Amazon.com
In The Winter's Tale, a play of 1610, William Shakespeare gave a coastline to Bohemia, a landlocked country. Three hundred and twenty-eight years later, his compatriot Neville Chamberlain would call a brewing war in Czechoslovakia, as the country was called, "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing." As Canadian scholar Sayer writes, knowingly, Bohemia eventually got its coastline, one "guarded by minefields, barbed-wire fences, and tall watchtowers with machine guns," while the West took little notice. The general ignorance of all things Czech would cost Europe dearly, for conflagrations from the Thirty Years War to World War II (and even sparks that might have ignited World War III) have begun in the tiny country known by many names---Czechoslovakia, Bohemia, Moravia. Canadian scholar Sayer writes of the Czechs' struggle over centuries to define themselves as a people and nation, and he does so in a vivid, detailed narrative that will enlighten readers who are unfamiliar with the critically important center of Eastern Europe. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline--a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center.
Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation; an Austrian imperial province and a proudly Slavic national state; the most easterly democracy in Europe; and a westerly outlier of the Soviet bloc. The complexities of its location have given rise to profound (and often profoundly comic) reflections on the modern condition. Franz Kafka, Jaroslav Hasek, Karel Capek and Milan Kundera are all products of its spirit of place. Sayer describes how Bohemia's ambiguities and contradictions are those of Europe itself, and he considers the ironies of viewing Europe, the West, and modernity from the vantage point of a country that has been too often ignored.
The Coasts of Bohemia draws on an enormous array of literary, musical, visual, and documentary sources ranging from banknotes to statues, museum displays to school textbooks, funeral orations to operatic stage-sets, murals in subway stations to censors' indexes of banned books. It brings us into intimate contact with the ever changing details of daily life--the street names and facades of buildings, the heroes figured on postage stamps--that have created and recreated a sense of what it is to be Czech. Sayer's sustained concern with questions of identity, memory, and power place the book at the heart of contemporary intellectual debate. It is an extraordinary story, beautifully told.
Customer Reviews:
Poetic scholarship!.......2005-12-19
Anybody wanting to gain a deeper knowledge of the Czech people, Czech culture, and Czech spirit should read Derek Sayer's 'The Coasts of Bohemia.' Anybody wanting to dive into the sticky mess of Central European history would also do well to read this book. And those unbelievers who think that a scholarly work must be by its very nature dry and dense, MUST read this book.
Sayer's work stands alone in the veritable dearth of good works dealing with Czechdom. A towering mountain, 'Coasts' is far and away the best door to a culture and nation little understood in the 'West.' In this monumental work, Sayer continues in the grand tradition of Czech historiography started by the grand master of Czech history, Palácky. And like Palácky before him, Sayer attempts to give an answer to that elusive question: Who are the Czechs?
Starting his work with the formulators of written Czech, Josef Jungmann and Josef Dobrovsky, Sayer makes a wise decision. During the Hapsburg rule from 1620 to 1918, the only real home of Czechdom was Cestina, the Czech language. From there, Sayer takes the reader on a serpintine journey through the heart of Czech cultural consciousness. We meet up with poets of the national awakening like Karel Hynek Macha, whose epic poem, 'Máj,' could easily be considered the Czech people's Aeneid, a work that defines who they are as a voice in the cacophony of Europe. Critics of culture like F.X. Salda and voices of modernism in Czech culture like Kundera or the Noble Prize-winning poet, Jaroslav Seifert, also make appearances as Sayer makes a case for the Czech artistic voice being paramount in the creation of national identity. Sayer shows how even supposedly 'international' art trends like surrealism and social-realism all served a very selective end: the search for national identity.
In the realm of politics and ideology, Sayer argues that the Czechs have pursued an uniquely singular course throughout their history. The first people in Europe to rebel against catholic uniformity (hence the term 'bohemian'), Czech preacher, Jan Hus, laid the groundwork for Luther's more cathartic 'reformation.' The followers of Hus, the 'Hussites' not only preached a more Gospel-centered Christian creed stripped of the Roman church's ceremony and tradition, but promoted a lifestyle of radical egaliterianism. This conception of a rank-less society more than anything irked the Catholic Hapsburgs who waged a long and savage war with the Hussites until 1620 when the Austrian Hapsburgs put their unruly neighbors under the boot of Catholic rule until the demise of Austro-Hungary in 1918. Sayer argues that the coals of Hussiterian democracy never cooled down completely but instead smoldered on until the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. This grand social experiment led by the teacher-ideologue, Tomas Masaryk, proved to be Central Europe's only real democracy during the years between both world wars. Yet, Sayer makes a strong claim that Hussitism only gained full resurrection (albeit in a radically perverse form) with the ascension to power of the Czech Communist Party in 1948. The Hussite dream of a radical levelling of all economic and social class was made real with the party's drastic restructuring of Czech society which included the violent expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from the Czech lands, the shameful odsun of 1946-47. Czech communists soon took their ideology of 'people's democracy' to such radical extremes that they stamped out all forms of dissent in their quest to create uniform Czech society. Kundera's novels paint a grim picture of a society which sought to regulate, control and oppress its citizens in even the most intimate of spheres.
By the time the reader finishes 'Coasts,' he/she will not only be wiser by far, but quite exhausted as well. The sheer detail and volume of Sayer's information threatens at times to overwhelm the reader. That one quarter of the book is devoted to 'notes' is not by chance. Yet, even these notes are fascinating cultural and historical tidbits. If Sayer's work has a flaw, it lies in the author's selection of material. Selection is the most crucial (and most difficult) element of historiography. What to include, what to exclude, not only makes or breaks a work, but also carries echoes for generations to come. Who and what is left out of the history books is often doomed to oblivion in day to day life as well. Thus said, Sayer's work attempts to define Czechness around a deliberately tiny base. That of one province, Bohemia. While Bohemia did suffer the lion's share of conflict with the neighboring Germans as well as play a central role in the national awakening, two other Czech lands, Moravia and Czech Silesia have also played crucial roles in the formation of Czech identity. Some of the most internationally-known Czech artists originate from these parts i.e. Kundera, Janácek, Lysohorsky and even Mucha. Unfortunately, Sayer glosses over the cultural and historical connections with these lesser-known Bohemias. Moreover, his treatment of Slovakia's role in the making of the Czech nation and Czechoslovak 'idea' is cursory at best. A grievious absence considering the prominent role many Slovaks have played in Czech political life from Masaryk to Dubcek.
All in all though, there is little room to complain. Sayer's work has filled a gapping hole in Central European studies. A profound act of scholarship and one written in a style approaching the lyric, 'The Coasts of Bohemia' is a giant indeed. Read it!
The Coasts of Bohemia -- a truly beautiful voyage of discovery.......2005-08-07
Derek Sayer's book is exceptional well written and informative, indeed the text is positively lyrical at times. The aim is to provide an understanding of a "people of whom we know nothing" in Central Europe, and Sayer does a masterful task in shaping and clarifying Czech national identity and national culture.
The book is not simply a historical text. While the history is there, and while there is copious scholarly detail and referencing of historical events, the main strength of the text is in illustrating a deep national awareness in literature and the arts. One can almost imagine walking with Sayer on his return visit to Prague, walking through the magical streets of this beautiful city and commenting on buildings, street names, and monuments. He has a delicate but assured ability for capturing detail, coincidence, and irony. The book reads very well and it is amazing to remember that the original text was written in Czech and translated into English by the author's wife.
This is an excellent way of understanding more about Czech lands and the Czech spirit and identity. It is a very beautiful literary work that rejoices in the artistic and literary richness of the Czechs, particularly over the last century. I, for one, am very grateful that Derek Sayer made it back to his homeland to reflect on complex issues of history, national identity, and national culture and to write this masterful book: a must for those of us who love the Czech lands and their peoples.
Where is My Home?.......2005-07-22
Sayer takes an original, creative approach in writing the history of Czech culture. Sayer's book is predicated on the notion that the nation is an imagined community, constantly being re-invented and examines what Czechs have long remembered and forgotten about themselves and their little nation.
The book is unique because Sayer does not employ the typical linear approach to writing history, rather, he casts a wide net over the entire spectrum of Czech intellectual activity from 1618-1960, focusing on the cultural borders of language, symbols, and identity vis-vis the Germans just to name a few. Sayer brings the seemingly obscure to life in a lucid, pleasurable read.
The book highlights the Czech feeling of "smallness" or "malostnosti" within Europe. The Czechs have long been at the center of political, cultural, and philsophical developments over the course of history but tragically were often passive observers to events in their own land due to being subjects of other nations' empires. As a consequence, Czechs felt a powerful need to define their cultural coastlines. Their national anthem, "Gde Domov Muj" or "Where is My Home" is indicative of the Czech historical quest for identity and national destiny.
Sayer takes leave of his story circa 1960 when socialism was at its appogee. This tremendous book is the difinitive source of Czech historical culture. To understand the challenges of integrating the "East" into the EU and the senstivities of small nations, read this book.
A Czech "Cultural" History.......2004-03-24
A previous reviewer is right--this is not a Czech history. But it is the history of how Czech culture has been formed. For that, it is fascinating--For a straight history, look elsewhere. If you are travelling to Prague, it will make many sites much richer--Vysehrad cemetery, the National Theatre, Old Town Square.
Misleadingly titled.......2003-12-22
The book's subtitle is "A Czech History," but people looking for a general history of the Czech lands will be disappointed. Sayer focuses not on battlefields and parliaments but on art, literature and historiography. He either completely ignores or barely mentions such topics as the world wars, the Munich Pact and the Communist coup while devoting dozens of pages to poets, artists and critics. Thus, despite the rather esoteric nature of Czech history, Sayer assumes readers already know the basics. I guess a title like "The Humanities and Czech Identity, 1620-1960" wouldn't sell as well.
Amazon.com
An unspoiled coastline bathed in spectacular light--just far enough from Manhattan bustle--made the Hamptons seductive for generations of creative types. Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach is an entertaining survey of the personalities who found a summer or year-round haven on the southeastern end of Long Island. Numerous color photographs--of artworks, personalities, and landscape views--offer inviting glimpses of the shifting tides of culture. The story begins with early 19th-century figures like James Fenimore Cooper, who abandoned a failing whaling business to take up writing novels. Then came the genteel landscape painters with their portable easels and sunshades. By the 1950s (the era of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and many others), bohemia was in full swing. Since then the Hamptons have become a clubby getaway for artists who've already made it, from Kurt Vonnegut to Julian Schnabel. --Cathy Curtis
Book Description
Bargain Books are non-returnable.
For more than two centuries, the Hamptons have been home to a vibrant community of artists and writers, lured by the golden dunes, refreshing breezes, radiant landscapes, and frequent visits from the Muse. It was here that Winslow Homer painted bathers and strollers on the ocean beach and Lee Krasner created her Earth Series in a cramped studio shared with her husband, Jackson Pollock. From Herman Melville to F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck to George Plimpton, these are just a few of the gifted figures to draw inspiration from this famous and fashionable retreat. Richly illustrated with archival photos and reproductions of the artists' work, Hamptons Bohemia chronicles the evolution of a community and the colorful characters who have inhabited it.
Customer Reviews:
Hamptons Bohemia.......2002-07-06
"Hamptons Bohemia" is a lovely coffee table book, but it is much more than that. It is a well-researched, thorough history of the artistic life of the Hamptons from the 18th Century to the present day.
The illustrations were an important part of my enjoyment of this book. Almost every page contains a painting by a Hamptons artist, or an offbeat photograph of a group of Hamptons writers or painters. And the illustrations are beautifully done.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Finally, the Hamptons as they should be seen.......2002-05-24
It's no surprise that artists and writers were among the first to be inspired by the natural beauty of the Hamptons. It's also no surprise that celebrities, hangers-on, and wannabees followed soon after. What some may not know is that the Hamptons exerted their draw on the creative community long before Jackson Pollock and his pals put it on the map. This book eloquently conveys the allure of this magical place and the entertaining goings-on that occur when the world's finest artists and writers intermingle.
It reinforced the love affair with my home.......2002-05-22
I was given this book as a "must have" gift. So very true. The stories and photos are sublime. I'll never look at this place in the same way. Highly recommend it.
Book Description
A radical reconceptualization of modernism, this book traces the appearance of the modern artist to the Paris of the 1830s and links the emergence of an enduring modernist aesthetic to the fleeting forms of popular culture. Contrary to conventional views of a private self retreating from history and modernity, Popular Bohemia shows us the modernist as a public persona parodying the stereotypes of commercial mass culture. Here we see how the modern artist--alternately assuming the roles of the melodramatic hero, the urban flâneur, the female hysteric, the tribal primitive--created his own version of an expressive, public modernity in opposition to an increasingly repressive and conformist bourgeois culture. And here we see how a specifically modern aesthetic culture in nineteenth-century Paris came about, not in opposition to commercial popular culture, but in close alliance with it.
Popular Bohemia revises dominant historical narratives about modernism from the perspective of a theoretically informed cultural history that spans the period between 1830 and 1914. In doing so, it reconnects the intellectual history of avant-garde art with the cultural history of bohemia and the social history of the urban experience to reveal the circumstances in which a truly modernist culture emerged.
Book Description
This beautiful book celebrates the remarkable flowering of art in Prague during the reigns of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and his two sons, Wenceslas IV and Sigismund. When crowned king of Bohemia in 1347, Charles vowed to make Prague the cultural rival of Paris and Rome. He rebuilt its castle and began a massive building campaign to glorify Saint Vitus’s Cathedral. In the ensuing century, Prague became not only an imperial but also an intellectual and artistic capital.
In essays and detailed entries on some 240 artworks drawn from American and European collections, an esteemed group of scholars traces the birth of a distinctly Bohemian art in Prague in the mid-fourteenth century and its diffusion throughout Europe over the next hundred years. Panel paintings, goldsmiths’ work, sculpture, stained glass, and illuminated manuscripts bear witness to the wide-ranging achievements of the hundreds of artists who were active in Bohemian lands during this spectacular century. Not since they were created have these magnificent objects been accorded the attention that they deserve on an international stage.
Customer Reviews:
The BEST.......2006-03-01
I have this book and bought it as a gift for a relitive..whose has been to Prague.and will be going back again this year.He was thrilled with this gift..and could not say enough about how pleased he was with all the color pictures...This rates as one of the Best on whats being shown now at the Museum...and its just a beautiful book..a very good value.B.W.
Prague, Still One to the Most Beautiful Cities of Europe.......2005-10-20
PRAGUE, THE CROWN OF BOHEMIA, 1347-1437 is a great example of how a catalogue for a museum exhibition can fill a hole in art history. Though visitors still throng to this magnificent city, few know enough about its history in the arts except for a isolated facts like Mozart's 'Prague Symphony'! This beautiful, rich book focuses on the 90-year period when the crowned heads of Bohemia pulled out all stops to make Prague the cultural equal of Paris and Rome. The resulting architecture, sculpture, street vistas, paintings, incomparable stained glass, and even the carved gold antiquities are among the finest examples of the craftsmen's art.
The book highlights many of the works in the Metropolitan Museum exhibition, works gleaned the world over and reproduced here in immaculate color and black and white. The accompanying writing by Barbara Drake Boehm is not only well written and informative, it holds an awe for the subject that makes the concomitant viewing of these masterworks a particular pleasure.
This book and exhibition not only focus on the, for the most part, unknown factual art historical aspects of Prague and Bohemia, it also provides a superb social and political history source for this important region. This is a grand book, highly recommended. Grady Harp, October 05
Book Description
A common sight in American cities today is the local bohemia, filled with hipsters, funky stores, picturesque dive bars, and aspiring artists. Yet not so long ago, these sorts of districts were relatively rare, and one had to travel to San Francisco or Greenwich Village to experience bohemia in all its glory. The last two decades, however, has seen the emergence of a mass alternative nation, populated by struggling screenwriters, oddball thrift stores, indie rockers, and thousands of coffee houses. It has sprouted in locales ranging from San Diego to Seattle, Athens to Cleveland. In Neo-Bohemia, Richard Lloyd asks, how did bohemia become such an ordinary thing?
In the past, bohemia was always a small and embattled refuge for society's weirdos, its starving artists, its avant-garde, and its dope fiends. Now, not only is bohemia an established district in every medium-sized city, it drives up real estate prices and gets promoted as a lifestyle amenity. In this witty exploration of one of America's most successful new bohemias, Chicago's Wicker Park--site of the hip film High Fidelity and launching pad of alt rock stars like Liz Phair--Lloyd shows that bohemia's new status is a result of broader social and economic transformations. Cities like Chicago that are trying to shift from the industrial to the postindustrial era no longer rely on smokestack industries. Rather, they crave "creative" industries like media, tourism, advertising, and design, and hence have a newfound tolerance for nonconformists. As Neo-Bohemia shows, bohemia's creatures of the night, flaunting thrift store duds, piercings, and tribal tattoos, are the perfect labor force for these new industries. They are very creative, yet willing to work odd hours on a freelance basis. And the success of Wicker Park has only attracted more aspiring artists ready to toil in the information and tourism sectors at relatively low wages.
Neo-Bohemia is essential reading for anyone trying to get a handle not just on the growing prominence of alternative and hipster culture in America, but on how cities are retooling to become players in the information age economy.
Customer Reviews:
Gentrification and the City.......2006-07-25
Fantastic book centering on the gentrification of Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Wicker Park, the once blight and gritty hood that attracted artists and other creatives due to cheap rents and proximity to the Loop, has become one of the hippest areas of the country by way of aspiring artists, rising musicians, and a healthy design commerce. "Neo-Bohemia" gives a somewhat detailed history of Wicker Park and insightful interviews with it's residents (not the yuppies thats have invaded the neighborhood) on their coined "bohemian" culture.
Beyond the history lesson, "Neo-Bohemia" explains how, in our postindustrial era, creative communities are viewed more positively and actually help to gentrify areas that were once avoided. Comparisons to NYC's Greenwich Village and SF's North Beach (along with Paris' Montparnasse and Montmartre) are made to better prove the point. Great read if you have any interest in gentrification and urban development. Only complaint is I felt that there was too much emphasis on the negative aspects of artists Vs. yuppies. I was hoping more for statistics, rehabs and major commerce associated with gentrifying areas.
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The Privilege of Poverty: Clare of Assisi, Agnes of Prague, and the Struggle for a Franciscan Rule for Women
Joan Mueller
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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Clare of Assisi: A Heart Full of Love
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Such is the Power of Love
ASIN: 0271028939 |
Book Description
Early in the thirteenth century a young woman named Clare was so moved by the teachings of Francis of Assisi that she renounced her possessions, vowing to live a life of radical poverty. Today Clare is remembered for her relationship with Francis, but her own dedication to poverty and her struggle to gain papal approval for a Franciscan Rule for women is a fascinating story that has not received the attention it deserves. In The Privilege of Poverty, Joan Mueller tells this story, and in so doing she reshapes our understanding of early Franciscan history.
Clare knew, as did Francis, that she needed a Rule to preserve the "privilege of poverty"--a papal exemption that gave monasteries of women permission not to rely on endowment income. Early Franciscan women gave their dowries to the poor and were as passionately holy and shrewdly political in this choice as were their male counterparts. Mueller shows the crucial role played in this by Agnes of Prague, one of Clare's closest collaborators. A Bohemian princess who declined an engagement to Emperor Frederick II in order to found a monastery of Poor Ladies in Prague, Agnes capitalized on the papal need for a political alliance with the kingdom of Bohemia to negotiate the privilege of poverty for her monastery and set up a hospital for the poor in Prague.
The efforts of Clare and Agnes ultimately paid off, as Pope Innocent IV approved a Franciscan Rule for women with the privilege of poverty at its core on Clare's deathbed in 1253. Only two years later, Clare was canonized, and the Poor Clares--as they came to be known--continue today as contemplative and active communities devoted to the same ideals that inspired Francis and Clare.
The Privilege of Poverty not only contributes new insight into Franciscan history but also redefines it. No longer can we view early Franciscanism as primarily a male story. Franciscan women were courted by their brothers and by the papacy for their essential contributions to the early Franciscan movement.
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- Thick and Beguiling.
- A must for any New Yorker
- A Glorious Yet Tragic Life of the Village
- 50 years of the Village's dynasty.
- Village-Sized Biographies
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Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960
Ross Wetzsteon
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0684869969 |
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New York's Greenwich Village, "the most significant square mile in American cultural history" and "home of half the talent and half the eccentricity in the country," is the subject of Ross Wetzsteon's Republic of Dreams, an enthusiastic and rigorous biography of place. From the Village sprung American socialism, gay liberation, the YMCA, the American Civil Liberties Union, The Reader's Digest, the phrase "I heard it through the grapevine," the Colt .45 revolver, and America's first night court, for starters. It was in the Village where Kahlil Gibran wrote The Prophet and the buffalo nickel was designed. Wetzsteon is primarily interested in the place between the years 1910 (when, he says, it became a "self-conscious bohemian and radical community") and 1960, when cultural boundaries "blurred" and the "hegemony of 'the normal'" disappeared. This is not a "walking tour" of famous hangouts so much as a portrait built on a chronological series of richly detailed biographies of Village denizens renowned, notorious, and relatively obscure, including Max Eastman, E.E. Cummings, Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists, a Who's Who of American feminists, Eugene O'Neill, and Mabel Dodge. Wetzsteon, who died in 1998, revels in the Village's inherent chaos, contradictions, and mutation, and never succumbs to "golden age" nostalgia. As his daughter writes in an afterword, "the Village is dead; long live the Village." Republic of Dreams, eminently readable, unflaggingly perceptive, and immaculately researched, is, arguably, the seminal study to date of America's most fertile literary, artistic, and political geographical dot. --H. O'Billovich
Book Description
A richly woven history of Greenwich Village's Golden Age and of the artists, rebels, and eccentrics who make the Village a cultural phenomenon. Ross Wetzsteon presents a vibrant portrait of the Village through the remarkable and often interrelated stories of its legendary residents, including Eugene O'Neill; Edna St. Vincent Millay; Dawn Powell; the fiery and passionate anarchist Emma Goldman; the pioneering advocate of birth control, Margaret Sanger; and the group of Abstract Expressionists including Jackson Pollock.
Customer Reviews:
Thick and Beguiling. .......2007-02-26
I have to give this 5 stars too simply because so much of it is useful and illuminating. I acquired it for the purposes of reading about Bohemia which is a mental state that has always been attractive to me. An added side benefit of Wetzsteon's approach, with its chapters that can easily stand alone, is that so many famous artists are thoroughly expounded upon within the spine (and cost) of a single book that it ends up saving you money. I picked up enough about Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Eugene O'Neill that their full biographies will remain on my Wish List for the unforeseeable future. What the author offers here is a shotgun blast of information concerning emblematic figures that made the village the village--or our own Left Bank--during a particular fifty year period. There's was a world not easily recreated and that's how it should be or else we'd all die of malnutrition and alcoholism. The writing is quite good and Wetzsteon managed to pack enough information into these pages where the book become more of an experience than a didactic history lesson.
A must for any New Yorker.......2007-01-11
or student of the history of NY in the 20th century. They were all here and lived within a mile of eachother.
A treasure.
A Glorious Yet Tragic Life of the Village.......2005-05-10
Ross Wetzsteon examines the remarkable life of a handful of distinctive writers and artists that made Greenwich Village for what it was - a refuge for the bohemians that came from all points of the United States from 1910-1960. REPUBLIC OF DREAMS tells the story of the core of writers that drifted in an out of the Village during its most creative and innovative period, and displays an intimate and intense portrait of the most vibrant time in literary and cultural history. Wetzsteon brings the Village alive with the numerous stories that offer a glimpse of the person behind the person, which presents each writer or artist as humanly as possible -- self-absorbed, narcissistic, and always striving to maintain marginality as a means to creativity in their insular middle class upbringing (568). He parallels the difficult and at times, the idiosyncratic experiences that each subject faced to their spontaneous creativity. Hauntingly, their lives mirrored the novels and poems that they wrote may have followed the moniker of "live hard and die young." It is unfortunate that this became true for writers, such as Hart Crane, e.e. cummings, Jackson Pollack, and Dylan Thomas. However, others lived over the age of 50 despite living with their insane demons -- John Gould, Djuna Barnes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay; while others lived the starving artist life - William Carlos Williams and the Eminent Villagers mentioned in chapters six and chapter seven.
REPUBLIC OF DREAMS contains and immense collection of stories that Wetzsteon painstakingly compiled and researched. It is unfortunate that it isn't a complete narrative, but comes close in spite of Wetzsteon's untimely death in 1998, which is mentioned in the Afterword. This could have been volume one of a two volume set due to the enormous content of the book, 619 (569 of narrative) pages. The period in which he presents spans 50 years of Village life, and he does not cover every character that lived within this vicious circle of unrestrained eccentricity and vitality. Despite the number of pages, that should not discount anyone from exploring this important part of Americana. No one can say that these inhabitants of the Village lived a lackluster life, but one that overflowed with great extremity.
50 years of the Village's dynasty........2004-07-03
Way back when America was still a conglomeration of British colonies, Greenwich Village was settled by the rich and merchant class of lower Manhattan as an escape from the recurring ravages of yellow fever and cholera. For this reason Greenwich Village was, essentially, never really mapped out; never really settled in accordance to any public plan. Of course, there was no grid plan either. Perhaps this haphazard beginning is what gave the area its combined flavor of anarchy and refinement. Where else would you find a Washington Square Park whose north end was the home to upper or, at least, bourgiose families, and whose south end was a magnet for immigrants not so rich?
Focusing on what was arguably the Village's heydays, the 50 years from 1910 to 1950, the late Ross Wetzsteon reveals to us a neighborhood as provincial and insular as any New England town in one way, and as forward-looking and worldly in another. REPUBLIC OF DREAMS is a look at the artists and writers, activists and thinkers, who populated this amazing world (e.g. Gould, Pollack, O'Neill, Reed, Sinclair). And, as Wetzsteon demonstrates, the Village sort of became an image for the entire world on the verge of modernism.
Prof. Wetzsteon's style is learned and academic, but far from stuffy or dull. And he peppers the book with anecdotes that are witty and tragic. It is a shame that Prof. Wetzsteon has been taken from us, but at least his REPUBLIC OF DREAMS will be with us for a long while.
Village-Sized Biographies.......2002-09-29
The late Ross Westzsteon had crammed this big book with a wonderful amount of love and research and it shows on every page. Republic of Dreams (Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960) consists of mini-biographies for chapters as it is not so much a history of the Village as it is a history of the significant people who made the Village their home, sometimes briefly and sometime for life. The idea is presented that the Village was only truly the Village as it exists in lore in the 1910s. Three-quarters of the book is devoted to this period and this is the funniest, most touching and most fascinating part of the book. All of the lives covered in this first period intersect creating a true picture of a community of artists, actors, writers, labour leaders, society matrons, anarchists and hangers-on that create a unified whole in the book. The last quarter of the book (covering the next forty years) feels a little uncooked, while still being interesting. This book is an incredible place to spend a number of hours and a great chance to meet the people who made the Village the Village.
Customer Reviews:
Needs to be updated........2007-08-31
I bought this book back in 1999. It was a year before the infamous Saatchi exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. I think this book gives too much praise and favoratism to the British artists featured inside. It doesn't give any information on their flaws, and you need to know the artists' flaws in order to understand their work.
British art has been rising in prestige in the last decade, and this book should be updated for a new edition. It should also include American reactions to the Brooklyn Museum show in 2000, plus the changes in the artists' styles.
Corr!.......2000-06-21
Matthew Collings is extremely aware of the zeitgeist. His criticisms can be so accurate that it hurts. To get a broad overview on the phenomena of Brit Art I really can't reccommend it enough.
Lightweight but fun.......1999-12-25
The chattiness is fine. I haven't seen Collings on television but I can imagine how he'd be entertaining there. I wondered about his motives a few times when Collings' own paintings showed up deep in the background of photos -- obviously he's so deep in this world that he may have some agendas. But the overall impression is certainly friendly and the few artists he dismisses are big enough to take it. It's a fun book you can read in a couple of hours. The only problem then is remembering any of what's been said.
EXCELLENT VISUALLY, INCREDIBLY SELF-STROKING OTHERWISE........1999-10-16
I recommend this for the photos, almost completely. And I do not mean the cover photo where the author, Matthew Collings, has chosen to put a huge picture of himself with an eye-trapping bullseye painting behind his head. This mystified me, till I read the incredibly disorganized, ungrammatical account Collings writes, really more of a reminiscence than a history. Along the way he attacks the brilliant R.B. Kitaj and the rest of the School of London(including those such as Bacon and Freud) as "a bunch of oldsters exhibiting their charcoal life drawings and stuff." Incisive commentary that. Collings must make Robert Hughes tremble. Basically this is one huge self-promotional book, but generously illustrated with works of Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Tracey Emin and others from the infamous and brilliant SENSATION show, and contains, in spite of its obnoxiously chatty style, many interesting anecdotes about the London art world. One can almost piece it together despite the annoying narrator. The current London art scene is beautifully dangerous and the SENSATION Show(and I hope its catalog goes into print in the US soon)may be, in the end, as influential as the 1913 Armory Show, so it deserves study. Art needed back some kind of edge. The book is an OK intro to the subject and the photos alone justify purchase.
My only other complaint is the constant recurrence of those completely nightmarish perversions of conceptual art, the "living sculptures"(or charlatans, as I like to call them) Gilbert and George, laced oddly throughout the book for no apparent reason. What do they do? In a nutshell, they go about and place themselves in context, in photos or live. Why they think they're interesting wherever they're placed, or make a place interesting by their presence, is beyond me, but they've apparently made a great deal of loot from this. Go figure. John Roberson
Nah. It's not really all that good........1999-07-14
I'd recommend something with a bit more... Marc Quinn in it
Average customer rating:
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Gothic art in Bohemia and Moravia;
Albert Kutal
Manufacturer: Hamlyn
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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Gothic
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ASIN: 0600016587 |
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- The Stuart Queen Elizabeth
- The story of "Europe's grandmother"
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The Winter Queen: Elizabeth of Bohemia
Carol Oman
Manufacturer: Phoenix Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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General
| British
| Historical
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General
| Historical
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Elizabeth I
| Royalty
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Women
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Elizabeth I
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Czech Republic
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ASIN: 1842120573 |
Book Description
With wonderful accounts of the Shakespearean England from her youth to Restoration England to which she returned, this is the rags-to-riches story of Elizabeth of Bohemia. "It is as easy to read and absorbing as a novel, and has the advantage of scholarly documentation."--Times Literary Supplement.
Customer Reviews:
The Stuart Queen Elizabeth.......2002-10-28
Recent English royal biographies, perhaps following the success of Fraser's "Mary Queen of Scots," remain fixated on the Tudor era, Elizabeth I in particular, with less frequent mention of Mary Tudor or Mary Stuart, and/or perhaps Henry's wives. The romance of the Stuart queens, however, didn't end with Mary Queen of Scots - it reached its apogee with her grandchild, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia. Married to the hapless Frederick, Elector Palatine, in 1619 she and her young family were brought to Prague as the newly elected (and Protestant) King and Queen following the deposition (defenestration, to be exact) of the previous Catholic regime. In power for little more than a few weeks, they were chased back into Germany after the disastrous Battle of the White Mountain, following which Elizabeth languished in exile in Holland for the best part of the next 40 years. Oran's 1930s bio is the standard work on Elizabeth - she pays particular attention to the life of a woman in the 17th century European court: hobbies, clothes, sports and the ubiquitous letter-writing. Elizabeth turned the damsel-in-distress cliche on its head, being a furious rider and outdoorswoman as well as a supple European politician and skilled linguist. Despite competition with the other women in the Stuart family (e.g., Charles I's and II's respective wives), it was Elizabeth's genes that won out - under the Act of Succession, every English monarch since 1713 has been required to prove an ancestral link to the Winter Queen. Classic biography and a useful bridge between Antonia Fraser's four Stuart books (Mary/James I/Gunpowder Plot/Royal Charles) and C.V. Wedgwood's numerous 17th century histories (e.g. Thirty Years War, Montrose).
The story of "Europe's grandmother".......2002-03-27
Elizabeth, the daughter of King James VI of Scotland and I of England, was widely acclaimed as the most beautiful princess in Europe. Her hand was sought by many, but James selected the Protestant prince of a small German state, Frederick of the Palatine, to counterbalance the intended match of his eldest son with the Catholic royal daughter of either France or Spain. It would prove to be a true love match, as well as a political disaster.
This history follows the eventful life and tumultous times of Elizabeth of Bohemia, known as the Winter Queen for the brief duration of her husband's reign. The research is solid, the writing scholarly yet engagingly annecdotal. The narrative is particularly strong: settings are described with unusual care and color, and telling bits of cultural detail help evoke a sense of time and place.
The relationships between Elizabeth and her many family members are vividly drawn. Most poignant among these were her strong sibling attachment to her oldest brother Henry, her passionate but disappointing marriage to the moody Frederick, and the sense of betrayal she must have suffered when her father all but abandoned her. She survived war and endured exile -- not only from Bohemia and her husband's hereditary Palatine, but also from England. Neither James nor his successor Charles I acknowledged her as a queen, or permitted her to return to England.
Students of history might be interested in Elizabeth's descendents, which, in 1938, included the ruling sovereigns of Denmark, Great Britain, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Roumania, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Italy. By any measure, this is an impressive family saga!
Books:
- The Cruising Guide to the New England Coast: Including the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, and the Coast of New Brunswick, Twelfth Edition
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day
- The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria
- The Language of Threads: A Novel
- The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
- The Organic Food Guide: How to Shop Smarter and Eat Healthier
- The Orkney Scroll
- The Pilgrim's Guide to Santiago De Compostela
- The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II
- The Rough Guide to Southwest USA, 3rd Edition
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