Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination
by Ilan Stavans
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $14.95
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Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 860.9980904
EAN: 9780312240318
ISBN: 0312240317
Label: Palgrave Macmillan
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2001-09-08
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Studio: Palgrave Macmillan
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A problematic but interesting collection of essays
Comment: "Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination" is a frequently fascinating, frequently annoying volume of essays by Jewish Mexican writer Ilan Stavans. Stavans, who moved to the United States and writes in English, has a complex perspective which is reflected in this book.
Much of this book deals with Latin American literature. Stavans' essays are informative, and frequently rich in intriguing insights. But I often found his style pompous and arrogant. I particularly disliked his many nasty comments about other Latino/Hispanic writers: he calls Mario Vargas Llosa a "dilettante" (in "Two Peruvians"); he dismisses Cherrie Moraga's work as "highly predictable and often stale" ("Art and Anger"); he refers to the career of Gabriel Garcia Marquez as "curiously disappointing," and says that this author's "Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" is "forgettable and poorly structured" ("The Master of Aracataca"). Some of his cruelest comments are directed at Octavio Paz, whom he accuses of having a "relentless need to be worshiped and applauded." I have no doubt that many educated readers will disagree with these and other highly subjective statements.
Other essays in the collection are also troublesome. "The Latin Phallus: A Survey" contains interesting comments on such gay Latin American writers as Reinaldo Arenas and Jose Lezama Lima. But the essay as a whole is poorly structured (to steal one of Stavans' phrases) and ultimately unsatisfying.
Still, there are many good points in this collection. I was particularly intrigued by "Tongue Snatcher," about Argentine-born Hector Bianciotti, who writes in his adopted language of French. Overall, I recommend "Art and Anger" to those interested in Latin American studies, but I suggest that it be read with a critical eye.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unique
Comment: Stavans is one of the best essayists of our time. His pieces are always stimulating and informative. I would compare him with Lionel Trilling. The essays on translation and poliglotism alone are worth the price.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A problematic but interesting collection of essays
Comment: "Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination" is a frequently fascinating, frequently annoying volume of essays by Jewish Mexican writer Ilan Stavans. Stavans, who moved to the United States and writes in English, has a complex perspective which is reflected in this book.
Much of this book deals with Latin American literature. Stavans' essays are informative, and frequently rich in intriguing insights. But I often found his style pompous and arrogant. I particularly disliked his many nasty comments about other Latino/Hispanic writers: he calls Mario Vargas Llosa a "dilettante" (in "Two Peruvians"); he dismisses Cherrie Moraga's work as "highly predictable and often stale" ("Art and Anger"); he refers to the career of Gabriel Garcia Marquez as "curiously disappointing," and says that this author's "Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" is "forgettable and poorly structured" ("The Master of Aracataca"). Some of his cruelest comments are directed at Octavio Paz, whom he accuses of having a "relentless need to be worshiped and applauded." I have no doubt that many educated readers will disagree with these and other highly subjective statements.
Other essays in the collection are also troublesome. "The Latin Phallus: A Survey" contains interesting comments on such gay Latin American writers as Reinaldo Arenas and Jose Lezama Lima. But the essay as a whole is poorly structured (to steal one of Stavans' phrases) and ultimately unsatisfying.
Still, there are many good points in this collection. I was particularly intrigued by "Tongue Snatcher," about Argentine-born Hector Bianciotti, who writes in his adopted language of French. Overall, I recommend "Art and Anger" to those interested in Latin American studies, but I suggest that it be read with a critical eye.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Unique
Comment: Stavans is one of the best essayists of our time. His pieces are always stimulating and informative. I would compare him with Lionel Trilling. The essays on translation and poliglotism alone are worth the price.
Fascinated by the idea of Western civilization as being a sequence of numerous misinterpretations and misrepresentations, these 19 essays cover a broad range of topics with the unifying theme being the crossroads where politics and the imagination meet. An essay on linguistics and culture discusses the shaping of Latin America’s collective identity; Peru’s modern history is approached as a bloody battle between enlightenment and darkness; and in critiques of Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez, Ilan Stavans reflects on the dichotomy between pen and sword in the Hispanic world. In Letter to a German Friend, Stavans returns to his fate as a Jew in the Southern Hemisphere, and in The First Book, he connects his passion for literature to his initiation into Jewishness. Finally, in a meditation on Columbus’s afterlife, he reflects on the many ways in which we reinvent ourselves in order to make sense of the chaotic world that surrounds us.
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