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MICHEL FOUCAULT

A meticulous and authoritative biography of the influential French philosopher and historian, by an editor at Le Nouvel Observateur who was closely acquainted with Foucault during his later years. Foucault (1926-84) is known in this country mainly as one of the prime exemplars of structuralism, the radical school of thought developed in the late 60's and 70's to question the foundations of many social and philosophical systems. In reality, as Eribon makes clear, Foucault was more of an intellectual historian than a philosopher, and achieved his greatest successes when attempting to set forth the ``archaeology'' of a concept or idea. This is what he did in Madness and Civilization, which traced the development of Western notions of sanity and reason as reflected in social attitudes towards madness. His monumental History of Sexuality, left unfinished at his death, was to provide a similar blueprint for the modern understanding of eroticism. Eribon's exposition is readable and clear, and makes good use of the many interviews he held with Foucault during his lifetime, as well as his meetings with Foucault's colleagues and friends. The picture that emerges is of someone at once distant and complex: Foucault hated easy characterizations and refused to ``take sides'' when it came to politics or philosophy. His early dalliance with Marxism quickly gave way in the late 50's, and his later conservatism evaporated as soon as he won his post at the College de France (where, during the 70's and 80's, he became known as one of the most active leftists in the country). Solitary and rather reclusive despite his wide circle of friends, Foucault's public life was largely restricted to his professional writings, and it is to Eribon's credit that he concentrates mainly on these, since they provide the truest picture of Foucault available. Superbly written and carefully documented: Eribon has managed to provide a scholarly exegesis of Foucault that will also serve as a good introduction for the lay reader.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-674-57287-4

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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INTO THE WILD

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

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