The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 1: Family Letters, 1905-1931

Book Description

The first of a three volume collection of the letters of C.S. Lewis, this volume contains letters from Lewis’s boyhood, his army days in World War I and his early academic life at Oxford. From his declared atheism at age 16 to his budding friendship with Tolkein during his days at Oxford, these letters set the stage for the Lewis’s influential life and writings.

Customer Reviews:

We Don't Write Letters Anymore..........2006-12-10

I should begin this review with an important stipulation: I haven't finished the book yet. I am slightly over halfway done -- about 600 pages into it.

That said, I think I have a pretty good grasp of the course this first volume is taking. And it's a good one. I am thoroughly enjoying this detailed romp through C.S. Lewis's early life, though I must join with a previous reviewer in saying that I do feel a bit guilty reading through his personal papers.

You have to attack this book with the right mindset. It's not a novel, an action adventure story or even a biography. It's simply the unedited, honest ramblings of a man growing up in the early 20th century.

This first volume does contain a lot of excruciating details that one might call mundane. In many of the letters, Lewis is doing nothing more than asking his father for money, describing the binding of a new book he has recently purchased or apologizing for taking so long to write.

But at the same time, the anthology is chock full of minute details that shed infinite light on what life was like at the dawn of the 20th century. The very idea that people would write so many (and so lengthy) letters at all seems foreign to us now in the age of e-mails and instant messages. Imagine growing up in a time when you were expected, not only to learn Greek and Latin, but also to speak and read it fluently. I used to think I was an intellectual for having read The Iliad and The Odyssey in their English translations. Lewis (and likely his contemporaries) seemed to scoff at anyone who would read anything other than the Greek versions. It was a different time.

The other reason this book is appealing is that it enables you to trace a seismic shift in Lewis's worldview. Smattered among the grocery lists, the book reviews and the complaints about his father are honest observations about the universe itself. These doses of philosophy come from Lewis unedited and unexpected -- a sentence or paragraph in between the requests for new socks and a comment on the weather.

By the time he entered his teenage years, Lewis was a staunch athiest. In fact, he sometimes chides his childhood compatriot Arthur Greeves for his belief in Christianity. On several occasions he mockingly calls down the anger of God upon himself and blasts Christianity in favor of the older religions, such as Greek mythology.

But slowly, we see Lewis's atheism whittled down until, by the end of Volume One, he has converted to Christianity. Being a believer myself, I am always amazed to see the contrast between a person before and after they accept Christ. This collection of Lewis's letters provide a window into the "before". Volumes Two and Three will no doubt give us the "after".

Extremely interesting in parts, rather boring in others.......2006-03-06

My opinion of this book is rather similar to the previous reviewer's. This book provides an extraordinary glimpse into the pre-Christian life of the giant of the faith, C. S. Lewis. There are many, many letters which are extremely interesting, and you can see Lewis' thought developing as the years pass in the book. On the other hand, there are also many letters which have no relevance to Lewis' thought at all and are, as far as I can tell, completely useless to anyone who is not some kind of Lewis fanatic or something (who really wants to read a letter about what groceries Lewis needs that week?). Hooper could really have done a better job at choosing what to weed out, and some of the letters he chose to retain are doing nothing but taking up space in the book and frustrating readers who are looking for gems in this book.

One of the best parts of the book is that in a good portion of his letters Lewis writes about books that he is reading at the time. I loved reading about what Lewis thought of the books he was reading, and seeing the vast number of books that Lewis was reading was what inspired me to start reading the classics myself, so I owe a great debt to this book (as well as the 2nd volume, which I read at the same time).

As to the previous reviewers question about how to read through this book, I just read sraight through. It was tough, but I wanted to see Lewis' thoughts develop, which is hard to do if you take the "island hopping" approach. It may be a tough read, but it is definitely worth it.

Overall grade: A-

Intermittently interesting. .......2005-01-02

I feel a bit guilty reading this book. Since I "discovered" Lewis thirty years ago in a friend's basement in Alaska, his ideas, stories, logic, and humor have more than influenced me, they have become part of the furniture of my mind. Anyone who knows Lewis well, knows how little he would have liked having his mail read by snoopy Americans. Oh, well, where he is now, they can afford to be forgiving.

This volume is put together well. Walter Hooper is both thorough and judicious in his editing; the notes he adds at the bottom of the page are often helpful. I find myself wondering how in the world he tracked down some of these sources. The book is also physically attractive, as Lewis would have appreciated.

Most of the letters in this first volume are to one of three people: Arthur Greeves, Lewis' "first friend," his father, and his brother Warren. Especially with Arthur, who seems to get the most, the topic is usually books and the ideas contained in them, romance (in the literary sense, not sex, which is treated with a detached voyerism), philosophy, art and music, natural beauty. The "real world" also intrudes (school, war, college, a job) from time to time. Not all of this is interesting to me; often he's talking about subjects I know nothing about, in a way that sheds little light on them.

But from an early age, Lewis has already become a precise and perceptive writer, with wide-ranging curiosity. So while the material is not equally interesting, and some could have been excluded -- are the sexual fantasies of two post-adolescents really our business? -- I am finding it intermittently interesting to look behind the screen, and grapple with this new motherload of unsifted Lewisiana. But I wouldn't recommend volume one to anyone who doesn't (a) have a strong interest in Lewis AND (b) love Western literature. Volume two is broader in scope and correspondents.

While volume two is easier to read right through, I'm not sure I have found the right way to do the first volume yet. Straight reading would be like hacking a road through the Peruvian jungle. I have tried the "island hopping" method of General McCarthur, and the "pick up and read" method of Augustine . . . Compared to volume 2, this one may get more shelf time. But I am glad to have it, and will leaf through it from time to time. The paperbacks and garage sale hand-me-downs on my shelf seem flattered by such gentile company; though perhaps they worry that property taxes will now go up.

Collected Letters - Volume 1, Family Letters 1905-1931

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Collected Letters - Volume 1, Family Letters 1905-1931
C. S. Lewis
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000O8SSU2

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Family Letters, 1905-1931 (Vol. 1); Books, Broadcasts and the War 1931 - 1949 (Volume 2)

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The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis: Family Letters, 1905-1931 (Vol. 1); Books, Broadcasts and the War 1931 - 1949 (Volume 2)

Manufacturer: Harper San Francisco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H0Q8FY

Book Description

Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker is a collection of essays, photographs, personal statements, and reminiscences about the celebrated avant-garde filmmaker who died in 2003. The director of nearly four hundred short films, including Dog Star Man, Parts I-IV, and the Roman Numeral Series, Brakhage is widely recognized as one of the great artists of the medium. His shorts eschewed traditional narrative structure, and his innovations in fast cutting, hand-held camerawork, and multiple superimpositions created an unprecedentedly rich texture of images that provided the vocabulary for the explosion of independent filmmaking in the 1960s.

Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker chronicles both the director's personal and formal development. The essays in this book—by historians, filmmakers, and other artists—assess Brakhage's contributions to the aesthetic and political history of filmmaking, from his emergence on the film scene and the establishment of his reputation, to the early-1980s. The result is a remarkable tribute to this lyrical, visionary artist.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent service!.......2007-01-04

I received exactly the book I ordered. It came quickly, as advertised. I am very satisfied.

From a Wide Angle.......2006-10-09

What is the nature of art? What is its bottom line? At first when sent this book I was skeptical, thinking it would be a hagiography of a genuinely difficult artist about whom there are only shades of grey. But editor David E. James anticipated me there, and in his beautifully delineated preface goes right to the heart of the matter, the precipitous decline of Brakhage's reputation, a drop nearly unparalleled in contemporary art. Was he, as Annette Michelson or P. Adams Sitney once claimed, the sort of genius artist for whom whole eras used to be named? A filmmaker who combined a sincerity and authenticity with a true avant-garde spirit and actual hardcore discoveries that forever changed the medium? Or was he what his latterday rep suggested, a driven, masculinist obsessive who was able to hide behind patriarchy the failures of an overdetermined use rule?

James makes it all sound so obvious, and yet he then comes around and suggests that even the haters might find something to cheer about with a new survey of Brakhage's voluminous output. (400 films, of which it was sometimes said that even Brakhage himself had only seen maybe three quarters of them.) Completists will sigh that James' compilation is too meager to do him justice, just as they balked at the recent Criterion release of 27 films, with far too many from the last 15 years of his life with those wild hand-painted strips of film. And not even women writing about Brakhage, but that's one of the issues in the first place, isn't it, and this book merely reflects that. Even so, Carolee Schneeeman and (especially) Abigail Child contribute two of the most cogent essays here. There are a few "poetic" pieces written by Brakhage's contemporaries, such as the essays by Bruce Baillie and Chuck Strand, that not even their mothers could love.

As James points out, there are few notable artists about whom so little biographical information is available. I vote for James himself to give it a go. Not only does his introduction represent and condense a whale's load of original research, but one of his own pieces, "Amateurs in an Industry Town" (on Warhol and Brakhage wrestling with Los Angeles both as metropolis and conceptual freedomland), is a brilliant and focussed article that sheds light not only on the supposed duality between the two filmmakers, but on their mutual interests and fellowship.

Film at Wit's End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers

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Film at Wit's End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers
Stan Brakhage
Manufacturer: McPherson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Direction & Production | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 092970116X

Book Description

Of all art forms, filmmaking is the one most taken for granted: no sooner is an artistic or technical advance made than its salient features are employed in the harness of commerce. Yet, innovation is almost always the province of individual expression. Film at Wit's End presents eight artists who have electrified American independent cinema across four decades: James Broughton, Bruce Conner, Maya Deren, Jerome Hill, Ken Jacobs, Christopher MacLaine, Marie Menken, and Sidney Peterson. Each of these filmmakers' lives and work is brought into sharp focus as we enter the art scenes of New York and San Francisco during times of ferment and controversy. Film at Wit's End tells marvelous tales of serendipitous encounters, of life lived at the edge of social disapproval, and of the insistent development of an art form.

Telling Time: Essays of a Visionary Filmmaker

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Enjoy this collection not just for its film insights, but for its reflections on modern culture

Telling Time: Essays of a Visionary Filmmaker
Stan Brakhage
Manufacturer: Documentext
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

History & Criticism | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Film-Making

ASIN: 0929701690

Product Description

Throughout a career spanning half a century, Stan Brakhagethe foremost experimental filmmaker in America, and perhaps the worldwrote controversial essays on the art of film and its intersections with poetry, music, dance, and painting. Published in small circulation literary and arts journals, they were gathered later into such books as Metaphors on Vision and Film at Wit's End. Beginning in 1989, and for a decade thereafter, Brakhage wrote the essays in Telling Time as an occasional column for Musicworks, a Toronto quarterly. Ostensibly about the relation of film to music, they soon enlarged to explore primary concerns beyond film, including Brakhage's aesthetic theories based on the phenomenology of human cognition. In these essays he is as brilliant discussing Gertrude Stein or romantic love as he is on child psychology, astronomy, and physiology, all the while teasing out vital correspondences between the arts, and upending conventional ideas of how we perceive. His investigations of other artists are models of sympathetic intuition and generosity. Above all, he shares his theories, discoveries and understandings in the spirit of establishing a groundwork for many varieties of human liberation. His prose is filled with flashes of insight, elaborated metaphors, playful elisions, shorthand puns and neologisms, personal digressions, surprising epiphanies, leaps of faith, affronts to authority. He appeals to the imagination, and invites us to a more profound and personal experience of art.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoy this collection not just for its film insights, but for its reflections on modern culture.......2006-06-23

If you recognize the name of author Stan Brakhage, you must know experimental films: his is one of the biggest names in experimental filmmaking in America and his controversial essays on film and its multimedia blends have been published in small literary and arts journals and, later, into books. TELLING TIME: ESSAYS OF A VISIONARY FILMMAKER gathers essays written as an occasional column for the Toronto quarterly Musicworks: they began as discussions of film's relationships with music, but soon explored more philosophical routes. Enjoy this collection not just for its film insights, but for its reflections on modern culture.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Stan Brakhage (Filmmakers filming monograph)

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Stan Brakhage (Filmmakers filming monograph)
Marie Nesthus
Manufacturer: Walker Art Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B0006Y3XS6

Book Description

These are stories of family life told with a realism large enough to accommodate illusion, filled with characters whose inner lives are waiting in the shadows about to trip up the characters in their attempts to make sense of things. Most of these stories are about children and their parents. Sme of the children are grownups taking care of their elders; others are chronologically juvenile. At the turning point of youth to age, of singleness to marriage, they fight their way out of the webs of family and self with a degree of success equal finally to their gift for belief.

Customer Reviews:

A master portrait of childhood and paradoxes of parenthood.......2001-07-04

Pronoun Music is an impressive anthology of twelve Richard Cohen short stories about children and their parents across a chronological spectrum of family evolution. A master portrait of childhood and the paradoxes of parenthood, the stories comprising this entertaining and insightful collection include: Theme From a Summer Place; Cousin Gemma; On the Flight Path; Putting Up Signs; Good with Girls; What Makes You You; Possible Future Stepmother; Delicate Destinies; Refuge; Uncle Wolfie; Those Kooks; and Dream Group Forming. Pronoun Music is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys and appreciates a well crafted story showcasing the kaleidoscopic relationships between children and their parents -- at any age.

Book Description

Sudoku continues to take the world by storm! This book of more than 200 all-new sudoku puzzles will satisfy the legions of fans who have made sudoku the latest puzzle craze. Each puzzle contains a grid of nine rows by nine, split into nine boxes of nine squares each. The aim is to fill in the grid so that the digits 1 to 9 appear once in every row, every column, and every box. While the rules are simple, the solution can be quite complex. These puzzles offer hours of stimulating entertainment for sudoku fiends of all levels, from beginner to advanced, as well as an answer key in the back of the book.

Customer Reviews:

Far too easy, even for beginners! Skip it and look elsewhere........2006-09-03

After purchasing and being very impressed with one of Tammy Seto's other collections, simply entitled "Sudoku" (same format as this book, but has a blue/green cover instead), "Sudoke Fever" was very, very disappointing. All the puzzles in this book, and I mean ALL, are insanely easy. I have never seen a collection of sudoku puzzles that start you off with so many numbers already filled in, and there is no discernable difference in difficulty between "easy" puzzles and those denoted as hard. No advanced logic whatsoever is needed to solve these, and they would be patronizing even for a rank beginner (this was, in fact, only the second sudoku book I'd ever purchased - Seto's other collection being the first - and I grew bored almost immediately). The nice thing about the book is that the grids are large, so there is room to pencil in options and notes, but ironically you won't need to pencil in anything to solve the puzzles in this one. All the answers are also provided in the back, but again, it's unlikely you'd need to check them. I simply cannot recommend this collection to anyone. However, I do very highly recommend Seto's other book, which I mentioned at the beginning (ISBN: 0517228270).

Book Description

When the head of Columbia Pictures, David Begelman, got caught forging Cliff Robertson's name on a $10,000 check, it seemed, at first, like a simple case of embezzlement. It wasn't. The incident was the tip of the iceberg, the first hint of a scandal that shook Hollywood and rattled Wall Street. Soon powerful studio executives were engulfed in controversy; careers derailed; reputations died; and a ruthless, take-no-prisoners corporate power struggle for the world-famous Hollywood dream factory began.

First published in 1982, this now classic story of greed and lies in Tinseltown appears here with a stunning final chapter on Begelman's post-Columbia career as he continued to dazzle and defraud . . . until his last hours in a Hollywood hotel room, where his story dramatically and poignantly would end.

Customer Reviews:

The Ultimate Study in Greed and Hubris.......2007-04-05

I bought this book when it first came out and have reread it every year or so. Tends to be a bit long and sometimes slow, but it's great. Buy a used copy, or check at the library.

Being from the Washington D.C. area I kept constantly asking why someone didn't leak this to the press and blow the whole compiristy.

The only comparable book is "The Great Salad Oil Swindle"

Domino Effect.......2004-04-08

David Begelman, powerful head of a studio thinks he is above the law, until an actor by the name of Cliff Robertson exposes him. This book is a well written tale of immorality in a town known for it's lack of scruples. Hollywood insiders should not be surprised at this tale, but I was. The check Begelman forged was for a small amount. The man made more than that in a month. The book exposes the reasons why a man who had it all, would choose to commit such a crime and fall from grace. I was quite disappointed by Robertson's treatment by Hollywood's hierarchy when he was the victim, not Begelman. But it proves just how far studios will go to protect the bottom line. I read this book when it was first published years ago and I'm reading it again. The list of books I will read more than once is a short one. I highly recommend it.

Good Coverage of Major Scandal!.......2003-11-30

This book gives details of David Begelman the head man at
Columbia Pictures getting caught forging Cliff Robertson's name
on a check. Robertson had won an Oscar for his role in Charly.
As a result of Begelman getting caught Roberetson would suffer
mightily at the hands of the powerful in Hollywood.Cliff Robertson wound up being blacklisted as a result of this scandal.This scandal would send shockwaves from Hollywood to
Wall Street.You are given a complete coverage of this event in
this excellent book.You are given good coverage of some of the
individuals who were involved in this scandal.David Begelman's demise is also given coverage in this book.This is an excellent book on this event. Read it. You will not be dissapointed.

Cliff Robertson is the true star of this story........1998-06-06

David Begelman would never have been exposed as the crook he was without the dogged, principled determination of Cliff Robertson to get to the bottom of corruption at the top levels of Hollywood. This excellent book documents Robertson's heroic efforts to get at the truth -- for which he was blackballed by the Hollywood establishment for years. Cliff once said to me: "Of all the things in my life I'm proud of -- if I'm proud at all -- it's not winning the best actor Oscar or Emmy; it's my part in bringing down that crook Begelman."

But perhaps the book is most valuable for its exposure of the top echelon of Hollywood -- people with lots of money and no taste; people who know nothing whatever about movies. And could care less. I hope this book is reprinted soon. It is timeless.

A fascinating study of the real powers of Tinseltown........1997-11-27

First things first. This book only gets an "8" becuase I realize some people could care less about studio executives in Hollywood(unless their name is Julia Phillips or Steven Speilberg, both of whom make appearences in the book) but it truly is a ten. It is truly an amazing tale: what starts out as a theft of less then a $100, 000 becomes a battle for corporate power. David Begelman, the man behind the scandal, isn't even the main character of the book. It's Alan Hirschfield trying, desperately, to do the responible business decisions he was hired to do and is one of only a few major players in this detailed history to remain a completely sympathetic person by story's end. Indecent Exposure is truly is one of great true life American Dramas I have ever read. (Review by Michael Goodman)

Indecent Exposure - A True Story Of Hollywood And Wall Street

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Indecent Exposure - A True Story Of Hollywood And Wall Street
David Mcclintick
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IWZMBW

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Indecent Exposure: A True Story of Hollywood and Wall Street
David McClintick
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NVNYEU

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