Synopsis
Essays discuss American leftist thought of the sixties, the role of the artist, documentary films about the Holocaust, historical fiction, jazz, and the marriage of low and high art
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Reviews
In a seductive book of wide-ranging essays, several of them previously published, Cantor ( The Death of Che Guevara ; Krazy Kat ) shows that he is as insightful a critic as he is a novelist. In writing about Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, he urges readers to embrace these "patriarchs" for the questions they raise about our humanity rather than abandon them in postmodern despair for the "answers" they mistakenly theorized were at the core of our behavior. Cantor discusses the genesis of his book on Che from a personal perspective as well as in terms of the political dramas of the 1960s. He also can be playful, reintroducing Krazy Kat 's Ignatz Mouse to wish Mickey Mouse a happy 60th birthday. Blending the comic with the serious--or, what he terms the "high" and the "low"--Cantor constructs a convincing language to reveal himself and his cultural icons (Arshile Gorky, Delmore Schwartz, among others). His clarity is a magical additive given the complexity of his ideas.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Cantor ( Krazy Kat: A Novel in Five Panels , LJ 1/88) rejects the consumerist/capitalist "culture" of disposable lifestyles and empty "change-the-channel" images. Instead, he propounds the necessity of art that confronts us with felt images of our death drives and violence and, in doing so, enables us to integrate these negatives into a fuller, freer self. Similarly, he asserts that post-modernism's facile, ironic surfaces have obviated neither the root questions of modernism raised in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud nor the need to come to terms with them. These positions recur and inform--perhaps a bit too relentlessly--these eight essays and Cantor's thoughts on "the party of pleasure" and its strivings in the Sixties; Krazy Kat and Mickey Mouse; the creation of his own novel, The Death of Che Guevara ( LJ 11/1/83); and three films on the Holocaust. His perspective is psychoanalytic and moral, his writing sometimes overly fine and grave, but his views are well worth serious consideration.
-Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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On Giving Birth To One's Own Mother: Essays on Art and Society
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On Giving Birth To One's Own Mother: Essays on Art and Society
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On Giving Birth to One's Own Mother: Essays on Art and Society
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Alfred A. Knopf Inc, Westminister, Maryland, U.S.A., 1991
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On Giving Birth to One's Own Mother: Essays on Art and Society
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On Giving Birth To One's Own Mother: Essays on Art and Society
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ON GIVING BIRTH TO ONE'S OWN MOTHER: Essays on Art and Society
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On Giving Birth To One's Own Mother Essays on Art and Society
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Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991
ISBN 10: 0394587529
ISBN 13: 9780394587523
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On Giving Birth To One's Own Mother: Essays On Art and Society
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hardcover. Condition: Very Good in Dustjacket. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. New York. 1991. March 1991. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0394587529. 179 pages. hardcover. Jacket art is a portrait - 'The Artist and His Mother', 1934, by Arshile Gorky. Jacket design by Archie Ferguson. keywords: American Literature Essays. DESCRIPTION - With wit and passion, Jay Cantor in this sequence of essays tackles some of the philosophical underpinnings of modern life and art. In 'The Patriarchs,' American leftist thought of the Sixties, nourished on Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, meets the post-modern culture of the Eighties, raising questions that will have to be answered in the Nineties. (How can we defeat post-modern irony, post-modern despair? Will we participate in reshaping ourselves or be designed by others?) The title essay, 'On Giving Birth to One's Own Mother,' looks at Arshile Gorky painting and repainting a portrait of his mother and himself and explores the ways in which the artist transforms the loss of those he loves into art - to remake himself and to overcome his sadness. The collection includes, as well, essays on contemporary film (can we again make movies that we will want to splice into our personalities?); on making history into fiction (can we tell the story in a way that will change the shape of the future?); on Afro-American jazz, and how its inspired conversation between voices can serve as a model for a new, democratic post-modernism; on great popular art (Krazy Kat) and the endless joy it promises; and on three profound documentary films of the Holocaust, works that offer us a palpable, terrifying knowledge of loss and death, and so a deeper relationship to life. inventory #15224. Seller Inventory # z15224