Essays ​of the 1960s & 70s Against ​Interpretation / Styles of Radical Will / On Photography / Illness as Metaphor / Uncollected Essays

John Barth - Final ​Fridays
For ​decades, acclaimed author John Barth has strayed from his Monday-through-Thursday-morning routine of fiction-writing and dedicated Friday mornings to the muse of nonfiction. The result is _Final Fridays_, his third essay collection, following _The Friday Book _(1984) and _Further Fridays_ (1995). Sixteen years and six novels since his last volume of non-fiction, Barth delivers yet another remarkable work comprised of 27 insightful essays. With pieces covering everything from reading, writing, and the state of the art, to tributes to writer-friends and family members, this collection is witty and engaging throughout. Barth’s “unaffected love of learning” ( _San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle_ ) and “joy in thinking that becomes contagious” ( _Washington Post_ ), shine through in this third, and, with an implied question mark, final essay collection.

John Barth - Further ​Fridays
Every ​Friday for many years, John Barth has exchanged his weekday fiction muse for a nonfiction one. He first collected the fruits of these labors in the critically acclaimed Friday Book and now, in Further Fridays, treats readers to a brilliant encore. This collection features a variety of reflections and ruminations that range as far as Barth's curiosity takes him. Each is a journey, but never quite the one expected one.

Henry David Thoreau - Wild ​Apples
Wild ​Apples begins with a short history of the apple tree, tracing its path from ancient Greece to America. Thoreau saw the apple as a perfect mirror of man and eloquently lamented where they both were heading.

Ismeretlen szerző - Fényképezte ​Zsigmond Vilmos / Photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond
A ​kiállítás gerincét eddig még soha be nem mutatott fotók alkotják. Zsigmond Vilmos az ötvenes évek elején, még Magyarországon kezdett el érdeklődni komolyabban a fotóművészet iránt. Nagy hatást tett rá Dulovits Jenő Művészi fényképezés című, több nyelven is kiadott műve. Ennek segítségével autodidakta módon megtanulta a kompozíciós elveket, a fénykezelés jelentőségét, a film nyersanyagok sajátosságait. Az előhívást szintén maga végezte, így lehetősége volt megtanulni a fotózás laborálási eljárásait is. Ezek a tanulságok aztán operatőri munkájában tovább értek, fejlődtek, és alkalmazásukkal jött létre e nagyszerű filmes életmű, melynek indulása egybefonódik az amerikai film meghatározó korszakával, az Új Hollywood-nak nevezett filmtörténeti periódussal. A mintegy 150 darabot számláló fotóanyag az 1950-es években indul, és napjainkig bezárólag több csoportban mutatja be Zsigmond Vilmos alkotói gondolkodásmódjának fő jellegzetességeit. A kiállítás kiegészül továbbá a filmes életmű darabjaival is, hogy láthatóvá váljanak a fotográfiai alkotások és az operatőri tevékenység szoros összefüggései, segítve egymás értelmezését.

Ismeretlen szerző - Bódy ​Gábor 1946-1985
Ehhez a könyvhöz nincs fülszöveg, de ettől függetlenül még rukkolható/happolható.

J. R. R. Tolkien - The ​Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
Complete ​collection of Tolkien's essays, including two on Beowulf, which span three decades beginning six years before The Hobbit to five years after The Lord of the Rings. The seven 'essays' by J.R.R. Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien's work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953. Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien's approach to the whole genre. The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique 'academic' lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings

Arthur C. Danto - Embodied ​Meanings
Ehhez a könyvhöz nincs fülszöveg, de ettől függetlenül még rukkolható/happolható.

Naomi Wolf - The ​Beauty Myth
In ​the struggle for women's equality, there is one subject still shrouded in silence - women's compulsive pursuit of beauty. The myth of female beauty challenges every woman, every day of her life. The author exposes the tyranny of the beauty myth through the ages and its oppressive function today, in the home and at work, in literature and the media, in relationships between men and women, between women and women. With examples, she confronts the beauty industry and its advertising and uncovers the reasons why women are consumed by this destructive obsession.

Candace Bushnell - Sex ​and the City
In ​this chronicle of the mating habits of New York's cultural elite, Bushnell infiltrates celebrity affairs, sex clubs, and posh suburbs to introduce us to "bicycle boys," "modelizers," and "toxic bachelors" - powerful and successful men who bed single and married women as if it were a contest. Often funny and occasionally bleak, this is an inside account of the quintessential '90s romance and the never-ending search for the perfect marriage partner in high society.

Marija Gimbutas - The ​Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
European ​civilization between 6500 and 3500 BC - long before Greek or Judaeo-Christian civilizations flourished - was not a provincial reflection of neighboring Near Eastern cultures but a distinct culture with its own unique identity. The mythical imagery of this matrilinear era tells us much about early humanity's concepts of the cosmos, of human relations with nature, of the complementary roles of male and female. Through study of sculpture, vases, and other cult objects from southeastern Europe, Gimbutas sketches the village culture that evolved there before it was overwhelmed by the patriarchal Indo-Euopreans. The Goddess incarnating the creative principle as a Source and Giver of All, fertility images, mythical animals, and other artifacts are anlyzed for their mythic and social significance in this beautifully illustrated study.

Arthur C. Danto - Philosophizing ​Art
Arthur ​Danto's work has always affirmed a deep relationship between philosophy and art. These essays explore this relationship through a number of concrete cases in which either artists are driven by philosophical agendas or their art is seen as solving philosophical problems in visual terms. The essays cover a varied terrain, with subjects including Giotto's use of olfactory data in _The Raising of Lazarus;_ chairs in art and chairs as art; Mel Bochner's Wittgenstein drawings; the work of Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, and Robert Irwin; Louis Kahn as "Archai-Tekt"; and visual truth in film. Also featured are a meditation on the battle of Gettysburg; and a celebration of the Japanese artist Shiko Munakata, an essay that is partly autobiographical.

Aldous Huxley - Brave ​New World Revisited
In ​his 1932 classic dystopian novel, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley depicted a future society in thrall to science and regulated by sophisticated methods of social control. Nearly thirty years later in Brave New World Revisited, Huxley checked the progress of his prophecies against reality and argued that many of his fictional fantasies had grown uncomfortably close to the truth. Brave New World Revisited includes Huxley's views on overpopulation, propaganda, advertising and government control, and is an urgent and powerful appeal for the defence of individualism still alarmingly relevant today.

Jared Diamond - Why ​is Sex Fun?
To ​us humans the sex lives of many animals seem weird. In fact, by comparison with all the other animals, we are the ones with the weird sex lives. How did that come to be?Just count our bizarre ways. We are the only social species to insist on carrying out sex privately. Stranger yet, we have sex at any time, even when the female can't be fertilized (for example, because she is already pregnant, post-menopausal, or between fertile cycles). A human female doesn't know her precise time of fertility and certainly doesn't advertise it to human males by the striking color changes, smells, and sounds used by other female mammals.Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest ancestor, the apes? Why does the human female, virtually alone among mammals go through menopause? Why does the human male stand out as one of the few mammals to stay (often or usually) with the female he impregnates, to help raise the children that he sired? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large?There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond—renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author—to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.

Ursula K. Le Guin - Dancing ​at the Edge of the World
Incisive, ​eloquent, crackling with ideas, this is a "mental-biography" of the award-winning fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin. She draws together essays, travel journals, lectures, informal talks and reviews spanning twelve years, for a fascinating peek into the mind of a remarkable woman.

Susan Sontag - A ​fényképezésről
"A ​fotó: a tér és az idő vékony szelete. A fényképek kormányozta világban minden határvonal ("kivágás") önkényesnek tetszik. Akármi elválasztható, elszakítható akármitől: csak más képkivágást kell alkalmaznunk." "Fényképet gyűjteni annyi, mint a világot gyűjteni. A film és a tévéműsor megvilágítja a falat, fölvillan és kialszik; az állókép viszont tárgy is, súlytalan, olcsón előállítható, könnyen hordozható, gyűjthető, tárolható. Godard Les Carabiniers (Karabélyosok) című 1963-ban készült filmjében két tunya lumpenparaszt azért csap fel katonának a királyi ármádiába, mert azzal kecsegtetik őket: kifoszthatják, megbecsteleníthetik, legyilkolhatják az ellenséget, tehetnek vele, ami csak kedvükre van, s meggazdagodhatnak. Hanem a hadizsákmánytól duzzadó bőröndről, amelyet Michelangelo és Ulysses évek múltán diadalmasan hazavisz feleségének, kiderül, hogy csak képeslappal van tele, százszámra lapulnak benne a műemlékek, az áruházak, az emlősök, a természeti szépségek, a közlekedési eszközök, a műalkotások és a földgolyó egyéb - téma szerint csoportosított - kincsei. Godard ötlete színesen figurázza ki a fénykép kétes értékű varázsát. Talán a fénykép a legtitokzatosabb mindazon tárgyak közül, melyekből összeáll és szövevénnyé sűrűsödik az a környezet, amelyet modernnek látunk. Minden fénykép valóban egy-egy rabul ejtett élmény, s a fényképezőgép eszményi fegyver a bírnivágyással teli tudat számára. Fényképezni annyi, mint birtokba venni a lefényképezett tárgyat. Azt jelenti, hogy bizonyos viszonyt létesítünk a világgal... A világ arányaival ügyeskedő fényképet magát is kicsinyítik, nagyítják, vágják, retusálják, utókezeléssel és trükkökkel átformálják. A fénykép megöregszik - megviselik a papírra leselkedő szokásos bajok; a fénykép elvész; a fényképből érték lesz, a fényképet adják-veszik; a fényképet reprodukálják." Forrás: http://www.sunbooks.hu

Nemes Károly - Jean-Luc ​Godard
Godard ​azon kevés filmrendező közé tartozik, akik képesek újra és újra megújulni. Nem csak a hatvanas évek nagy korszakának volt meghatározó alakja, de a mostanában készült filmjei is a filmművészet élvonalába tartoznak, nem csupán halovány utánérzései a régieknek. Godard késői filmjei legalább olyan izgalmasak, frissek és újszerűek, mint a hatvanas években rendezett munkái. Egy régi anekdota szerint az egyik cannes-i filmfesztiválon egy hosszas vita végén Henri-Georges Clouzot a következőt kérdezte Jean-Luc Godard-tól: – Azt ugye azért Ön is elismeri, hogy egy filmnek kell, hogy legyen eleje, közepe, vége?! – Hát persze! Csak nem feltétlenül ebben a sorrendben. wikipedia

André Bazin - What ​Is Cinema? 2.
André ​Bazin's _What Is Cinema?_ (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential _Cahiers du Cinéma_, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin „will survive even if the cinema does not.”

André Bazin - What ​Is Cinema? 1.
André ​Bazin's _What Is Cinema?_ (volumes I and II) have been classics of film studies for as long as they've been available and are considered the gold standard in the field of film criticism. Although Bazin made no films, his name has been one of the most important in French cinema since World War II. He was co-founder of the influential _Cahiers du Cinéma_, which under his leadership became one of the world's most distinguished publications. Championing the films of Jean Renoir (who contributed a short foreword to Volume I), Orson Welles, and Roberto Rossellini, he became the protégé of François Truffaut, who honors him touchingly in his forword to Volume II. This new edition includes graceful forewords to each volume by Bazin scholar and biographer Dudley Andrew, who reconsiders Bazin and his place in contemporary film study. The essays themselves are erudite but always accessible, intellectual, and stimulating. As Renoir puts it, the essays of Bazin "will survive even if the cinema does not."

Susan Sontag - A ​betegség mint metafora
A ​betegség az élet sötét oldala, a kínosabbik, a terhesebb állampolgárság. Ugyanis minden ember kettős állampolgársággal születik, egyaránt polgára az egészség és a betegség birodalmának. Bár mindannyian szívesebben használjuk az egészség útlevelét, előbb-utóbb valamennyien rákényszerülünk, hogy ha rövid időre is, de átlépjünk a másik királyság állampolgárának szerepébe. E könyvben nem azt szeretném leírni, hogy mit jelent a valóságban, ha az ember átköltözik a betegség birodalmába, hanem azt, hogy miféle, embert büntető, illetve bizalmas képzetek tapadnak hozzá: nem a betegség valóságos geográfiája érdekel, hanem mintegy a nemzetkarakterológia sztereotípiái. Könyvem tárgya nem a betegség maga, hanem a betegség átvitt értelmű és metaforikus alkalmazása. Az én véleményem szerint a betegség nem metafora, és a betegséghez való emberi viszony legigazabb változata - egyben a betegség elviselésének legegészségesebb módja is - az, amely a leginkább meg van tisztítva a metaforikus gondolkodás elemeitől. Tudom, szinte lehetetlen feladatra vállalkozik, aki előítéletek nélkül szándékozik letelepedni a betegség birodalmában, ahol a tájat baljós metaforák népesítik be. Könyvemet e metaforák megvilágításának és felszámolásának eszközéül ajánlom.

Jane Yolen - Touch ​Magic
We ​must equip our children with story in order to keep them linked with the past and ready for the future. "Our children are growing up without their birthright: the myths, fairy tales, fantasies and folklore that are their proper legacy." The essays in Touch Magic, Jane Yolen's classic call-to-arms advocating the use of fantasy and folklore in children's literature, echo that statement. Yolen argues persuasively that fantasy, folklore, and the realm of story provide children with the necessary tools for facing the world, understanding its ways and capriciousness, indeed, becoming truly human. "I believe that culture begins in the cradle," she writes. "To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future." August House now offers a richly expanded version of this seminal volume. With six new essays that tender fresh perspectives on the morality of fairy tales, time travel, the definition of story, and, of course, why such themes are essential to the development of today's children, Touch Magic heralds a new millennium of fantasy, myth, and storytelling. "Story is our wall against the dark," Yolen contends, and as adults, we must equip our children with story in order to keep them linked with the past and ready for the future. Touch magic, and pass it on.