Avram Noam Chomsky (* 7. Dezember 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) ist emeritierter Professor für Linguistik am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), einer der weltweit bekanntesten linken Intellektuellen und seit den 1960er Jahren einer der prominentesten Kritiker der US-amerikanischen Politik.
Chomsky ist einer der bekanntesten Linguisten der Gegenwart. Er übte durch die Verbindung der Wissenschaftsdisziplinen Linguistik, Kognitionswissenschaften und Informatik besonders in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts starken Einfluss auf deren Entwicklung aus. Seine Beiträge zur allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft sowie seine Modelle der generativen Transformationsgrammatik veränderten den bis dahin vorherrschenden US-amerikanischen Strukturalismus. Seine Kritik am Behaviorismus förderte den Aufstieg der Kognitionswissenschaft.
The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar
Essays on Poets and Poetry
Helen Vendler
HARDCOVER
$35.00 • £25.95 • €31.50
ISBN 9780674736566
Publication: May 2015
464 pages, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
Helen Vendler is full of condescending waffle (and not just when she’s attacking me)
Daniel Swift takes ‘the Queen of Formalism’ to task over her scientific approach to poetry in her spiky new collected essays, The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar Daniel Swift, Spectator
The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry, by Helen Vendler
Elizabeth Greene lauds an eminent critic’s fine close reading of Wallace Stevens and others Times Higher Education, June 18 2015
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012, was an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar (1948), outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He also ran for political office twice and was a longtime political critic.
Gore Vidal dies aged 86
Feisty American author wrote widely on everything from politics and literature to homosexuality and religion The Guardian, 1.8.2012
US author Gore Vidal dies aged 86
Celebrated writer and political commentator Gore Vidal has died aged 86, his family has confirmed. BBC, 1.8.2012
With some telling comments by readers.
If one listens closely to the words of Gore Vidal, one wonders how he could hve been popular. There is a contradiciton, not on his side, but on the side of the American public. Obviously popularity doesn't ncessarily come along with understanding. Ohterwise American politics would be quite different. But his is, of course, not to count on Gore Vidal who was outspoken and highly educated. The Americans generally are of low education, as Vidal for himself compared often in contrast to the Europeans. Unfortunately, this low educated not knowing people easyly can be fooled and welcome to be fooled. This is an eminent danger, not the last, of which Gore Vidal spoke often.
Addendum:
'The Man Who Knew Everyone' - Gore Vidal Through The Eyes Of The One Per Cent Press David Edwards, MEDIA LENS, August 20, 2012
"Literatur, Philosophie, Naturwissenschaften: Heute entwickeln sich die Hilfsmittel, mit denen wir die Welt verstehen, voneinander getrennt, wie der Intellektuelle und Humanist George Steiner bedauert. Dabei ist die Kultur das, was uns rettet, insbesondere in Europa. Auszüge."
Many people wish to bestow someone a book but are insecure concerning their selection. What should be given away as a gift? What is proper, beautiful, enteraining, worthwhile etc.?
I recommend the latest publication by the British author, artist and art critic John Berger:
A meditation, in words and images, on the practice of drawing, by the author of Ways of Seeing.
The seventeenth-century philosopher
Baruch Spinoza—also known as Benedict or Bento de Spinoza—spent the most
intense years of his short life writing. A sporadic draughtsman, he
also carried with him a sketchbook. After his sudden death, his friends
rescued letters, manuscripts, notes—but no drawings.
For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento's sketchbook
without knowing what its pages might hold, but wanting to see the
drawings alongside his surviving words. When one day a friend gave
Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said “This is Bento's!” and
he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher's vision.
The result is Bento's Sketchbook—an exploration of the
practice of drawing and a meditation on how art guides our gaze to the
world: to flowers, to the human body, to the pitilessness of the new
world order and the forms of resistance to it.
Hardback, 176 pages
ISBN: 9781844676842
May 2011
£14.99
Writer and critic John Berger donated his archive to the British Library in 2008 but it was not possible to thank him officially for his generosity until he came on 23 May 2011 to give a reading from his latest book, Bento's Sketchbook.
John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text. Wikipedia
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding (published in a rejacketed edition in April 2009), King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. Amongst his outstanding studies of art and photography are Another Way of Telling, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Titian: Nymph and Shepherd (with Katya Berger) and the internationally acclaimed Ways of Seeing. He lives and works in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). His collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published in 2001. His latest novel, From A to X, was published in 2008.
About Looking, published by Bloomsbury in April 2009, is the follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing, one of the most influential books on art.
Berger is a Marxist, an advocat of dignity and freedom. He not only is an art critic but a critic generally, politically. He took explicit stands against Israel concerning their suppression of Palestinians. He is outspoken and courageous.
John Berger: a life in writing
'I wanted to write about looking at the world, so this book is about helping people to see what is around us, both the marvellous and the terrible' Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian, 23 April 2011
John Berger: A und X Ein Gespräch gegen die Abwertung der Welt
Worte sind stärker als Trennungsschmerz: Der englische Schriftsteller John Berger erzählt in „A und X“ eine Liebesgeschichte - und verrät sein Vademecum gegen die Verwundungen der Moderne. Thomas David, FAZ, 28.01.2011
Avram Noam Chomsky (* 7. Dezember 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA) ist emeritierter Professor für Linguistik am Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), einer der weltweit bekanntesten linken Intellektuellen und seit den 1960er Jahren einer der prominentesten Kritiker der US-amerikanischen Politik.
