A true pleasure: Lying has come in for its fair share of philosophical analysis, but rarely has it been so well written...
Another treatment of one of humanity’s oldest traits (also see Jeremy Campbell, above).
Considering how common lying is, it’s a wonder that there are not more popular accounts of it. Sullivan (Four of Fools, 1995, etc.) has done us a service with her compact and literate take on our ancient capacity for deception. Beginning at the beginning with lying’s biblical pedigree, she places deception at the very dawn of human consciousness. Moving on to the how’s and why’s of lying, she discusses in detail why people lie and how they do so effectively. Holding up Othello’s Iago as the “perfect liar,” Sullivan illustrates the many tactics of the deceiver as employed by Shakespeare’s most odious villain. She also elucidates the similarities in the arts of lying, fiction, and acting—explaining, for example, why the Bard had such a talent for describing scoundrels. The often-high personal and social costs of lying (whether they entail the loss of personal credibility or the poisoning of social and political life) take up much of the analysis, and Sullivan discusses the various strategies, ancient and modern, used to confound deceivers and get at the truth. She questions the reliability of modern lie-detector tests, comparing them to the medieval tradition of the ordeal—wherein the truth or falsehood of a man’s word was determined by how well he endured a variety of unpleasant torments. (The ordeal itself is the subject of an entire chapter, with a detailed account of its underlying theological logic as well as its more sanguinary aspects.) One of the most fascinating chapters catalogues the uses of deception in the natural world—underscoring that the power of misdirection is not a human monopoly.
A true pleasure: Lying has come in for its fair share of philosophical analysis, but rarely has it been so well written about, or had more light shed on its true nature.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-374-12868-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
