Isbn: 0198751729
Sales Rank: 12242
Subjects:  1. Epistemology    2. Ethics & Moral Philosophy    3. History & Surveys - General    4. Knowledge, Theory of    5. Metaphysics    6. Movements - Humanism    7. Philosophy    8. Epistemology, theory of knowledge    9. Philosophy of mind    10. Western philosophy, c 1600 to c 1800   

Isbn: 0811201325
Sales Rank: 150031
Subjects:  1. English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh    2. European War, 1914-1918    3. Poetry    4. English    5. Poetry & poets: from c 1900 -   

Isbn: 0679435921
Sales Rank: 32801
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. Fiction - General    3. Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936    4. Short Stories (Anthologies)    5. Short Stories (single author)    6. Fiction / Short Stories (single author)   

Isbn: 0804736669
Sales Rank: 119262
Subjects:  1. Death    2. God    3. History & Surveys - Modern    4. Metaphysics    5. Philosophy    6. Religion    7. Time   

Editorial Review

Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem.Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then(as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel ofdeath, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers tothe rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah tosymbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a bigtrick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky.

Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from themad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments onthe infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful inrocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to itspresence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incomingV-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany.

That's just the Imipolex G tip of the shrieking vehicle that isPynchon's book. It's pretty much impossible to follow a standard plot; one musthave faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blowup the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patternsonly just past our comprehension. You will enjoy Pynchon's cartoon infernofar more if you consult Steven Weisenburger's brief companion to the novel,which sorts out Pynchon's blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. Rest easy: there really is a simplereason why Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream about a serpent biting itstail (which solved the structure of the benzene molecule) belongs in the same novelas the comic-book-hero Plastic Man.

Isbn: 0062700146
Sales Rank: 86020
Subjects:  1. Dictionaries & Terminology    2. Dictionaries - General    3. English Language Dictionaries    4. English language    5. Reference    6. Synonyms and antonyms    7. Thesauri   

Editorial Review

Isbn: 019528478X
Sales Rank: 3244
Subjects:  1. Bible    2. Bibles    3. Bibles - New Revised Standard    4. Religion    5. The Bible   

Isbn: 7119005901
Sales Rank: 3322
Subjects:  1. Fiction    2. China    3. Chinese Novel And Short Story    4. Chinese literature    5. Fiction - Historical    6. Three kingdoms, 220-265    7. Translations into English   

Isbn: 0671203231
Sales Rank: 6596
Subjects:  1. Agnosticism    2. Free thought    3. History & Surveys - Modern    4. Philosophy    5. Religion    6. Religion / General   

Editorial Review

Reviews (2)

Essential for the Faulkner completist
William Faulkner is one of the most celebrated and popular authors in all of American literature. With his widespread popularity, and stature within the literary world, a book such as this needs to be in print. The book basically picks up everything -- or nearly everything -- of Faulkner's that had not been published up to that point, including:short stories that were later made into novels, short stories published in various fiction magazines that were never collected in a previous Faulkner anthology, and Faulkner stories that had never before been published anywhere. Some of the first group are nearly identical to the books of which they would eventually become a part -- The Unvanquished; The Hamlet; Go Down, Moses; Big Woods; and The Mansion -- but some are radically different. The alterations made to these stories offer a fascinating peek into Faulkner's writing process. They also offer a taste of some of Faulkner's novels, and, thus, work well as a sampler:the reader can read these stories and see which of the novels he or she might like to subsequently pick up. The previously uncollected stories contain some real gems and are eminently worthy; also, only the most hard-core Faulkner reader will have read them before. The previously unpublished stories are not of a significantly lower quality, as one might expect; indeed, some of them are very good -- just as good, or better, as some of the published stories. In any case, they constitute a goldmine for the Faulkner reader. The same goes for the book as a whole:though this certainly does not contain his best work, it contains much that is very good, and everything else is worthy -- perhaps some are even superlative. To be sure, some stories are of less worth than others, but they are all vintage Faulkner, and this is an essential volume for both Faulkner fans and scholars.

An Incomplete Un-Collection
Although I have not read all of his short stories, I find Faulkner's tales to be poigniant reflections of American life, without being overtly obvious in their symbolism.The reader draws as much, or as little, as he wishesfrom Faulkner.

Being a work of 'uncollected' stories, it does not havethe consistency as, say, These 13, or others arranged by Faulkner, but itdoes have its gems.

Reviews (5)

So set, before its echoes fade...
A.E., Housman's superb poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young", cannot help but bring to mind all the young men who perished in aerial combat. You knew some. I knew some. We are now moving off stage and we cannot help but hope and pray that others will carry on the task of remembrance. I drive by Putterham Circle in South Brookline, Massachusetts, frequently and I note that the wooden sign dedicating the traffic circle to my old friend Staff Sgt. Frank Ryan is in need of replacement.

What brings this to mind is a letter from a Fred Farnsworth (email address: FredieF@aol.com) of Los Alamos, New Mexico. He is interested in the life of his late cousin, Lt. Everett Farnsworth, of Stillwater, Oklahoma. His cousin and Jimmy Stewart were close pals and used to double date the English girls who lived near the air field. I should note here that I have yet to hear one note of criticism of Jimmy either as an Airplane Commander, actor or as a human being.

Our correspondent says Jimmy told his cousin that he would honor him in a movie Stewart would make when he got back to the States. He gave Everett the name George Bailey in the movie we all have seen probably more than once. Its title was "It's a Wonderful Life".

Everett did not live to see the movie in which Stewart kept his promise. He was killed on a bombing mission when his badly shot- up Fortress went down in a Swiss lake. The name of the lake was Greifensee. Everett and one other were killed in the crash. Four other crewmen who had been ordered to bail out did so and survived. The plane was a B17G -serial no. 384BG/5545BS and it went down April 4, 1944. Anyone with information concerning the plane and its crew can forward it to "Vapor Trails".

As long as I am still here to tell the tale let me home you in a bit on my pal Frank Ryan. He was a rich kid from a very patriotic family. He had a U.S. Marine brother who fought on Tarawa if my memory serves. Frankie went to "Cranwell", a lahdeedah Jesuit boarding school in the Berkshires. I went to Boston College High, at that time a Dickensian Jebbie prep school in Boston's tough South End. It is still close to my heart after all these years. We both wound up among the very few Radio Operator Gunners who could read Latin. (I can say this without fear of correction because all my Latin teachers are dead.)

We both joined the Army Air Corp in Brookline but didn't see each other again until a couple of years later when we luckily met on a train back to Brookline. We were beginning the furloughs you get just before going overseas and presumably into combat. Frankie went to the Eighth Air Force whereas I wound up in the Tenth. I sent him a V-Mail from the 7th Bomb Groups airbase at Pandeveswar, Bengal soon after I got there. By this time the European air war was winding down. I wrote Frankie that he was one lucky guy because his war was just about finished whereas fliers in the CBI had a long way to go.

I sent the same note to Nate Douglas of Georgia whom I had met my first day of Basic Training and had been to CTD, Sioux Falls Radio School, and Gunnery School at Yuma. We said goodbye in Savannah where he was assigned to train on B17s and I was across town at Chatham Field training on Liberators.

A few weeks later I was sitting in front of a sweltering straw-roofed basha in Bengal, India, when a mail orderly came by and handed me the self-same V-Mails I had sent Ryan and Douglas. The orderly muttered "Sorry". Both V-Mails were stamp "Killed in Action."

Smart lad(s) to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not fade...
John Brennan, editor

nastalgic lyrics and ballads
I remember first discovering A. E. Housman in school when I read "A Shropshire Lad" and was rather impressed.

My favorite of his poems is "To An Athlete Dying Young". It moved me because it has a special connection with me, since now that my athletic days are over and I'm no longer a part of any team, I understand and can identify with the athlete who is once so glorious and yet his glory can be so short-lived.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Reviews (205)

Should be called "Downfall of a Young Man"
I read the book because it was listed as a great classic in English Literature.If this is a great classic, I am on the wrong planet.The main character, the artist as a young man, is insipid and disparaging to life itself.James Joyce emasculates the title of author and great classic.After reading the b ook, I threw it away. I do not recommend this book.

the edition to get
If you're gonna buy a copy of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," you can't go wrong with the Wordsworth Classic edition.Its advantages are several:

1.It's extremely cheap.
2.It features a very long and immensely insightful (32-page) introduction by Jaqueline Belanger, which includes a biography, publishing background, sections on language structure, irony, etc.There are also many suggestions for further syntopic or critical reading.
3.The thing is complete and unabridged.
4.There are extensive footnotes at the end, which are keyed throughout in the text, explaining all the Latin and the extinct realia of Joyce's world.

In short, get it.

As for the work itself, it's a very good prepper for "Ulysses:"I started that novel without having done this one.Later I came back to this:much was made clearer.Don't make my mistake.