I Would Prefer Not To

I Would Prefer Not To PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Pushkin Collection
ISBN: 1782277471
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A new selection of Melville's darkest and most enthralling stories in a beautiful Pushkin Collection edition Includes "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno" and "The Lightning-Rod Man" A lawyer hires a new copyist, only to be met with stubborn, confounding resistance. A nameless guide discovers hidden worlds of luxury and bleak exploitation. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, an American trader's cheerful outlook is repeatedly shadowed by paralyzing unease. In these stories of the surreal mundanity of office life and obscure tensions at sea, Melville's darkly modern sensibility plunges us into a world of irony and mystery, where nothing is as it first appears.

I Would Prefer Not To

I Would Prefer Not To PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Pushkin Collection
ISBN: 1782277471
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A new selection of Melville's darkest and most enthralling stories in a beautiful Pushkin Collection edition Includes "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "Benito Cereno" and "The Lightning-Rod Man" A lawyer hires a new copyist, only to be met with stubborn, confounding resistance. A nameless guide discovers hidden worlds of luxury and bleak exploitation. After boarding a beleaguered Spanish slave ship, an American trader's cheerful outlook is repeatedly shadowed by paralyzing unease. In these stories of the surreal mundanity of office life and obscure tensions at sea, Melville's darkly modern sensibility plunges us into a world of irony and mystery, where nothing is as it first appears.

Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bartleby, the Scrivener PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Xist Publishing
ISBN: 1623958784
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by Herman Melville about a strange man with a strange phrase: "I would prefer not to." This American short story is now one of the most famous of American short stories and has been adapted into many variations. This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it. Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes

The Parallax View

The Parallax View PDF Author: Slavoj Zizek
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262265184
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
In Žižek's long-awaited magnum opus, he theorizes the "parallax gap" in the ontological, the scientific, and the political—and rehabilitates dialectical materialism. The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Žižek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Žižek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism. Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Žižek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences (according to which "nobody is home" in the skull, just stacks of brain meat—a condition Žižek calls "the unbearable lightness of being no one"); and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Žižek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics—including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism. The Parallax View not only expands Žižek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains (notably cognitive brain sciences) but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes.

Bartleby & Co

Bartleby & Co PDF Author: Enrique Vila-Matas
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216982
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Tells the story of a hunchback who is a failed writer that has no luck with women. He is a self-described "Bartleby", named after the Herman Melville character; someone who, when asked to reveal information about themselves, will respond that they "would prefer not to."

The Lightning-Rod Man

The Lightning-Rod Man PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443435074
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
When an unnamed narrator opens his door to a lightning-rod salesman, the two become involved in a philosophical discussion about faith and the will of God. The salesman claims that the copper rod will protect its owner from the very lightning that the narrator believes to be an act of God. As they argue, and the narrator laughs off the explanations, the salesman becomes increasingly and violently angry. The allegorical nature of Herman Melville’s tale explores the ideas of good and evil, and faith in God before faith in fear. This story was included as part of Melville’s collection The Piazza Tales. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

The Piazza Tales

The Piazza Tales PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
"With fairest flowers, Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele-" When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house, which had no piazza-a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combining the coziness of in-doors with the freedom of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect your thermometer there, but the country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbs hill or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sun-burnt painters painting there. A very paradise of painters. The circle of the stars cut by the circle of the mountains. At least, so looks it from the house; though, once upon the mountains, no circle of them can you see. Had the site been chosen five rods off, this charmed ring would not have been. The house is old. Seventy years since, from the heart of the Hearth Stone Hills, they quarried the Kaaba, or Holy Stone, to which, each Thanksgiving, the social pilgrims used to come. So long ago, that, in digging for the foundation, the workmen used both spade and axe, fighting the Troglodytes of those subterranean parts-sturdy roots of a sturdy wood, encamped upon what is now a long land-slide of sleeping meadow, sloping away off from my poppy-bed. Of that knit wood, but one survivor stands-an elm, lonely through steadfastness.

Great Short Works of Herman Melville

Great Short Works of Herman Melville PDF Author: Herman Melville
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 006176079X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Billy Budd, Sailor and Bartleby, the Scrivener are two of the most revered shorter works of fiction in history. Here, they are collected along with 19 other stories in a beautifully redesigned collection that represents the best short work of an American master.As Warner Berthoff writes in his introduction to this volume, "It is hard to think of a major novelist or storyteller who is not also a first-rate entertainer . . . a master, according to choice, of high comedy, of one or another robust species of expressive humour, or of some special variety of the preposterous, the grotesque, the absurd. And Melville, certainly, is no exception. A kind of vigorous supervisory humour is his natural idiom as a writer, and one particular attraction of his shorter work is the fresh further display it offers of this prime element in his literary character."

The Demon of Writing

The Demon of Writing PDF Author: Ben Kafka
Publisher: Zone Books
ISBN: 194213035X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Since the middle of the eighteenth century, political thinkers of all kinds — radical and reactionary, professional and amateur — have been complaining about “bureaucracy.” But what, exactly, is all this complaining about? The Demon of Writing is a critical history and theory of one of the most ubiquitous, least understood forms of media: paperwork. States rely on records to tax and spend, protect and serve, discipline and punish. But time and again this paperwork proves to be unreliable. Examining episodes from the story of a clerk who lost his job and then his mind in the French Revolution to Roland Barthes’s brief stint as a university administrator, the book reveals the powers, failures, and even pleasures of paperwork. Many of its complexities, the book argues, have been obscured by the comic-paranoid style that characterizes so many of our criticisms of bureaucracy. At the same time, the book outlines a new theory of what Marx called the “bureaucratic medium.” Returning first to Marx, then to Freud, The Demon of Writing argues that this theory of paperwork must be attentive to both praxis and parapraxis.

The Almost Nearly Perfect People

The Almost Nearly Perfect People PDF Author: Michael Booth
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250061970
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The Christian Science Monitor's #1 Best Book of the Year A witty, informative, and popular travelogue about the Scandinavian countries and how they may not be as happy or as perfect as we assume, “The Almost Nearly Perfect People offers up the ideal mixture of intriguing and revealing facts” (Laura Miller, Salon). Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than ten years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely book he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another. Why are the Danes so happy, despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People Michael Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades. They may very well be almost nearly perfect, but it isn’t easy being Scandinavian.

The Great Refusal

The Great Refusal PDF Author: Andrew Lamas
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439913048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Herbert Marcuse examined the subjective and material conditions of radical social change and developed the "Great Refusal," a radical concept of "the protest against that which is." The editors and contributors to the exciting new volume The Great Refusal provide an analysis of contemporary social movements around the world with particular reference to Marcuse's revolutionary concept. The book also engages-and puts Marcuse in critical dialogue with-major theorists including Slavoj Žižek and Michel Foucault, among others. The chapters in this book analyze different elements and locations of the contemporary wave of struggle, drawing on the work and vision of Marcuse in order to reveal, with a historical perspective, the present moment of resistance. Essays seek to understand recent uprisings-such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement-in the context of Marcuse's powerful conceptual apparatus. The Great Refusal also charts contemporary social movements against global warming, mass incarceration, police brutality, white supremacy, militarization, technological development, and more, to provide insights that advance our understanding of resistance today. Contributors include: Kevin B. Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Joan Braune, Jenny Chan, Angela Y. Davis, Arnold L. Farr, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Forman, Christian Fuchs, Stefan Gandler, Christian Garland, Toorjo Ghose, Imaculada Kangussu, George Katsiaficas, Douglas Kellner, Sarah Lynn Kleeb, Filip Kovacevic, Lauren Langman, Heather Love, Peter Marcuse, Martin J. Beck Matuštík, Russell Rockwell, AK Thompson, Marcelo Vieta, and the editors.