chomping at the bit those who had read it could barely wait for the moment when it could be discussed openly. When the last reader closed the book and placed it on the living room table the comments flew.
"I thought I'd hate it...the writing was so Victorian"

"How did Haggard come up with those wild scenarios"
"I hated her and loved her at the same time"
"Right and wrong became muddled"
"Everything was covered, adventure, excitement, romance, death, religion and morality"
"I continued to turn the pages hardly believing that he could come up with another bizarre scene"
Do we recommend it??? A great big giant YES!!!

Oh, thou-who-hast-not-read-this-book, you know not what you're missing! H. Rider Haggard's "She" is one of the best adventure novels of all, and it is one that inspired some of the best adventure stories of all, like, say, the Indiana Jones series.

A mysterious iron box that cannot be opened for twenty years... a 2,000-year-old quest for revenge... a lost civilization in the depths of Africa... and a mysterious queen called "She."

The story covers a vast landscape that will delight your imagination, and the main characters are distinct and likeable, sturdy partners in this most thrilling of adventures.

The story is so exciting and full of action, it's tempting to write it off as pure pulp fiction, hacked out with little intellgence or deeper meaning. You can read the book this way and still come away having a good time. But, if you're looking for that rare adventure novel with a meaningful subtext, "She" delivers on this level, too. I won't give too much away, but I think it's one of the greatest books ever written that demonstrates the total control desires have over man. Arthur Schopenhauer would approve.

Sigmund Freud called it a book "full of hidden meaning." C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien read it and loved it. Give this one a try, and you, too, might become forever fascinated with "She."

From the swoony cover to the intro by Margaret Atwood to the helpful and witty notes, this is likely the best edition of Haggard's magnificent warhorse on the market (certainly better than the benighted edition that omitted all the author's crucial footnotes, as if they were irritating excrescences).

Plus of course the novel's a gas, and somehow it gets under your skin and stays there forever.

This is the reprint of the 5 volumes originally printed in 1906, so that all these translations are in need of checking with other, more recent interpretations of them. None the less, the impressive task undertook by late Dr. Breasted has not diminished its value with the pass of time, since this is a collection of texts, otherwise accesible only in a wide range of out of print or really inaccesible papers and books. Price is salty, but remember that there are over a 1,000 pages of valuable data on every aspect of ancient Egypt. Worthy and basic!

These volumes, written by a distinguished American Egyptologist, were first published in 1906 and 1907. In his introduction to this re-edition, Egyptologist Peter Piccione provides a short biography of the author as well as a historical account of the 5 tomes. Volume 1 discusses the First through the Seventeenth Dynasties; Volume 2, the Eighteenth Dynasty; Volume 3, the Nineteenth Dynasty; and Volume 4, the Twentieth through Twenty-Sixth Dynasties. Volume 5 contains supplementary bibliographies and indices for the previous volumes; Piccione has added a more recent bibliography that proves to be quite useful. Each book offers a description of texts along with comments on historicity and significance, before continuing onto easy-to-understand translations. Many of the texts included are never-before-seen passages, while others are quite popular: the Palermo Stone, Letter of Pepi II, Tale of Sinuhe, Tomb of Rekhmire, Capture of Kadesh, Papyrus Harris, Adoption Stela of Nitocris, and so on. This is the most complete, easy-to-consult translation of Egyptian historical texts ever available in the field of Egyptology. A highly recommended resource for students and scholars.

Please, does anyone knows if the book "Hemingway, in love and war" has been traslated in italian?. Thank you very much, Massimo.

Its just really a deep analyse of the dream in Ernest his life.
I agree agree totally with Dr. Verheyen:

Hemingway and (the false) Agnes in projection of real life!.

Romance of oné site (Ernest Hemingway anyway).

I am doctorating in psychology in beautiful Rome: Italy.

I live back in New York City (after my doctorating?).

As a Dr. in Psychology, I can antherstand Hemingway and obvious Agnes. I suppose this romance was to beautiful to hold stand!. Anyway I antherstand 1961( Ernest did suicide WITH Agnes her letters next to him) AFTER 4 TRYING? to forget Agnes! MARRIAGE'S. This prover real eternity love exists, only both have to FORGIVE, and that's the hard way (I do know personnell). They were really made for each other, sad, so sad: stubborn Ernie and WHY?. Dr. Patrick Verheyen (U.S. Graduated ;-).

The narrator of this book, the "author" of the diary is a man anticipating death within a week. Chulkaturin is alone - only an old woman caring for him - facing death without family or friends. He begins writing a diary, an accounting of his life. What begins as a biography beginning with his childhood, becomes the narration of a single event, an event he believes illustrates beyond all doubt that he is a "superfluous man". This event is a one-sided love for a girl just becoming a woman. In this story Turgenev presents us with alienation - 1850's Russian style. For those of us raised on existential alienation, this book is an excellent reminder that alienation is a far more universal literary theme - a theme well executed in this book.

This early work (published when he was 32) presents an author who is already a master of metaphor and simile as well as a great story-teller. It is a short book, not quite a novel one could say, but an excellent exhibition of the young Turgenev's skill and artistic sensibilities.

The story itself is in the framework of a diary of a dying man. More than an actual diary, it is actually an account of a desperate man, hopelessly in love with a young girl. It is the story of his unhappiness and jealousy, which make him a superfluous man without use and objective.

Turgenev's novella about a dying 'superfluous' man . In a way, it's an update of Lermantov's "A Hero of Our Time" (without the tricky narrative structure) or Goethe's "Werther." Turgenev's story is notable for its more humane perspective; he truly was the "greatest French novelist writing in Russian."

The only downside to this volume is its length: "Superfluous Man" is more of a long story or novella than a book in and of itself. Look instead for a collection.

On the surface this is a story about an either haunted or hysterical governess who juggles words with true virtuosity, stringing them into psychologically insightful sentences. But that is all just camouflage, as is the many-layered structure of this tale. When the chips are finally down, the truth emerges, even though it is never explicitly stated --- how could it possibly have been stated explicitly in 1898? --- this is a story about pedophilia and its effects on a ten year old boy. At the core of this tale lies the relationship between the boy Miles and his uncle's servant Quint at Bly, the uncle's country estate. The housekeeper Mrs. Crose informs the new governess that the too-good-to-be-true Miles had been "bad" in the past, he would disappear for hours in the company of Quint who was not only "much too free" but also engaged in "depravity." Sent off to a boarding school, Miles gets expelled for what he tells his classmates presumably about this depravity. When at the very end of the tale the governess confronts Miles about these matters, he appears to expire in the last four words of the tale's last sentence. Yet at the start of the unresolved flashback which this tale represents, Miles may yet be alive as a middle-aged family man named Douglas, who reads to his friends the whole tale as written down by the governess herself.

Is Douglas the grownup Miles? James doesn't tell, but this remains a fascinating possibility perfectly consistent with the rest of this tale. Further conflations of characters are equally well compatible with the "facts." The uncle who lived at Bly and then left his estate at the very time of Quint's accidental death doesn't want to ever again hear of his nephew or to return to Bly. Could it be that it was not Quint who engaged in pedophilia, but that it was the uncle himself who abused his orphaned nephew? In their numerous dialogues the Governess and Mrs. Crose complete each other's sentences to such a degree that one gets the distinct impression that one is dealing with the ruminations of a single character and like Quint, so Mrs. Crose too can easily be removed from the scene. In fact James does just that shortly before tale's end, while getting rid of Miles' little sister Flora at the same time. He sends them to London to visit the uncle. There is one more character, the earlier governess Jessel, whose only role is to impose a certain degree of symmetry to the tale, and to appear in one climactic scene.

Why all these dispensable main characters, why the fireside chat of all kinds of minor characters at the time when the flashback is entered never to be left again, and finally why even use a flashback? I think these are all diversionary tactics on James' part. The central story he tells is so very unorthodox, unnerving and incendiary that he prefers to hide it with great care and great success among all this clutter. As I said, in 1898 he would have been pilloried for openly writing about pedophilia. The challenge of doing so all the same, has resulted in a masterpiece of ambiguity, which still clearly conveys its point. This interpretation of the story is supported by the fact that Benjamin Britten, one of the twentieth century's greatest opera composers, has set "The Turn of the Screw". Britten was himself apparently interested in pubescent boys and pedophilia drives the stories of three of his masterpieces. Based on what has been written about Henry James, he may not have been a stranger to this subject either.

The style of this tale is fascinating. On the one hand it is formal, quite pedantic, quite precious and removed, as if carving itself a much-needed ditch separating the narrative from the reader. It does not grant easy access. On the other hand all those long sentences with big words tend to have a mesmerizing effect that absorbs the reader into the story better than even the most honest and well-meaning informality ever could. There is a certain rhythm and poetic drive to some crucial passages. For instance, as one enters the flashback, the first few pages have the drive of a prose poem or of a symhony. With it James welcomes the reader to his realm. No wonder "The Turn of the Screw" ultimately landed on the opera stage.

Henry James wrote in a clear, precise even-handed American style that has not grown stale despite the passage of over 100 years. The two stories that stand out here to me are the two that are usually singled out by reviewers, "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn Of The Screw", the former because of its sensual European atmospherics and the fact that even back in 1900 an American female could be considered overly outgoing or prurient by community standards, even if she was probably just an extroverted American; the latter because James effectively creates the controlled terror of a ghost story involving children at a British greathouse, perhaps a bit like Poe. But the other 3 stories all have something going for them: "The Jolly Corner", is also a ghost story,set in New York; "The Beast Of the Jungle" creates a sense of mysterious suspense within the context of a couple's love relationship, and "Washington Square" is the story of a love relationship forbidden by the girl's
sophisticated doctor father.

This is a good collection of Henry James' best. Each short story is a pager-turner rich with insights into American and British life at the end of the 1800's. He doesn't make his characters Romantic heroes but real, flawed, interesting and complex. James definately ranks among the best of the Realism and Naturalism authors like Twain, Dresler, Crane and Howells.