What did Kurtzman wrought?
581374
In 1952, comics genius Harvey Kurtzman created one of the all-time great comic books with MAD at EC. After a few issues, the title became a top seller and other, less creative companies took note. Soon there were several imitators, none of which had much success. Most were mediocre,but a few showed some real spark. Most of the copiers didn't really "get" Mad, so they stole what they could of the style with little substance.

This good-looking book presents a fine overview with complete stories in excellent color. Highly recommended. For more on the subject, look for the two issues of Alter Ego magazine that featured the subject.
4697310
The intensity of Georges Bataille eventually produced a system called The Accursed Share in which the idea of sacrifice is the expenditure of energy which gives meaning to social activities. The publication of On Nietzsche in French in 1945 did not result in this English translation's first American edition until 1992, when people were trying to turn me into a highly medicated individual as the Vet Center suggested, though my shrink thought I was the most intelligent person he met in such an intrusive deal for authenticity. According to the introduction by Sylvere Lotringer written for this edition, Bataille had tuberculosis and was far from Paris and his official position as a librarian, so Bataille's "company on earth is mostly Nietzsche" (p. viii) from 1941 to 1944 when he wrote feverish notes trying in extreme anguish to bring intensity back to life. In Bataille's Preface:

Infinite tasks are imposed on us.
Precisely in the present. (p. xxviii).

The attempt to relate to the ludicrous and painful convulsion of all of humanity sees how:

It's true:
sensible action (action proceeding toward some single meaning)
goes beyond such incoherence,
but that is exactly what gives humanity in my time
(as well as in the past) its fragmentary aspect. (pp. xxix-xxx).

The book is based on the laceration of meanings that can only apply in brief moments of comprehension. I kid you not.
3625588
Conrad, as a young man, dreamed of visiting the Congo. He carried out this wish as a steamboat captain, chugging deep into the heart of that still mysterious land. We are told that his experiences became fodder for this, his best known work.

"Heart of Darkness" is told primarily by a secondhand narrator. This seemed to be a favorite technique of writers in the late-1800s, though it creates a barrier between the fiction reader and the story itself. Perhaps that's a good thing, as we follow a captain's journey deeper into the jungle, further upriver. Along the way, we see disturbing glimpses of the racism and imperialism that was so predominant at the time. The English, Dutch, and Belgians were pillaging the Dark Continent for their own gain, looking down on the natives as uneducated savages. The captain is an impassive observer. He is a product of his time and social class. He is willing to work with the natives, to see them as equally human, but only in the most visceral sense.

Does Conrad promote racism, then? I think he does the opposite. Even as his captain becomes clouded in thinking, deluded by the near-mythic existence of a man named Kurtz, he discovers his own nearness to that heart of darkness. He empathizes with eating human flesh, and other atrocities--only to find that Kurtz has plunged forever into his own narcissistic evil.

In conclusion, Conrad seems to point fingers at any and all who would exalt themselves over other men and other races. If Kurtz is a microcosm of the gross imperialism of his age, then Conrad's criticisms are harsh, while also remaining immensely personal. Probably better understood in its day, and more jarring in contrast to other novels of its time, "Heart of Darkness" is one of the first English novels to tackle the psychological aspects of evil in the heart of man. For that reason alone, it stands as an important literary work, even if it stumbles somewhat in its ability to entertain the modern reader.
3977374
Guy Montag is a personification of the human spirit. In this story he is given a new insight by a young babbling teenage girl, Clarisse. With this sudden and mysterious revelation, Montag begins to see that the world around him is very synthetic, no can think about what they feel or feel what they are thinking - only the now exists and no concern for actions or consequences. Montag is centered and yet torn between two archetypes, Captain Beatty and Professor Faber. Beatty is an evil and heartless intellectual barbarian, a man possessing an illegal library in his home and claiming to not read a page of it. He is without a doubt a coward hiding behind brute force, whether it be by tongue or kerosene. Then there is Faber, a kind and fearful man who provides sanctuary for Montag. Bradbury puts you behind Montag's eyes and tells the story by letting you experience his life.
3593971
A most interesting and revealing unconscious account of a Nobel prize winner's frustration in trying to untie the Gordian knot of consciousness armed with the scientific methodology approach. The real value of this book is the unarticulated pessimism it distills about the possibility of science ever being an effective tool to unravel the mysteries of life and consciousness. It happens everytime a mathematician or a theoretical physicist strays away from the safe axiom-structure of his discipline and navigates in the unchartered waters of biology, sociology or philosophy. It happens in the best of families, Nobelists Nirenberg, Crick and Edelman being just the most recent examples. After all, should anyone expect retiring baseball star Cal Ripkin to be as good playing chess? The rules and perspectives of the game are different. The clue to Dr. Crick's deception is found in his homily during the Sunday Morning service at the end of the book when he critizes the psalmist for saying: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made.", to which he responds, tongue in cheek: "..he had only an indirect glimpse of the delicate and sophisticated nature of our molecular construction." And we ask, after several decades of trying to focus directly on the brain, what has he -or anybody else- come up with? Or perhaps he has the illusion he has explained "life" with his double helix model of DNA?, as when he claimed that DNA structure accounts for the "..mysterious aspects of embryology." Can an engineer, after calculating how the construction materials used account for the structural stability of a building, claim to have a knowledge of the master plan in the mind of the architect who designed it? When you take stock of the book you realize that there is nothing astonishing, not even any hypothesis, only a frustration. Did he solve the problem he set out to resolve? Did he develop strategies for the "Scientific Search of the Soul"? Hardly. He projects his displeasure when he points out the "..poor record.." of philosophers who "..would do better to show a certain modesty rather than the lofty superiority that they usually display". In one occasion he complained why church goers do not instead conduct experiments to demonstrate life after death! When he declares how "..our behaviour..based on a vast, interacting assembly of neurons..." enlarges the view humans have of themselves, any charitable reader would conclude, it must be only the British humor....
3565258
How would you react if you were taken away from everyone and everything you knew and placed in a 'level of hell' that you didn't know could exist?  How would you live day-to-day in a section of Dante's Inferno?  That is what Fred Wander did for six years (1939 through 1945) while being moved from camp to camp (twenty in all) and finally being 'death marched' to Buchenwald where he was liberated by the American forces.

What would be your explanation, not of why so many died, but of how you managed to survive? What would you remember? What would you take from the experience?  Wander has given us the stories of individuals (all who later died) an how their lives gave his meaning.  Stalin said, "the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic".  The number is too large to get into any kind of perspective.  It's only when you look at the actual people, that you can put it into any meaningful place.

One of the most striking symbols of the stories is that only the inmates have names and identities, the guards and workers are referred to only as 'jackboots'.  They are uninteresting and interchangeable, they are just murderers and sadists, without any humanity.  They are to be endured and fooled, and in some cases made the butt of jokes.  But they are at all times, un-human.
4909760
Dan Simmons writes Science Fiction (he won the Hugo award for Hyperion in 1989). Dan Simmons writes Horror (Bram Stoker Award, Carrion Comfort). Dan Simmons writes Fantast (World Fantasy Award, Song of Kali). And Mr. Simmons writes detective fiction.

These different genres mostly have different writing styles. Instead of trying to force one type of writing into another genre, Mr. Simmons changes his colors, adjusts his pacing, wording and style for the hard-core nasty world of private investigation.

Hardcase is the first of three (and we hope more) Joe Kurtz novels.&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Hard-Freeze-A-Joe-Kurtz-Novel/dp/0312989482/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Hard Freeze (A Joe Kurtz Novel)</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Hard-as-Nails-A-Joe-Kurtz-Novel/dp/0312994680/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Hard as Nails (A Joe Kurtz Novel)</a>&nbsp;are the other two. Joe Kurtz isn't mean and nasty, but he also has no compunction about sticking a man's hand in a disposal or running over an unconscious man's legs. Kurtz has his own code. Getting out of jail after following that code, Kurtz throws himself in the middle of a Mafia mess that he learned about in prison, and starts churning up the mob and old acquaintances.

The pacing of this novel is well done, the dialogue believable. The plot integrates several subplots well, although some of the plot twists are tipped off early (ain't this called foreshadowing?).

I also liked how Mr. Simmons slides in a reference to one of his other books,&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Crook-Factory/dp/0380789175/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Crook Factory</a>, about a spyring in Cuba run by Hemingway (see page 221 in the paperback for the reference).

Language and graphic violence make this an unsuitable read for kids. Everyone else will enjoy it.
2369085
May be not being aware of that, Michael Bromski, reiterates,in a way, by this anthology, the aim that theese "old pulps" intend to realize  : "give a sight on a half-hidden world of dark faces of sexuality".
Sure, nowadays, Gay-prides give us no-at-all hidden view about what homosexuality may be. But nevertheless, what Michael Bromsky let us discover it's an other kind of dark world : the one of hidden treasure of tasty texts ; for the simple reason that most of them are out-of print.
The introductive essay is brillant. Full of passionating facts of History. The social world -mainstream one and the part of it which is not- but also the publishing world. The point of view is quite interesting : the way from "homosexual personnal desire" to the building of a "gay community". But, from my point of view, a question comes : sure, the building of a community, with its "rites and codes". However, how may theese codes not become "stereotypes"? And, always from my point of view, they are, nowadays, too often, stereotypes lacking of life, something like what commercial goods are also.
Nostalgia of a golden age of innocence? As paradoxal as this world may appears ? An age of own creation? As much as this "own" creation needs- at least- two persons. When homosexual life was a personnal, risky, rebelling adventure and not yet adhering to a "gay global system" ? When , may-be, bodies were more living, fragile even when bulky, and less commercial things ?
May be, past life is lighted by a mythified quality, that perhaps it had not. Anyway, thanks to this book for allowing us to dream of and from this really golden litterature.
4434088
It was the genius of this classic work by Kafka, Metamorphosis, to stretche our imagination beyond reasonable limits.  The fundamental, even primordal, conflict between parental love and gratitude for a son's sacrificial support of the family with the guilt of being repulsed by the horrible physical and behavioral disfigurment that inexplicably happens to the son pulls us into the awful struggle.  Kafka makes us want help for this poor creature, but it is a horrible creature all the same. While the ending seems, in one sense, to be a relief, it seems also to condemn the reader for feeling relief.
2680775
Every major war produces one or two writers who have the genius to turn deadly serious subject matter into an opportunity to shine the purifying light of comic relief into dark corners of our collective psyche.  Joining Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" and Heller's "Catch-22," we now have David Abrams' "Fobbit."  The author served as a "Fobbit" during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Fobbitt - Definition: A U.S. Army employee stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2011).  Pejorative.

As a soldier in a Public Affairs team in Iraq in 2005, the author kept detailed notebooks of his observations and comments about what he was seeing at the FOB.  Those notebooks found their way into a Blog, and now into this fictionalized account of life inside the wire in Baghdad.  Abrams brings a literary and cultural sensibility to his writing that enlivens the narrative, with frequent allusions to classical music and literature that seem deliciously and ironically incongruous amidst the sandstorms of the Saddam's former kingdom.

The writing has an acerbic wit that made it difficult for me to put the book down.  I raced through its 350+ pages in a couple of days.  Like Dickens, whom the author clearly admires (there are several mentions of "Hard Times" within the text), the author takes great delight in inventing names for his characters that describe them and lampoon them.

"Quinner was a man who talked tough to his staff but, Duret suspected, deep down inside he was irresolute as a choice given two choices for dinner: pepperoni pizza or chicken nuggets with barbecque dipping sauce.  When faced with a fork in the road, Quinner probably wrestled with himself for hours on end, wondering if he should take the high road, the road less traveled, or if he should just stop by the woods on a snowy evening.  This didn't mean Quinner was necessarily a cautious, prudent man; no, just a dumb one who couldn't tell a fart from a turd.

Was he a quitter?  No.  Was he a winner?  No.  He was Quinner!" (Page 102)

Abrams lays out clearly his vision for this book, as he presents a snippet of conversation between ill-fated Captain Abe Shrinkle and an Aussie soldier at poolside inside a distant corner of FOB Triumph:

"The soldier put down his book.  'Is this a joke?'

Abe pointed at the book. 'No, but that is.'

'What's wrong with Catch-22?' Abe's poolside companion said.  'It's a classic.'

'Yeah, classic antiwar rhetoric.'  Abe had never read the novel, but he remembered how, during office hours, one of his West Point professors had gone on a vein-throbbing rant against 'that ass-clown Yossarian,' who spent the entire book trying to weasel his way out of his patriotic duty.  One the basis of that alone, Cadet Shrinkle vowed he would never touch Catch-22.

'Why in the world,' he asked the other soldier, 'would you want to read a book like that at a time like this?'

The soldier grinned.  'I can't think of a better time to read it, can you?  It's helped me get my perspective skewed in the right direction.  Sort of like an owner's manual for this war.'" (Page 194)

We should be grateful that this former Fobbit has crawled out of his lair in the Shire and joined the front lines of those waging literary battle against the inanities of warfare.
4900551
I found "People of the Lie" to be compelling reading. A psychotherapist myself, I found strong resonance with with many of Dr. Peck's insights and conclusions. His elaboration of group dynamics was fascinating, especially his insights into the regression and dependency that occur in groups, as well as into how specialization can lead to immoral and destructive behavior. His prediction, written in 1983, that in twenty years, our all volunteer armed forces will again become involved in foreign adventures was eerily prescient.

As a therapist, I appreciated Dr. Peck's insights into how difficult it is to treat patients who demand unconditional love while operating out of a paradigm of power and control.

However, the cases he chose to illustrate as evil were not particularly complelling in their destructiveness. Charlene was exasperating and annoying, difficult, to be sure, but evil?

His diagnostic criteria were also lacking-where is the aggressive, meglomaniacal evil personality of the Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Husseim? Where is the personality of the Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer? Can't evil be served straight up as well as under cover?

I recommend "People of the Lie" as a worthwhile, provocative read for the insights the reader will glean into human and group behavior.
4748992
Freedom of Information documents have shown that Ernest Hemingway WAS being stalked and harassed by the FBI. His sexual dysfunction was likely the result of these political techniques of the COINTELPRO era. Dr. Siegel I am wondering how many of these case histories you are wrong about.
The following comes to mind:

"The almost constant assertion of patients that one influences them,
induces them, telepathizes them: is this assertion to be understood as
entirely senseless merely because it comes from the mouths of madmen?
Or is not the constant recurrence of the assertion on the part of
thousands upon thousands of patients an obligation to ponder over this
complaint, and to attempt to pursue its cause? When one after another
asserts that his thoughts are besieged from the outside, and when we,
without giving it much thought, let these thousands, one after the
other, go the way of the lunatic asylum solely because of the madness
of their assertion, then possibly we, who are unable to see the
partial truth in the remarkable repetition of a phenomenon, stand
accused of a rigid psyche as veil."

.......... from the book INTROGENESIS by Immanuel Velikovsky (1936), a
Russian psychiatrist
3407428
Students of the history of American comic books may notice that a large number of the creators of major comic characters were Jewish, including Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (creators of Superman); Bob Kane and Bill Finger (creators of Batman, though only Kane is officially credited by DC Comics); Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee (between them creators of most of the major Marvel superheroes) and Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert (primarily responsible for the war hero Sgt. Rock).  Over the past few years there has been a flurry of several books taking note of this fact and suggesting that Jewish culture and the Jewish-American experience played a major role in shaping the comic superhero genre and the comic book industry generally.  This book is something of a late-comer to the theme. (Some titles of earlier entries include JEWS AND AMERICAN COMICS; UP, UP AND OY VEY; FROM KRAKOW TO KRYPTON; and DISGUISED AS CLARK KENT.)
  Due to my own interest in comic-book history (I'm not Jewish myself, though my wife is), I've looked at several of these books.  This one covers some of the same ground as the earlier books, but also some new aspects, for instance how Jewish artist Joe Kubert moved from drawing generic war comics to historical comics on Jewish and Holocaust themes; and an analysis of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon, a fictionalized version of the Jewish experience in the comic book field.
  As a comic-book buff, though, I spotted some mistakes, though.  For instance, Brod says at one point (page 15) that the Superman series never addressed the question of how his Kent foster parents kept his super-powers secret during his infancy and childhood; but comics fans of the 1950's and 60's will remember a whole series of "Superbaby" stories that dealt, lightheartedly, with that very issue.  He states (pg. 91) that Jack Kirby's creation the Silver Surfer "became one of Marvel's most popular characters", but actually the first Silver Surfer comic book was a sales flop, and though frequently revived, the Surfer never has become a major Marvel star on the level of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, Iron Man, or Thor (most of whom were Kirby co-creations, so he certainly deserves credit, but the Surfer wasn't one of his big hits).  The popularity of the Kanigher/Kubert war anti-hero Enemy Ace at DC is likewise exaggerated (I like Enemy Ace myself, but he wasn't a big seller).
  This kind of thing may sound like nitpicking, but when I see a writer make mistakes on a topic I know really well, such as comics history, it makes me wonder whether the writer is also making mistakes in areas I don't know so well, such as Jewish history and culture.  Also, I have an interest in general real-world history as well as comics history, and Brod makes at least one statement about that I find dubious; he states (page 68) he states that "conservatives who opposed the New Deal...tended to favor an aggressive, militaristic policy that would insert the U.S. into (World War II)."  My study of that period leads me to believe that most anti-New Deal conservatives were also "isolationists" who opposed U.S. involvement in the war (unlike some, though, I don't think that makes the conservatives evil or pro-Nazi, though they may have been short-sighted).
  Anyway, if you're interested in learning about how Jewishness and comic books were inter-related, this book is an OK place to start... but several earlier books on the theme would do just as well.
3207277
I like a lot of what Morrison had to say about the history of comics and their reflections of society over the years, but there might have been too many "I'm a genius!" moments for one book to handle.
4107917
Someone tell Dean Koontz that ol' rascal science has, indeed, identified Neanderthal DNA in homo sapiens, rendering all of his nay-saying efforts for naught.

I endured an audio book version of this novel, eight tortured hours and 900 miles of it by automobile, delivered by a narrator who provided all male, female and animal voices, as well as various sound effects.

Assuming  that "unabridged" means "what is spoken is what was written," Mr. Koontz has some issues to address in 72 short chapters that read more like paragraphs. Like how making up vapid stories about spontaneous creations does not prove "creation science," no matter how much the author might claim he is not proselytizing to the choir.

And like how cartoon caricatures of government agents (and all other characters in the book) do not make valid one's partiality or dislike toward real persons the caricatures are intended to represent--and especially not so for the author's alter ego, the deadly sniper-turned-woodworker whose veiled death threat shakes the confidence of  the evil, two-faced government agent whose joy in life is in trampling on pretty much all constitutional rights, from speech to usurpation of states rights, with special delight in stripping citizens of arms and abducting heavenly creatures without probable cause.

And the nerve of government, trying to co-opt Adam & Eve, The Sequel. Or something. What? Good question. Close Encounters Meets First Blood, or The Telltale Heart. Chapter 1288: "Henry/Jim hears a muffled shuffling that seems to come from the drawer where the forks and knives and the occasional used soda straw, the kind you get at the convenience store to drink your 32-ounce Coke (or Sprite or Root Beer) are kept, but of course, forks don't shuffle, so that's impossible! and so Henry/Jim frantically washes his hands with acetone and a steel brush from the real Jim's barbecue pit. "That's refreshingly cool on my hands," Henry/Jim mutters to himself, simultaneously repulsed and yet compelled to draw the chemical fume cloud into his lungs and hold it, like he had in the past so voraciously scarfed that pleasing yet addictive Blue Rooster hydro weed in Amsterdam, just before discovering Chaos.

"Chapter 1289..."

Yes, Chaos. The workings of a troubled mind. Arrhhh. Beam me up, matey.
2624255
Twenty-one (21) years after seeing the movie, I finally read Silence of the Lambs (1988) and I'm glad I did.  (However, I must confess, although I liked the movie, it did not inspire me to read the book.)

When the time is right, like magic, a book can seem to reads itself. And that's what Silence of the Lambs did for me.  I was favorably struck by how easy the book was to read, like candy, and how the author seemed to go out of his way not to get bogged down in too much detail, so as not to make the book dense and a chore to read.

I did have some concerns about the book's plot:

Why would the FBI rely so heavily on Hannabal Lector, a very bad guy, to help them solve their case?

Why would Jack Crawford pick Clarice Starling, an FBI student, to interface with the dangerous Lector?

Also, I thought Jack Crawford's struggle with his dying wife Bella's illness (cancer?) was amazingly similar to retire Detective Edward X. Delaney's struggle with his dying wife Barbara's illness (Proteus infection) in Lawrence Sanders' The 1st Deadly Sin (1973).

Additions concerns:

What is the probability Hannabal Lector would actually know Jame Gumb a.k.a. Buffalo Bill? (A case of birds of a feather flocking together?)

Or that Lector's fictional name for the killer: William (Bill) Rubin would contain the same name the newspapers' tagged him with: Buffalo Bill, and the police not question the coincidence?

Also, what's with authors (Thomas Harris, Lawrence Sanders, John Lutz, etc.) using West Virginia (my home state) as a source of villains and as a dumping ground for bodies?
4596317
Yes, a good piece by Kurt Vonnegut.
For Vonnegut's followers, a must read, given the price.
I remembered when I first read it, years ago.