The Elementary Particles

The Elementary Particles PDF Author: Michel Houellebecq
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375727019
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

The Elementary Particles

The Elementary Particles PDF Author: Michel Houellebecq
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375727019
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq PDF Author: Douglas Morrey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1846318610
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Michel Houellebecq is one of the most successful and controversial contemporary French novelists. Translated worldwide, with three film adaptations of his works, he has also been at the center of a host of media scandals in France. In this book, Douglas Morrey examines Houellebecq's stark representation of humanity—a terminal state of decadence and decline ripe for replacement by a posthuman successor—looking at the global significance of his visions at the same time that he situates them in the contexts of French literature, culture, and society.

In Search of Reality

In Search of Reality PDF Author: B. D'Espagnat
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642870503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
When I take up a new book I always read its conclusions first. For I have discovered that even difficult books have conclusions that are easy to read and that give a first idea of their content. Of course, I expect my readers to do this also! Indeed, the present book offers them an opportunity for generalizing the method. After having gone over chapter 14 they should preferably look through chapters 5, 2, 13 and 10, or at least some of these (in this or in other orders), before engaging into any thorough reading. The point is that-at appropriate places in other chapters-the reader will find proofs; and, as we all know, all the proofs that are worth something are unavoidably ponderous. Of course, it is good to have them but, again, the most suitable procedure not to lose interest in their development is, I think, to first provisionally grant their conclusions,. in order to see where they lead us to. Then, to study the proofs once we have been convinced that the goal is worth some effort. This is the reason why I suggest that at least chapters 4 and 11 should, on a first reading, be skipped, at any rate, by the "poets"! The problem, a new approach of which is described in chapter 4, did not come to light, at least in its present form, before 1964. The first experi mental investigations bearing on it date back from the seventies.

Pathos, Poetry and Politics in Michel Houellebecq's Fiction

Pathos, Poetry and Politics in Michel Houellebecq's Fiction PDF Author: Russell Williams
Publisher: Brill
ISBN: 9789004416895
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Pathos, Poetry and Politics, Russell Williams examines the literary style in the work of Michel Houellebecq. This book underlines the extent to which the author's notorious provocations are key to the texture of his novels.

Veiled Reality

Veiled Reality PDF Author: Bernard D'espagnat
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN: 9780813340876
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
By questioning the validity of some of our basic concepts, such as space, object, and causality, quantum physics contributes quite decisively to the dramatic changes now taking place in our world picture.This book is addressed not only to physicists at an early stage in their careers (the first or second year graduate student) but also to philosophers, as well as to all the senior physicists interested in the interpretation problem. Beginning with a chapter that could be described as “philosophy for physicists,” it presents an in-depth analysis of present-day quantum mechanical concepts, an analysis of physicists and philosophers alike. Specifically, it first offers an extensive critical analysis of such topics as the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen reality criterion, nonseparatability, the quantum measurement riddle, decoherence theory, consistent histories approaches and ontologically interpretable theories. All this then naturally leads to philosophical questions concerning, in particular, intersubjective agreement and the limit of realism. And a thorough examination of this whole material finally leads to the view that distinguishing between empirical reality and a veiled man-independent reality yields an acceptable answer to the perplexing question of how to interpret quantum physics. Veiled Reality offers nonspecialists, including students in physics, philosophy and the history of science, an accessible perspective on basic problems in the foundations of physics.

Public Enemies

Public Enemies PDF Author: Bernard-Henri Lévy
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588369196
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The international publishing sensation is now available in the United States—two brilliant, controversial authors confront each other and their enemies in an unforgettable exchange of letters. In one corner, Bernard-Henri Lévy, creator of the classic Barbarism with a Human Face, dismissed by the media as a wealthy, self-promoting, arrogant do-gooder. In the other, Michel Houellebecq, bestselling author of The Elementary Particles, widely derided as a sex-obsessed racist and misogynist. What began as a secret correspondence between bitter enemies evolved into a remarkable joint personal meditation by France’s premier literary and political live wires. An instant international bestseller, Public Enemies has now been translated into English for all lovers of superb insights, scandalous opinions, and iconoclastic ideas. In wicked, wide-ranging, and freewheeling letters, the two self-described “whipping boys” debate whether they crave disgrace or secretly have an insane desire to please. Lévy extols heroism in the face of tyranny; Houellebecq sees himself as one who would “fight little and badly.” Lévy says “life does not ‘live’” unless he can write; Houellebecq bemoans work as leaving him in such “a state of nervous exhaustion that it takes several bottles of alcohol to get out.” There are also touching and intimate exchanges on the existence of God and about their own families. Dazzling, delightful, and provocative, Public Enemies is a death match between literary lions, remarkable men who find common ground, confident that, in the end (as Lévy puts it), “it is we who will come out on top.”

Interventions 2020

Interventions 2020 PDF Author: Michel Houellebecq
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509549978
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
The death of God in the West was the prelude to a formidable metaphysical soap opera that continues to this day. Christianity’s masterstroke was to combine a fierce belief in the individual with the promise of eternal participation in the Absolute. When that dream evaporated, various attempts were made to offer the individual a minimum of being. The latest of these attempts is advertising, which seeks to arouse desire and transform the subject into a docile phantom doomed to follow advertising’s every whim. But, like all previous attempts, this skin-deep, superficial participation in the world fails, and unhappiness and depression continue to spread. However, we can all produce a cold revolution in ourselves by stepping outside the flow of information and advertising. We need to take some time out, unplug the television, turn off our iPhones, stop buying stuff, stop wanting to buy stuff, temporarily detach ourselves and adopt an aesthetic attitude to the world. We just need to stay still for a few seconds. This is one of the key themes developed by Michel Houellebecq in this collection of his texts and interviews from the last three decades. Here he explains and elaborates his point of view, discusses his novels and addresses a wide range of topics from politics, religion and literature to suicide, euthanasia and paedophilia. An indispensable book for anyone interested in the work of one of the most widely read and controversial novelists of our time.

The War Between the Tates

The War Between the Tates PDF Author: Alison Lurie
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453271201
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
A husband’s affair pushes a suburban wife to her breaking point in this “near perfect comedy of manners” by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Real People (The New York Times). Erica Tate wouldn’t mind getting up in the morning if her children were less intolerable. Until puberty struck, Jeffrey and Matilda were absolute darlings, but in the last year, they have become sullen, insufferable little monsters. A forty-year-old housewife out of work and out of mind, she finds little happiness in the small college town of Corinth. Erica’s husband, Brian, a political science professor, is so deeply immersed in university life—or more accurately in the legs of his mistress, a half-literate flower child named Wendy—that he either doesn’t notice his wife’s misery or simply doesn’t care. Worst of all, their pleasant little neighborhood is transforming into a subdivision. As new ranch houses spring up around their once idyllic home, Erica’s marriage inches closer to disaster. When the Tate household tips into full-scale emotional combat, Erica must do her best to ensure that she comes out on top. In this darkly comic tale of a family at civil war, the National Book Award–shortlisted author of Foreign Affairs dives into the deterioration of a marriage. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s collection.

Contemporary Fiction and Science from Amis to McEwan

Contemporary Fiction and Science from Amis to McEwan PDF Author: Rachel Holland
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 303016375X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
This book identifies, in contemporary fiction, a new type of novel at the interface of science and the humanities, working from the premise that a shift has taken place in the relations between the two cultures in the last two or three decades. As popular science comes to assume an ever greater cultural significance, contemporary authors are engaging in new ways with ideas that it disseminates. A new literary phenomenon is emerging, in which the focus on language-based theories of the self and the world that has been predominant in the latter half of the previous century is making way for a renewed commitment to the material facts, both of human existence and the universe beyond subjectivity. The book analyses the work of Martin Amis, William Boyd, David Lodge, Richard Powers, Michel Houellebecq, Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, and Ian McEwan, revealing the ways in which these ‘third culture novels’ negotiate the relationship between literature and science.

Physicists on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society

Physicists on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society PDF Author: Jeremy Bernstein
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387765069
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Over the years, Jeremy Bernstein has been in contact with many of the world’s most renowned physicists and other scientists, many of whom were involved in politics, literature, and language. In this diverse collection of essays, he reflects on their work, their personal relationships, their motives, and their contributions. Even for those people he writes about that he did not know personally, he provides important insights into their lives and work, and questions their character, their decisions, and the lives they led. In the first three essays, Professor Bernstein looks at economic theory and how some physicists who developed interesting economic models based on derivatives and hedge funds almost led to the country into bankruptcy. In later essays, he discusses a suspect visit to Poland by the great Heisenberg during the Nazi era, a visit that there is almost nothing written about. Included also are essays on ancient languages and a nuclear weapons program in South Africa that was supposedly dismantled. In one particularly humorous essay, he describes how an ill-conceived manned spaceship to be powered by an atomic bomb was being developed by some of the country’s most powerful intellects. The project never got off the ground. Dipping into these pages is like rummaging around in the mind of a genius who has a potpourri of interests and an abundance of fascinating experiences. Bernstein has not only rubbed elbows with some of the finest minds in world, he has worked and played with them. He has sometimes mourned with them and laughed at them. His sharp wit and even sharper analysis make for a fascinating read.