Mathews's book is quite solid, providing concise, to-the-point information on the art of the Byzantine Empire. Rather than organize his text chronologically, Mathews chooses to focus each chapter on a specific theme, such as icons, churches, and secular art. In this way, he tries to unify the various branches of Byzantine art. It should be noted that the book is an introduction to the subject, and may not provide the depth of information necessary for more advanced study. This is not to say that what Mathews has provided is simplistic, or less than scholarly. On the contrary, his text is most distinguished for its artful way of connecting the art of Byzantium to both its classical roots and its Renaissance successors. Mathews takes upon himself the role of advocate, reminding readers that the Byzantine Empire kept western culture alive after the fall of Rome, and asserting the vital influence that Byzantine art had on the Renaissance. At times, his prose grows quite lofty as he reflects on the continuous tradition of western art. This thematic discussion complements his detailed descriptions of specific works or art. Overall, this is an accessible and useful text.

This inexpensive yet lavishly illustrated volume is an ideal introduction to the history of Byzantine art. As the previous reviewer has noted, it is arranged thematically. However, the themes themselves are those that arise more or less chronologically, so one does get a sense of moving from the period of the Late Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453. The volume as a whole is everything one could hope for in an introductory text; it is concise, extremely accessible, covers all the major issues and ideas of the periods being considered, provides all the essential background, and explains the ongoing significance and influence of the period as a whole. As Mathews explains early in the book, Byzantine Art is the backbone of Medieval Art, and he does a marvelous job of explaining and detailing that claim.

One sense that any reader will come away with from reading this book is associating a specific color with Byzantine Art: gold. In photograph after photograph, one will be struck at the amount of gold used in jewelry, sculpture, architecture, iconography, and painting. One will also gain a solid overview of Byzantine Art, and will definitely have an interest in further study kindled.

Perec's literary output was as varied as anyone's, comprising everything from encyclopedic novels to comic couplets, but he was consistent in one way--the quality of his writing was always excellent. Each of his works revelled in the myriad delights of language, whatever its subject. In this novel, published posthumously in an unfinished form, he uses the generic elements of the mystery novel, confounding and fulfilling them at the same time. A writer disappears from a fictional French African colony, and an unwilling acquaintance is drafted to study the vanished man's final manuscript for clues. The usual dangerous woman makes an appearance, and there are plenty of veiled warnings that the search should be dropped, but at each turn the narrator, well-versed in fictive custom, recognizes the conventions and turns them on their heads. The chapters abound with references to other works, classics and potboilers alike, and the plot in fact begins to hinge on them. Perec scholars or fans will additionally note a host of allusions to his own oeuvre and coded biographical details. Mystery aficionados will be disappointed that "53 Days" was never completed, but its editors have included the outlines and notes that wrap the story up; anyone with an interest in the writing process should find that these appendices more than make up for what's missing.

"Blue of Noon" is the story of Henri, an amoral man living in Europe during the 1930s. He is supposedly married, but spends his time with similarly amoral women, lacking clothing, inhibition, shame, and even proper hygeine at times. He zips between London, Paris, Barcelona, and Frankfurt, and frankly, engages in nothing but immoral self-satisfying activities in every spot.

At various times, he agonizes over his relationships with his wife, his sexual partners, and his deceased mother. He becomes embroiled in a Communist revolutionary plot in Barcelona, with one of his sexual partners, a Jewish woman, involved in its planning and execution. He reveals his necrophilic obsession to two of his partners, further revealing the exact, even more sickening, subject of his obsession to one of them. He has sex, he gets sick, his women have sex, they get sick, everybody has sex, everybody gets sick. For the punchline, near the end of the novel, Bataille throws Nazis into the picture, showing us that all the depravity of fascism is comparable to the depravity he has shown us all along. Though published in 1957, the book was originally written in 1936.

This reviewer isn't buying it. Not a word of it. Not the story, not even the "1936" part. For one thing, the writing style is actually more mature than that of "L'Abbe C", published in 1950. Bataille is most probably trying to show off that he detected the evil inherent in the Nazis "way back when". I don't give him that much credit.

For another thing, I think he uses Nazis as an easy way to score "scary" points. One might intellectualize his choice by saying Bataille is trying to tell us that no matter how disgusting humans may act, at least we're not as bad as Nazis. Imagine a murderer begging leniency because he's not a Nazi. He's still a murderer. It seems Bataille is using Nazis to justify the pornography he just wrote, as if the world is such a horrible place that pornography is just another little bit of it, and tries to throw a philosophical wrench into the works, as if saying life is meaningless in the face of all the horrible things fascism is doing to us in Europe, but I suspect it was all done just for the hell of it. I frankly don't see any rhyme or reason to the thematic choices he makes.

I have nothing against the depravity or explicit nature of the book. "Been there, done that", right? It's not even all that explicit, there's probably less sex in this book than the average mainstream novel today, and he's certainly not advocating committing even the slightest harm to anyone. There are a few disturbing or distasteful ideas here and there, but one never gets the sense Bataille really means what he's writing. One gets the sense he's simply trying to come up with every juxtaposition of immoral behavior and social taboo he can, just to tweak the reader's moral compass a bit, trying to get a cheap rise out of his audience. Maybe this was an interesting exercise in 1957 (or "1936"), but given the state of depravity which existed in Germany during the 1920s, and the state of sexual liberation which swept Europe from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, I strongly doubt it.

Perhaps the target reader for this book will be the person interested in twisted versions of 19th-century literature (Bataille wrote like someone living 50 or 100 years before his time), or the works of De Sade (albeit in highly shortened format, this book being only 126 pages).

I'm pretty fondly disposed to Bataille, but Blue of Noon was a disappointment. The title and the cover are wonderful, and having read Story of the Eye and L'abbe C just before it, I expected great things. But what I received instead was a drawling, shabby, painfully tedious and remarkably unmemorable narrative ramble. It isn't as disturbing as Story of the Eye, and it isn't as interesting as L'abbe C, and it feels much shorter in the surreal atmospheric magic that made those two books worthwhile. If you've already read and enjoyed Bataille, you may want to check Blue of Noon out, but it is not one of his better works.

I don't really know how to begin this review. There's not really a good angle to approach this remarkable and beautiful book. What do you do when the very things that attract you to a woman disgust you and yet they turn you on at the same time. In this novel Henri and his wife, whom he sometimes refers to by giving her the name "Dirty" are driving each other insane. They love each other but the very intensity of their personalities makes them fated to never be at peace. This is the root of their despair, that they both realize the futility of being with each other. Henri sinks into dissipation and having relationships with women he thoroughly despises. The first, a woman named Lazare, he refers to as a "raven of ill omen". She is so ugly and despicable but he loves her in a way simply because she reeks of death. He wants to surround himself with an environment that reflects his state of mind. Dirty is dying and you sense that in reality her spirit has already passed on and its simply her image dragging Henri into her own horrible hell. Most of the book takes place in Spain just as the Spanish Civil War is beginning and there are all kinds of portents of the coming World War which adds to the darkness of the characters. This book was brillantly done. The characters seemed so real because they did hurt each other, because they did have unhealthy obsessions which they revel in instead of hiding them within. They give full vent to their joys just as much as their miseries. This is the first book I have read by Bataille and I am curious to see what his other work is like.

Harry Mathews gave himself a writing assignment: before going to work on the last chapters of the novel he was writing at the time (Cigarettes), he would write at least 20 lines of something, anything. He mostly tried to avoid automatic writing and forced himself to stick to whatever subject he started out with, but he made no demands on himself of quality or insightfulness. The exercises produced surprising results, work of much better quality than he expected, and they are collected here in chronological order.

This is not the sort of book you will finish reading and say, "That was one of the great reading experiences of my life." The pleasures here are not earth-shaking or mind-blowing. But there are pleasures here, quite a few. The book reads like a journal, because many times Mathews wrote about what was going on in his life (a few people who were close to him had died just before he began the exercises), and the entries which stick to his everyday life can become dull and repetitive for a reader -- its when Mathews lets his imagination wander, or puts down some of his ideas about writing, that these pages really come alive.

The book is highly readable, whether you know Mathews's other work or not, because the exercises are short and the language clear. It's easy enough to skip around in the book, reading it on different days, looking for entries which appeal to whatever mood you happen to be in at the moment. Reading them in order produces a certain feeling of intimacy with the author, though, and the book is oddly moving by the end.

This novel is about a man and woman hunting for sunken treasure of gold. The style is a bit abstruse and intellectual, and is not intented for mass audiences. Yet if you pay attention and are persistent, you will find lots of witty lines and some rather poetic phrasings. It is a very unusual book ... the best comparisons I can think of are Fowles' "The Magus" or Umberto Eco's stuff. And maybe John Barth. Stick with it, the ending will surprise you.