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Rarely is the barbed edge of mother love described with such scorching wit and raw emotion as it is in Vivian Gornick's reissued memoir. Fierce Attachments zigzags between a Bronx tenement teeming with immigrants in the 1940s and New York in the 1980s. It chronicles an almighty struggle between the author and her mother, a stubborn rabble-rouser bursting with tart, angry pronouncements, moxie, and an undeniable measure of charm. Waving away an "Eastern religionist" trying to sell her on his god, she raps out: "Young man, I am a Jew and a socialist. I think that's more than enough for one lifetime, don't you?" Her husband's untimely death is the occasion for such wild histrionics--screaming, refusing to walk, flinging herself into the grave--that when Gornick works the Middle East years later as a journalist, the ululating cries and fainting mourners at funerals seem comfortably familiar. The rapid-fire flow of confidences and furious arguments between the duo mellow slightly, believably, as they grow older together.
Book Description
In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the prinicpal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.
Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick's struggle to find herself in love and in work.
As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader's admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter's mother.
Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre.
Customer Reviews:
An unpleasant memoir about horrible people.......2006-05-26
This memoir is Gornick doing a hatchet job on her mother. Gornick's mother is a pathological arrogant narcissist who verbally abuses everyone around her, including and especially Gornick. The dimension of it that Gornick seems not to see at all is that she is identical. She abuses her mother and everyone else with the same pointless malice her mother turns on her. It is two hundred pages of two pathological personalities who make themselves and everyone around them miserable. Their constant discourse is arrogance, insult, accusation, blame, and dismissiveness. They never stop bickering bitterly with each other and everyone else. Gornick is as blind to what a loathsome person she is as her mother is. One tires of them quickly.
The proposition that Gornick can write comes from her inserting pompous epigrams at the end of each section. Few of these are original and none are good enough to bear the weight she puts on them.
This is a thoroughly unpleasant book and well worth skipping.
Cliched, all around........2004-05-26
Upon first reading Fierce Attachments, I thought that it was an acceptable novel- interesting anecdotes, good dialogue, etc. However, after thinking it through and re-reading sections, it became painfully clear that Gornick has no deep insights to tell us, and because of this lack of original and profound thought, she writes about cliched things in a cliched manner. Yes, the novel can be entertaining, especially if the subject matter holds interest. In my opinion, get it from the library. It's not worth the money.
Be Aware of Gornick's Feelings About Memoirs.......2003-08-13
I think one would be hard put to find a reviewer who thinks that Gornick can't write, or that she doesn't have insights that other people feel are incisive and/or applicable to their own lives. I will not dispute any of this; this is an excellently-written book that does a wonderful job exploring the mother/daughter relationship. (Not being either one, I'm somewhat handicapped at commenting on how accurate it is in that area.)
I do think, however, that one should be aware of Gornick's take on what constitutes a memoir. Gornick has written that she views the lives on which a memoir is based to be the "rough draft." She feels that the "memoir" does not need to be held to the strict standards of truefulness that other non-fiction is. (For details on Gronick's take on what a memoir is, please read her piece in Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/08/12/memoir_writing/index.html
Personally, I find her explanations unsatisfactory, and her justifications to be rationalizations at best. I do not get enjoyment from the literary technique of an unreliable narrator, no matter how many literary persons find it to be a brilliant technique for exploring whatever (the universality of subjectivity, the unreliability of supposed objectivity, the capricious nature of life, or what have you), and similarly I have trouble with the concept of a "memoir" that is, at it's base, a piece of fiction. Perhaps I am a philistine, but I much prefer something like "The Ladies Auxiliarly," which, while certainly *based* on the author's life, does not pretend in any way to *be* life.
That caveat aside, I *do* honestly think that this is a very good book that many will enjoy. Just caveat emptor, is all.
A superb stylist.......2001-07-17
The truth is, Gornick could write about the hard bit of cheese left over and I would thill to it. She is a superb stylist and I've read all her books greedily -- precious objects that they are. This book, with its dark and painful attachment to her mother laid bare for us -- and how this attachment has acted upon all her other attempts at attachment -- is kinetic both intellectually and emotionally. She repeatedly tiptoes up to that taboo -- the lack of love that keeps a mother and daughter so intimately entwined -- and lets us stare over the lip of the abyss. I see myself, I see so many women. She is an incredible writer. Every hard won word is worth the wait. A true gem.
I just realized I spelled interesting wrong..........2001-06-28
in the review below.
It still doesn't look right! Oh the perils of relying on spell check!
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FIERCE ATTACHMENTS: A MEMOIR
VIVIAN GORNICK
Manufacturer: VIRAGO PRESS LTD
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Book Description
This digital document is an article from Columbia Journalism Review, published by Thomson Gale on March 1, 2006. The length of the article is 2277 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The predictable scandal: the book world's lack of devotion to truth runs much deeper than James Frey and the memoir.
Author: Samuel G. Freedman
Publication:
Columbia Journalism Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 44
Issue: 6
Page: 50(4)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Amazon.com
Plagues, fires from heaven, worldwide computer failure--apocalyptic visions are nothing new. Indeed, they may well be a necessary part of life. As historian Eugen Weber points out, "apocalyptic prophesies are attempts to interpret the times, console and guide, and suggest the future." In Apocalypses: Prophesies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages, Weber presents a history of end-of-the-worldisms, such as the panics during the sack of Rome in A.D. 410, multiple medieval Second Comings, Yeats's prediction of a "Celtic Armageddon" in 1899, and late-20th-century fears. This is no mere laundry list, however; Weber analyzes each of these beliefs and uses their historical contexts to make them more understandable. Weber's witty prose is tempered by an obvious respect for those with "alternative rationalities." Most readers, however, will enjoy watching these millennial beliefs recur throughout history--and perhaps breathe a sigh of relief. As Weber argues, St. Augustine's advice continues to ring true today: rather than trying to reckon the years before the end of the world, "relax your fingers and give them a little rest."
Book Description
Apocalyptic visions and prophecies from Zarathustra to yesterday form the luxuriant panorama in Eugen Weber's profound and elegant book. Beginning with the ancients of the West and the Orient and, especially, with those from whom we received our religions, the Jews and earliest Christians, Weber finds that an absolute belief in the end of time, when good would do final battle with evil, was omnipresent. Within centuries, apocalyptic beliefs inspired Crusades, scientific discoveries, works of art, voyages such as those of Columbus, rebellions and reforms. In the new world, American abolitionists, who were so critical to the movement to end slavery, believed in a final reckoning. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries' apocalyptic movements veered toward a lunatic fringe, and Weber rescues them from obloquy. From this more than two millennia history, he redresses the historical and religious amnesia that has consigned the study of apocalypses and millennial thought to the ash heap of thought and belief.
Weber, a master storyteller, turns detective in this latest book as he finds these alternative rationalities in the West, Asia, Africa, and South America. He writes with profound respect for the millennial pulse in history while never losing his urbane and witty style of writing. As we approach our second millennium beset by a host of apocalyptic predictions and cults, this book offers a map of understanding of the creeds we ignore at our peril.
Customer Reviews:
Difficult read.......2006-07-14
I can't argue with the fact that the author knows his research material. The problem is that the book is so full of examples, that it makes for a very difficult and painful read. There is no flow, no voice, just examples. And I mean multiple examples in one paragraph. No real analysis, just a compression of facts and other information. This would have been better off as a bibliography and not an attempt at an actual book.
a fine introduction.......2006-01-21
This book is an introduction to Western European and American apocalypticism. It jumps around pretty freely, although it is roughly organized into time periods.
What I'll say about this book is, if you've read a bit of history already, it will be enjoyable to you. But if you want a serious, careful and scholarly history of apocalypticism, this will disappoint you, as it did one reviewer. No phenomenon is explored in any depth, but the narrative moves quickly through a lot of fascinating history. I did appreciate the author's care with dates, since that made it easier to keep up with the narrative's jumping around.
My field is religious studies, although not exactly what is covered here. Nevertheless, I learned enough from this book to begin doubting some "conventional wisdom" about apocalypticism: for instance, that around the year 1000 there was a wild outbreak of enthusiasm. On the contrary, most people didn't know what year it was. But I also learned that apocalypticism has gone on pretty much constantly in Western Christianity, often despite the official churches' attempts to control it.
Depending on your situation, you of course will find something else in it.
I also want to add that, as I read this book, I continually wondered why this fascinating material is rarely covered in more general histories of Western Christianity. Whatever the reason, I strongly recommend this book to students of Western Christian history. I don't think enough people are famliar with this part of Christian history.
But let me recommend a couple other books for you to consider before you pick this up.
One is Paul Boyer's "When Time Shall be no More," which looks at apocalypticism in America very closely; if you're more interested in this than in European history, that'll be a better book for you. This is a book that I very strongly recommend to anyone who wants to understand religion in America.
Another is Norman Cohn's "Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come," which (also very briefly) covers the origins of apocalypticism in the ancient world. Very few people could read this book without learning something about Zoroastrianism, 2nd Temple Judaism, or early Christianity.
hasty and superficial.......2005-07-25
Weber acknowledges that he is no expert in the field, and offers APOCALYPSES as a subjective "travel guide" through the subject, based on his reading of "hundreds of the thousands of books" on the subject. APOCALYPSES does show off the virtuosic breadth of Weber's reading, but unfortunately, like many travel guides written by mere passers-through, it betrays haste and superficiality. In fact, the book is almost unreadable, as you can divine from the reviews of even those who claim to like it. It reads like a catalogue of dates and names and quotations from the author's notecards, stitched together not by insight that would serve to order the phenomena in some kind of conceptual framework, but by "urbane and witty" (as reviewers say) commentary. Even the commentary itself sometimes sinks to banality. How many ways are there to say "Yet once again, the end did not come on time"?
In his introduction, Weber promises "more narrative than interpretation." But for the most part we get neither narrative nor interpretation. For example, the transition of rural Christian America from a radical-left populist activism to radical-right reactionary fatalism over the course of a single generation early in the twentieth century is a fascinating phenomenon, one that cries out for some kind of explanation. Why did progressive political campaigners end up shunning politics and "declar[ing] the secular state demonic"? Weber lists his answers: the Scopes trial, Prohibition ("divided and criminalized the nation"), and the reform efforts of one Anthony Cornstock ("gave Christian altruism a bad name"). That's not an explanation, only a sketch of an outline of an explanation. It's about as informative and as entertaining as reading power-point slides.
Passive voice abounds, covering up the gaps in the author's knowledge. In some places the gaps can't be hidden. The author stumbles over the word "beguin" in an eighteenth-century context, speculating some connection to the word "bigot." Although he refers several times to Norman Cohn's classic book THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENIUM, if he had read Cohn carefully, he would know that "beguine" was the traditional name for pious females who lived in voluntary poverty in the Middle Ages, often in group homes and usually outside the supervision of the Church. Similarly, Weber speculates that the term "Caucasian" "probably originated with nineteenth-century British Israelism." No, in fact, the term was coined by the eighteenth-century German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. I'm no specialist, but I caught these errors. How many other errors does the book contain?
The wittiness can get in the way of good scholarship. Weber adduces Dante's elliptical description of his birthday, "under the sign of Gemini" in "the year of the battle of Benvenuto," as evidence that pre-moderns were unaware of or indifferent to the numbering of years and days. But is it not possible that Dante chose those expressions due to considerations of rhyme, meter, and style? Similarly, the apocalyptic poem "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" includes the line "twenty centuries of stony sleep." From that, should we really conclude that Yeats literally believed the world will end exactly in the year 2000?
Not only the research, but the writing seems hasty. The second chapter and the final chapter appear once to have been separate essays, for they rehash numerous witty details found elsewhere in the book. The final chapter, breathtakingly, starts right over again from ancient Israel and goes on through Paul and Augustine, and only six pages in do we finally get to some new thoughts. Weber quotes liberally from the dictionary. He does not define important terms until Chapter 7. He quotes primary and unnamed secondary sources together in the same sentence (p. 70, on Jean Bodin). Inexplicable brackets on page 235 suggest poor editing, and possibly worse: that in the shuffle of notecards, quotation marks went missing and a sentence or part of a sentence was unintentionally plagiarized.
Weber observes that Cohn's "Pursuit of the Millenium" paints a picture of millenarism as a preoccupation of ignorant and desperate lower classes. In that Weber sees a risk of intellectual snobbery. Weber says: "Condescension is not the right approach." But he has trouble following his own precept. Of one chiliast's suicide note he says, "One hopes that the Belgian Messiah was a better master of the forceps than he was of the English language." And on the next page: "One may regret that less discreet and more destructive humans do not remove themselves from earth with as little fuss as the inhabitants of Heaven's Gate."
Weber's book does have some value. While Cohn's book restricts itself to Northern Europe in the Middle Ages, Weber's succeeds in demonstrating (albeit in mind-numbing factoids) that end-time beliefs have been present in every generation since then, and indeed in all classes. The examples he gives show that the nineteenth century was something of an aberration--Christianity itself disavowed millenarism as less than respectable, while secular thinkers took it up (though oddly, Weber barely even mentions the most important secular millenarian of all, Karl Marx)--so today's eschatologically obsessed Christianity can be seen as just a return to the status quo.
Weber does show that millenarism is not just for the poor and oppressed. (It is fascinating to learn, for example, that Christopher Columbus was not only a courageous explorer and rabid racist, he also believed that his life's work was bringing Armageddon a little closer.) But that does not negate Cohn's thesis. Cohn states quite clearly that susceptibility to "eschatological phantasies" is not simply a matter of poverty or oppression, it is a matter of insecurity and cultural dislocation. In the Middle Ages, the most culturally dislocated groups were peasants who had lost the security of the manorial system, and marginal artisans working outside the guild system. The fact that modern cults find recruits from all strata of society shows that in globalized post-industrial capitalism there is cultural dislocation and insecurity pushing people over the edge everywhere, from the slums of Afghanistan to the middle class suburbs of Colorado Springs to the mansions of Hollywood. Weber had an opportunity to synthesize the amazing amount of data he collected and use it to extend Cohn's thesis. Instead, he just gave readers the pile of data.
The verdict is: If you are looking for a good grounding in the history of apocalyptic movements and thought, go for Norman Cohn's scholarly but accessible classic, THE PURSUIT OF THE MILLENNIUM. If you want fascinating storytelling about times when the end really did appear to be at hand, try Otto Friedrich's THE END OF THE WORLD: A HISTORY. If you want an annotated bibliography for further research, go ahead and get Weber's APOCALYPSES--but check his facts before you use them.
the end is at hand, again.......2001-08-20
Apocalypses; Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages, by Eugen Weber, well, the title says it all. This book covers every apocalyptic movement since they first began, and does it in nearly chronological order. Weber writes with a great sense of humor, which keeps this book from being completely mind-numbing. Its not the subject that is monotonous, but the overwhelming number of movements covered. I had no idea just how ubiquitous apocalyptic movements are and have been. This is not a new phenomenon, but one that has persisted for over two millennia of history, even proceeding Christ. I recommend this book as a good reference for anyone studying apocalyptic movements, but it might be a bit much for casual reading by the merely curious.
The end of times is tomorrow; and tomorrow, and tomorrow..........2000-06-14
An amusing and often enlightening book about the many prophecies - from the ancient past to our days - announcing the end of times. After reading this book it will be impossible to listen to the "revelations" of the many charlatans opening - in good or bad faith - their mouth with certainty to find credulity. Too many times the end has been "tomorrow", but too often this has been forgotten.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Church History, published by American Society of Church History on December 1, 1999. The length of the article is 939 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages.
Author: Stephen J. Stein
Publication:
Church History (Refereed)
Date: December 1, 1999
Publisher: American Society of Church History
Volume: 68
Issue: 4
Page: 966
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 2378 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.(Review) (book review)
Author: W. Warren Wagar
Publication:
Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 11
Issue: 2
Page: 214
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by University of Saskatchewan on August 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1175 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.
Author: Walter Klaasen
Publication:
Canadian Journal of History (Refereed)
Date: August 1, 2001
Publisher: University of Saskatchewan
Volume: 36
Issue: 2
Page: 410
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
Maxwell's Theory and Equations.......2001-12-16
This text is the classic work of James Clerk Maxwell. It is an essay, printed by the Royal Society of London in 1864 which gives a full insight into Maxwell's theory of electromagnetic waves.
Maxwell's equations are of course the entire basis of modern electromagnetic theory. It is much easier to view these ideas here, in this brief form, than to wade through the 1873 and later editions of Maxwell's mammoth "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism".
The primary benefit of this small volume is the easy access to this paper. One would otherwise have to go for a collection of Maxwell's papers, which would be somewhat more expensive. The preface to the volume is a useful addition to the work. However, the Introduction by Thomas F. Torrance is a bit over the top. It also introduces a bit of a Theological `spin' to the material, which is not surprising when you see how many Theological/Religious texts this fellow is involved with.
Take or leave this 27 page introduction as you wish. The fact remains that you still get Maxwell, which is why you wanted the book in the first place!
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- A good intro to the environment-property rights debate
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Rights to Nature: Ecological, Economic, Cultural, and Political Principles of Institutions for the Environment
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Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
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The Drama of the Commons
ASIN: 1559634901 |
Book Description
Property rights are a tool humans use in regulating their use of natural resources. Understanding how rights to resources are assigned and how they are controlled is critical to designing and implementing effective strategies for environmental management and conservation.
Rights to Nature is a nontechnical, interdisciplinary introduction to the systems of rights, rules, and responsibilities that guide and control human use of the environment. Following a brief overview of the relationship between property rights and the natural environment, chapters consider:
- ecological systems and how they function
- the effects of culture, values, and social organization on the use of natural resources
- the design and development of property rights regimes and the costs of their operation
- cultural factors that affect the design and implementation of property rights systems
- coordination across geographic and jurisdictional boundaries
The book provides a valuable synthesis of information on how property rights develop, why they develop in certain ways, and the ways in which they function. Representing a unique integration of natural and social science, it addresses the full range of ecological, economic, cultural, and political factors that affect natural resource management and use, and provides valuable insight into the role of property rights regimes in establishing societies that are equitable, efficient, and sustainable.
Customer Reviews:
A good intro to the environment-property rights debate.......1998-06-30
A refreshing and layperson's approach to the ever more complex debate on protecting the environment with property rights and entitlements. This is a solid rhetorical contribution that clarifies arguments for lawyers, economists, anthropologists, scholars and activists alike. It is multicultural and comprehensive enough for readers in the First and in the Third World.
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