George Steiner: A Reader
by George Steiner
List Price:
Our Price: $16.95
You Save: $23.04 (58%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.69 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: George SteinerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1987-05-28
ISBN: 0195050681
Number of pages: 450
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of George Steiner: A Reader
Book Review: Wizard of Modern Critics...
Summary: 3 Stars
...or closer to the Wizard of Oz? In my original review of this book (NATIONAL REVIEW, July 26, 1985), I closed by asserting that Steiner "earns that backhanded compliment deserved by few academic critics these days: He is never dull." It is true that for a man of Steiner's prodigious learning and effervescence, verbal theatricality is not so much a tic as a conditioned reflex - decades of striving after the will-o-the-wisp of the Deeper Truth of the Cultural Crisis of Our Time have led him to pronounce dozens of "Eurekas" since his early days as the youngest fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, while still in his 20s (he was, and still is, the Orson Welles of belles-lettres). Authentic tragic drama as a Western tradition has fallen mute, overtaken by the radical catastrophes of twentieth-century politics (THE DEATH OF TRAGEDY, 1960). The German language has been hollowed out from within by the totalitarian lies of the Nazi years, and lies unredeemed by "The Hollow Miracle" (the title of an essay repinted in LANGUAGE AND SILENCE, 1967) of postwar German economic resurgence. The failure of the humanities to humanize Western, and more specifically, Central European, society (think of the commandant proceeding home from his day-job in the death camp to weep rhapsodic by evening over an exquisite rendition of Schubert), as seen in the world-historic catastrophe of the destruction of European Jewry, tells of a radical rupture in Western culture against which bland liberal meliorism must prove impotent. As such samples of Steiner's penchant for the grand symphonic arguments of the *Kulturkritker* attest, he is, between hard covers, not content to drive at relatively modest problems in cultural history, but nourishes above all the overarching ambition to, as Robert Alter has described it, present a sort of satellite's-eye view of our culture as a whole, in its mock-theological fundamentals, a task at which no mortal can hope to excel. And his preferred method is that of bold prophetic assertion rather than detailed reasoned argument. What a pity, then, that Steiner has yet to collect in book form the finest examples of a genre where he really has shone with a light of brilliance unsurpassed: in the art of book reviewing and intellectual portraiture, of conveying, as near as can be done in the compass of five thousand words or less, the distilled, reflective essence of a writer or cultural milieu, as if from the inside, an enviable gift Edward Said has described as Steiner's "ventriloquism." Here, where his targets are finite, and his subjects themselves are masters of the sort of existentially haunted themes Steiner himself is drawn to - Kafka, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Simone Weil - he has few if any peers among general-interest reviewers working since the Second World War. And his volcanic energies are nowhere better channeled than in depicting the now-vanished world of the Central European Jewish bourgeoisie, circa 1870-1939, which spawned perhaps the greatest concentration of intellectual talent seen in the West since the Enlightenment. A collection gathering some of these more modest, but extraordinarily evocative review-essays (which alone gave many of us our sole reason to buy THE NEW YORKER in the 1970s and 1980s) would be, to use a typical Steinerian locution, an "urgent responsion" to the need to show just what traditional book reviewing in the European style was at its best. There is no dishonor whatever in serving as ambassador to some of the finest work by others in your time, and in his lack of narrow academic inhibition, he has shown himself a master of the higher journalism. In a time when cultural commentary is otherwise too divided between callow hacks and jargon-ridden hyperspecialists, that is gift enough.
India Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in India Books
The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of Indiaby Jahangir
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1999-11-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1,499.95
The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold Warby John Lewis Gaddis
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1989-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Kashmir 1947: A Survivor's Storyby Krishna Mehta
Penguin Global; Published: 2006-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.71
Price in other shops:
Gandhi Speaksby M.K. Gandhi
Penguin Global; Published: 2010-05-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.67
Price in other shops:
Gem in the Lotus, the Seeding of Indian Civilizationby Abraham Eraly
Penguin Books India; Published: 2000; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.92
Penguin History of Early Indiaby Romila Thapar
Penguin Books; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $44.41
The Penguin Gandhi Readerby Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1995-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.34
Price in other shops:
Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944. Fergal Keaneby Fergal Keane
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 2011-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.81
Price in other shops:
White Mughalsby William Dalrymple
Harper Collins; Published: 2002-10-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $59.39
Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gemby Richard Kurin
Harper Perennial; Published: 2007-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.05
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentaryby Robert Alter
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2010-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.49
Price in other shops:
My Unwritten Booksby George Steiner
New Directions; Published: 2008-01-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $16.06
Price in other shops:
After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translationby George Steiner
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1998-12-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.61
Price in other shops:
Lessons of the Masters (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures; 2001-2002)by George Steiner
Harvard University Press; Published: 2005-04-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
Real Presencesby George Steiner
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1991-04-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.87
Price in other shops:
The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celanby George Steiner
New Directions; Published: 2012-01-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.93
Price in other shops:
George Steiner at The New Yorker (New Directions Paperbook)by George Steiner
New Directions; Published: 2009-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops: