A substantial volume that makes a case for Eco’s novels as window-dressing, and his scholarship as the real thing.
All (and probably more than) you ever wanted to know about how cognitive linguistics and semiotics have risen to the challenge of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy.
Before he became a best-selling novelist (The Name of the Rose, 1983, etc.), globe-trotting intellectual (Serendipities, 1998, etc.), and media darling, Eco was a linguist and semiotician, and it is to this academic discipline that he returns in this collection, first published in Italy in 1997. In other words, don’t be fooled by his characteristically playful title. As the more revealing subtitle suggests, what Eco offers this time is a set of erudite and interrelated studies for highly specialized scholars. The essays are even broken up into numbered divisions and subdivisions, in the style of a German habilitation. Eco wrote these pieces in order to explore and redefine some of the loose ends left dangling in his much-praised Theory of Semiotics (1976). The good professor writes as lucidly as ever; McEwan’s translation is both fluent and exact; but Eco here, making assumptions and demands more characteristic of academic presses than trade hardbacks, takes for granted a working knowledge of the basic developments in the discipline of semiotics since the late 1960s which will exclude a good deal of his customary audience. For those with the price of admission, however, Eco offers a great deal. In a concise, intellectually aggressive, and lucidly penetrating survey, he considers fundamental questions that have arisen in the course of his impressive scholarly career: How do we understand our always strange world – symbolized here by his eponymous platypus – in and through language? Why do we arrange dissimilar objects like cats and beetles into larger groups, and what happens when we do? Above all, what is the relation between language and cognition?
A substantial volume that makes a case for Eco’s novels as window-dressing, and his scholarship as the real thing.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-100447-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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