Ferdydurke is out of print! It has been a battle to get this book openly published in Poland, but look at how English-speaking consumers conduct their own censorship scheme. Yet there is a touch of Anglo-Saxon to the novel's madness: the upper class school boys, the title borrowed from the netherlands of H.G.Wells' corpus and much, much more. The novel questions whether there is such a thing as maturity, sending its main character back to school as an adult, where he is among boys who treat him as another boy (as does everyone else!). It also asks one of the great questions of our time: our characters are made by others; is it possible to escape this or are we merely prisoners of other people's influences? Something for us living under states who idolize individual choice to think about. But Gombrowicz's book is also full of comedy: slapstick, sharp irony, plot twists and philosophical fables. Jokes are used as an ideal way to pose serious questions. Furthermore, in its giant bums and staring contests it shows how much more you can talk about reality, including prudent insights into totalitarian life, through wild fantasy. The experiments of the novel - the unique fantasy, the invasion of the author and the symmetrical interjections - put it at the heart of European modernism. It is a landmark, albeit buttock-shaped.

You may well ask the above question, but you will never discover the answer, for there is no character, or thing, in this darkly comic masterpiece named Ferdydurke. It just appears to be some play on words, or a nonsense title to intrigue the potential reader. This book, written in Polish between the two world wars, is extremely capably translated, with a good use of slang and diminuitive terms which must have caused endless hours of trouble and frustration for the translator. It appears to be an indictment of the state of society as it existed in Poland in the 1930's, and may appear a bit dated since must of what is excoriated by the author no longer exists. There is particular emphasis upon the type of relationship which existed between the nobility (of a sort) and the peanant and serving classes. There is a lot about the threat of modernity in the country, and a great emphasis upon infantilism and immaturity. The work takes some getting used to by the reader, but read in the context of its time it is very well done, and should be read to be appreciated for what it has to say about the human condition.

"Ferdydurke" by Witold Gombrowicz has finally been properly translated into English. Not that this is an event worth mentioning in general, but the point to be made is that the world of translation offers room for all kinds of mischief and sloppiness. Who would have thought that it were perfectly acceptable for publishers to allow translation from a second, and not native tongue? Imagine, for purposes of illustration, that a work of a classic British author translated into German not directly, but from Suahili, for this was the language the book was first translated into. Would you be satisfied with a product of this type? This was the fate of Gombrowicz, his native tongue was done away with, and the Anglo-Saxon world of bibliophiles had had no other choice but to read a lemon. Perhaps this is the revenge of the Heavens on the author himself, for never was there any other Polish author who had his native country in such a low regard as he did. In his "Trans-Atlantyk", Gombrowicz dared to ridicule everything a Pole holds dear, together with the whole idea of a nation as such. Were he to live today, he would embrace the idea of convergence and the global village of consumptionism, as opposed to Europe of Nations. That was one of the main reasons for Gombrowicz's emigration to Argentina, where he spent almost all of his literary career.

"Ferdydurke" is an early novel by this author, and it's never as crass as the aforementioned "Trans-Atlantyk". In fact, it constitutes part of a literary canon in Poland to this very day, and there is no educated Pole who hasn't read or at least heard of "Ferdydurke". Scenes from this book, gestures, and neologisms entered the mass vocabulary, and once you learn some of these expressions, you cannot unlearn them, for then there is no better way to express yourself, but to use the phrases coined by Gombrowicz. Whatever issues Poles have with this author, one thing is certain: we are grateful to him for augmenting our language. Gombrowicz created an archetype of a confused man, whose karma is to move back in time, back to school, with the mentality of an adult. I will even risk a claim that this fact alone lies at the very heart of science fiction - for how might that be possible, and what would happen if such occurence took place? How would that affect the object in queestion? Perhaps my perception of this problem is a bit skewed due to my occupational hazard of a scientist, but for me, "Ferdydurke" is a laboratory novel, where with a literary set of tools we analyze both the situation, and the object, in the vein of the medieval alchemist. This novel, hardly known in the English-speaking world, will be an exhilarating reading experience for you, provided that you will trust me and pick it up. The amusing analysis of the immature world the protagonist found himself in, mixed with elements from all literary forms, from plain mystery, via comedy, to sophisticated analysis of society, makes Ferdydurke an experimental novel of potential interest for all bibliophiles and lovers of the nonstandard.

My literary introduction into turn-of-the-century New Orleans, specifically Storyville, was a novel by Frank Yerby entitled "The Girl from Storyville; A Victorian Novel". On the cover of that particular edition is an artists rendering of one of Bellocq's Storyville photographs. The images of that book have remained vivid in my mind for more than 20 years, and when I saw the photos in this book, I was once again taken back to a life and time so long ago, and yet so real. The stark, poorly lit images extoll the gritty, decidedly non-aesthetic world in which these women lived. It is, at times, disconcerting to view the gay smiles on their faces, knowing , or at least supposing, their misery. The history of that place and time will continue to fascinate me as will the very real record preserved for us by E.J. Bellocq.

One of the most extraordinary collections of photographs ever published. I suppose I still prefer the original 'Storyville Portraits', but it's certainly good to have so many extra photos, hitherto unpublished. It's so difficult to describe the unique qualities of these strange, compelling images. They seem suffused with pathos, sometimes simultaneously grotesque and romantic. I love the photo of the naked girl scratching a butterfly into wall-plaster. She seems almost to be a pinned-up specimin herself, flattened across the space of the wall. But the lighting - here and in all of the images - so lovingly sculpts the figure that all feelings of exploitation vanish.

Susan Sontag's introduction is a big disappointment. She seems to have little to say and shows very little real feeling for the photographs. For much more sensitive insights you need to find the original introduction - consigned to the back of this edition - or read Michael Ondaatje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' and Brooke Bergen's 'Storyville: A Hidden Mirror'.

A lovely book, and one you might appreciate if you: a) Enjoy beautiful photography, b) Find prostitutes romantic, c) Are excited by plump women, or d) Are interested in offbeat and surreal images. Many of Bellocq's photographs are truly odd. For example, the one of a woman whose face is bizarrely hidden behind a too-large Zorro mask, slumped awkwardly in a wooden chair. Or the one of a woman wearing only a sly smile and high heeled shoes, her elbow propped uncomfortably on a window sill, armpit cheerfully thrust outward. Or the one of a woman in a weird full body stocking. Some of the pictures are weirder still for having the faces of the subjects crudely blacked out, or for being blotted with corrosion and cracks. Of course, these were not due to Bellocq, but they do contribute to the surreal, almost Joel-Peter Witkenesque look of his photographs. Wonderful all the same.

An excellent book, grab it if you see it, showing a wide variety of full body painting images. The canvas of the painting is the 1960s model 'Veruschka'. The book is divided into five chapters which are, 1 Mimicry-Dress-Art, 2 Signs and Animals, 3 Nature, 4 Peterskirchen, Spetse, Paros, and 5 Oxydation. The painting covers the entire body of the model and she merges seamlessly into her surroundings - if she is standing before a plain brick wall, the painting is such that she merges with the wall. Other body paintings include the illusion of suits and ties (like Demi Moore on Vanity Fair's August 1992 cover). Also Veruschka has appeared in bodypaint in Playboy January 1971. The contents pages from front and back covers of this book appear below.

'Veruschka' Trans-figurations. Vera Lehndorff Holger Trulzsch. Introduced by Susan Sontag.

In the 1960s there suddenly appeared on the scene a fashion model and actress of extravagant and exotic beauty known to the world as 'Veruschka'. She remained an enigma even when she starred in Antonioni's classic film 'Blow Up'. As we now discover, Veruschka was, and is, Vera Lehndorff, who, twenty years later, emerges in this book as an artist of extraordinary power and originality.

Trans-Figurations. In 1970, Lehndorff met Holger Trulzsch, prominent painter and photographer. Their collaboration - Trulzsch's vision fusing with Lehndorff's resulted in these brilliant, unsettling images: Veruschka transfigured beyond recognition. Their work challenges every conventional assumption about photography, fame and anonymity, beauty and death.

Trulzsch and Lehndorff use her body as the canvas. It can take sixteen hours to apply the theatrical paint that transforms Lehndorff. The artists never resort to technical contrivance. In some images, Lehndorff mimics cinematic beauties like Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. In others, she denies her humanity - becoming metamorphosed into an animal, a statue, a stone. Most haunting of all are those from the 'Oxydation' series, in which Lehndorff's body appears to disintegrate against the grim walls of a derelict building. Art critic Robert Hughes has called these 'an abandonment of consciousness: akin to being buried alive.'

Whether witty, shocking, or erotic, the images are always intensely beautiful. Or, not merely beautiful, but as critic Susan Sontag writes: ''about' the beautiful... very much concerned with the testing of beauty - through artifice, through distortion.'. Sontag's introduction is a stunning exposure of the issues behind this work. Closing essays by Lehndorff and Trulzsch reveal their method and rationale.

Vera Lehndorff studies painting and design in Hamburg and Florence. She became known as Veruschka while learning to act with Lee Strasberg in New York, and has appeared in many films, including Blow-Up (M. Antonioni, 1967), Salome (Carmelo Bene, 1971), and Dorian Gray im Spielgel des Boulevard-Presse (Ulrike Ottinger, 1983). She did her first body-painting in 1966.

Holger Trulzsch studied painting and sculpture in Munich. he has been involved with experimental music as a member of a group with whom he composed the music for Werner Herzog's film Aguirre (1972), and he has recorded several albums. His own photographs, drawings, and paintings have been widely exhibited since 1962.

As an experienced body painter I found Verushka's work amonst the best examples of body art I have ever come across. If you can feast your eyes on a copy of this baby, it will totally change the way you see things. It has for me! Mind blowing and very clever.

For anybody interested in the art of body painting, or in photography of the human / female figure, this book is well worth a look. The blending of the model into variously-textured backgrounds, as well as other approaches to body painting, are truly fascinating.

See the above entry for an example of one of Barthes' favoured subjects: Stupidity.

see the premier semiotician take it a l l off to such hits as "Hot To Handle", "Back That Azz Up", and "Flesh for Fantasy"! Roland, show that money-makin bacon! Yeeuh boyee!

This book deserves attention, and is in some ways Sontag's best fiction. Rough in some places, painfully rough, the prose grinds through the protagonist's agony, lightens with his fancy, slips away from coherence as he slips from coherence. This is writing on a par with a rough and angry, poignant and bittersweet symphony. It reminds me more of the Shastokovich Symphony no. 7, "Leningrad", than of any other book that I have read. Read it. Read it twice because the first time it can hardly be taken in.

This is the story of man's hallucination during and after his suicide. The surface tone is cold and metallic, distanced. But underneath it is achingly, sadly, brutal.

Interpret this story. Exercise your mind, your powers of analysis and of sensation. This is a layered piece of writing that holds up and puts out on many levels. And don't miss the exquisite prose on pages two through four.

this book was funny ok mabye it isn't who cares

Running across a Howard Hodgkin exhibition forever revolutionized my formerly negative view of modern art. It has opened my soul to new areas of art enjoyment not experienced previously. This book has many plates of his work and provides very interesting reading. Let his beautiful art and colors wash over you... Enjoy!

This well illustrated and multifaceted book is an important addition to any library. If only for Marla Price's catalogue raisonne a very valuble addition not in other publications about this important artist. I found the exchange of letters from Hodgkin to John Elderfield insightfull and full of the sort of detail on techniques hard to find elsewhere.

Michael Auping has written a compassionate opening essay on this sensitive man and the development of his work.

Susan Sontag writes about Hodgkin and art after modernism,with a wry and wonderfull humour.

All of these writings are punctuated with marvellous colour plates.

This book is a must.

Gillian Solomon. END

I agree very much with Mr. Linders. I recently worked with Bob Wilson at the Watermill Center, although it was undergone many changes since the beautiful photographs were taken. The book is indeed no documentary--it presents more the very spirit of Watermill--the creativity, the inspiration of being in the presence of such a master as Bob Wilson. It's repetative images of ceiling tiles, concrete walls, though at first questionable, quote the very atmosphere of Watermill and it's industrial air--and for one who has experienced it, the beauty of the building's simple architecture, and its history as the birthplace of the telefax machine.

This is a must for all art book lovers. This is a must for all theatre buffs. This is a must for all Hamptonites. RWWM is an extremely beautiful collaboration of two artists - the world famous avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson and the young emerging photographer Vittorio Santoro. In 1992, Wilson has begun to create Watermill Center in Eastern Long Island, a summer home for his manifold activities. Each summer, he gathers a mixed group of young and exeprienced artists from all over the world to initiate theatre, art, music, and architecture projects. RWWM is the first book to document this exciting process. But it does not give a documentary account, rather it is an artist's reflection on the work of artists. The extremely creative atmosphere can be felt through the collage of photos, sketches, texts, copies of source materials, beautifully designed pages and a few explanatory notes.

Keep in mind that this is an annotated bibliography. That means Sontag's work is given precise descriptions, and the reviews and essays about her work are also summarized. Even better, Poague has the single best introduction to Sontag's career that is available. It should be read in conjunction with his introduction to CONVERSATIONS WITH SUSAN SONTAG. I can't think of a better way for anyone studying or writing about Sontag to gain access to so much knowledge so quickly. Certainly Poague's work proved to be indispensable to my wife and me when we were writing our biography of Sontag.

Any and all of Sontag's works and the volumes of articles and books written about her are listed here. Indexed! Intelligently done! Bravo!

Why do I regard the publisher's remarks about this text being unabridged (read: sanitized to corporate "standards") with such lingering skepticism? Is is a question of having no faith in corporate ethics, or one of needing, however subconsciusly, to deny Sontag's virtuosity of intellect? If the transcribed interviews are reliably authentic, here is a mind quite literally capable of extemporizing sophisticated philosophical discourse. No wonder Camille Paglia attempted to make a cottage industry of ridiculing, belittling, and otherwise attacking this author, who not only anticipated many of Paglia's themes by decades, but who has also shown herself capable of stating in a few laconic phrases what takes Paglia (for all her verbal music) hypomanically-digressive chapters. This is a refreshingly intimate encounter with what "Hurricane Camille" herself has dubbed "one of the great minds of the Twentieth Century", in addition to being far more engaging reading than I had anticipated. Read Paglia's more serious endeavors to exercize your right brain; but read Sontag (this compilation included) to exercise your left. My only regret is noting that certain of the interviews included here were translated back into English from other languages: The smoothness of translation, for good or for ill, gave no clue.

If an appreciation of the personal perspective of the poet can deepen the experience of his words, then Lemkhin's photographic tribute to Brodsky's beloved home belongs on our bookshelves alongside the poetry books and essays of the Nobel laureate. Except for an intimate foreword by Milosz, a moving afterword by Sontag, and brief postnotes in which Lemkhin provides background details on several of the images, the message of this book is delivered entirely through black-and-white images. The voice of those visions comes through most clearly when one imagines viewig through the eyes of the poet himself, not only in the streets and the statues, the skies and the stories of Leningrad, but in the mirror of the close-up snapshots of Brodsky himself placed throughout the collection of pictures. Even the mediocre artistic quality of some of the individual snapshots can be forgiven as the soft footsteps of the poet can be heard stepping through his own lines in the movement of these deeply personal worlds of his own home.

JOSEPH BRODSKY, LENINGRAD: FRAGMENTS succeeds on every level. For those not familiar with Brodsky's brilliant poetry I would recommend that you spend time with WATERMARKS, his tribute to the city of Venice, before coming to this book. Once the gentle subtleties of his poetry are in mind, then spending time perusing this pictorial essay of Brodsky's face and the scenes of Leningrad (the old name for St. Petersburg is used because that was the city's Soviet name used when Brodsky lived there) will form a complete picture of this amazing expatriate. Mikhail Lemkhin addresses not only the pictorial influences on the poet, but also adds some words of wisdom. The tribute at the end of the photographs, in some of Sunsan Sonntag's most eloquent writing, is a fitting closure to this very lovely book. Highly recommended.

I greatly enjoyed the two books by Mikhail Lemkhin: "Missing Frames" and "Fragments". I am especially moved by portraits. There is something about the portraits that make them very different from most others. The pictures are not posed, but don't seem to be too candid either. I get the impression that the subject is aware of the photographer, but is not posing for him, at least not physically. It is as if the subject is exposing his/her inner soul to the camera. The photographs work, in deeply satisfying way, very well. I know I will look at them again and again.