Berger’s readers will see with fresh eyes.
A deceptively brief volume offers profound meditations on art, the creative process and so much more.
Berger has long been difficult to categorize—philosopher? art critic? essayist? novelist?—and his latest defies pigeon-holing even by the standards of this British-born writer who has long lived in France. Let’s start with the title, which alludes to a long-rumored but never-found sketchbook by the philosopher Spinoza, to whom Berger refers affectionately as “Bento” (the nickname for Benedict) and whom he excerpts liberally. In fact, dozens of passages from Spinoza’s Ethics, accompanied by drawings from Berger (perhaps channeling Spinoza) and others might give this the appearance of an illustrated abridgement of that work. Yet Spinoza is more of a springboard, as Berger delves deeply into the processes of making and responding to art, of thinking and being, of narrative and history, of the essence of humanity. Taking inspiration from the possibility of a Spinoza sketchbook, the author “began to make drawings prompted by something asking to be drawn.” In the process, he began to focus on what he drew and why he drew, connecting the creation of art to everything from philosophy to politics to religion. Each of the prose pieces—some as short as a paragraph, few longer than a couple of pages—is self-contained, yet this volume isn’t exactly a collection of essays, for none are titled and all are thematically interconnected as well. Whether he’s extending an analogy that compares making a drawing to riding a motorbike or discusses storytelling in a manner that could apply just as well to drawing (“In following a story, we follow a storyteller, or, more precisely, we follow the trajectory of a storyteller’s attention, what it notices and what it ignores…”), he makes such interaction and interconnection seem central to the human condition.
Berger’s readers will see with fresh eyes.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-37995-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
Hannah Arendt is one of the world's most profound political scientists: her scholarship is sterling, her philosophical- psychological insights staggering; two of her books Origins of Totalitariansim and Human Condition are among the few significant works in her field and our era. Whenever she publishes, it is an event. And although she is not at her best in this close study of the American and French revolutions and their meaning for the 20th century, still on every page we are in the presence of a mind of high individuality, great interest and intellectual integrity. It is her thesis that the Founding Fathers were faithful above all else to the ideal of freedom as the end and justification of revolution and thereby they assured its success. On the other hand, the Rousseau-Robespierre misalliance, the idea of the general will binding the many into the one, the transformation of the Rights of Man into the rights of Sans-Culotte, not only ultimately led to the Reign of Terror but also the whole catalogue of post-1792 ideological corruptions. The malhcurcux became the enrages, then the Industrial Revolution's miserables. And the Marxist Leninist acceptance of the new absolutism, which was done in the name of historical necessity and the name of the proletariat as a "natural" force, subsequently absolved both tyranny and blood baths as stages along the way... A powerful indictment and illumination, both immediate and enduring.
Pub Date: March 15, 1963
ISBN: 0143039903
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
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