Books about Particulars from Amazon.com

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"There are now not enough commercial magazines regularly publishing literary fiction to count on the fingers of a single hand," says Rust Hills. So why bother writing literary short stories, or books about doing so? Because, says Hills, a longtime fiction editor at Esquire, "what young writers want to write, or ought to want to write, is literature." In Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, Hills examines "the essential techniques of fiction and how they function." The short story is a tricky form, with no margin for error: "The successful contemporary short story," says Hills, "will demonstrate a more harmonious relationship of all its aspects than will any other literary art form, excepting perhaps lyric poetry." Many of the fictional elements discussed in this book will not be new to most fiction writers. We know that stories must have beginnings, middles, and ends; we know about epiphany and suspense and stock characters. But Hills claims that much of how we look at fiction derives from drama theory and from the formulas of "slick fiction" (fiction that once served the purpose mindless television now serves). Learned but not pedantic, Hills addresses these elements strictly in terms of literary short fiction.

An interesting side note here is Hills's discussion of the shift in support for American writers. "It is no longer the book publishers and magazines," he says, "but rather the colleges and universities that ... provide the major financial support for the great majority of American writers today." Given that, we might find it odd that this book comes from a man best known for his magazine editing. But we shouldn't. "Teaching fiction writing and editing magazine fiction have ... the same rather odd ultimate purpose in common: trying to get someone else to produce a fine short story." One caveat emptor: our copy of this edition fell quite apart upon our first, gentle reading of it. --Jane Steinberg.
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Mimesis: the idea of imitation Alterity: the idea of difference, the opposition of Self and Other. For anthropologists, social scientists, artists, and everyone else caught up in the enigma of "modernity," the question "What is reality?" is crucial to knowing what it is we know and what we are. If traditions are inventions, and social life is a construction, how is it that we understand reality as both real and really made us?

In his most ambitious and accomplished work to date, anthropologist Michael Taussig, widely known for his work on shamanism, undertakes a history of the mimetic faculty. Mimesis and Alterity moves from the nineteenth-century invention of machines capable of mimetic acts, such as the camera, backwards to the fables of colonial "first contact" and the alleged mimetic prowess of "primitives." He then moves forward to contemporaru time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable.

Utilizing anthropological theory, the ideas of Benjamin, Adorno, and Horckheimer, extensive research on the Cuna Indians, and work on colonialism and postcolonialism, Taussig analyzes mimesis across time and cultures. More than a faculty or one more sensory capability, mimesis--differently experienced in so-called primitive and modern socieities--has a history, too. That history is deeply tied to colonialism, the felt relation of the civilizing process to savagery, to aping, sensateness caught in the net of passionate images spun with wildness for centuries by the colonial trade. Vigorous, unorthodox, and sometimes breathtaking, Taussig's understanding of mimesis in different cultures deepens our meanings of ethnography, racism, and society..
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From one of the most accomplished celebrity and fashion photographers to date, Photography is an intimate look at Gilles Bensimon’s stunning images of the world’s most famous beauties and celebrities taken throughout his remarkable 30-year career. Iconic models and stars fill Photography’s 200 pages through exclusive images from Bensimon’s impressive portfolio. This collection honors the women he has made a career of celebrating, revealing in the process his original and unique photographic style, based on movement, sensuality and vitality, that has made him one of fashion’s leading lights..
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The Particulars of Rapture is Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's literary and theological exploration of the book of Exodus. Zornberg, the daughter of a rabbi, is a scholar of English literature who has become a popular teacher of religion in Israel, North America, and England. Her approach to Exodus is midrashic--a rabbinic tradition of creative, interpretive, even fanciful study of the Bible that often involves "the telling of stories that fill in gaps in the written biblical text." The Particulars of Rapture gathers many such stories that Zornberg has told and also discusses the process by which she created these stories--a process that she describes with reference to a wide range of psychological, philosophical, and literary works. If this all sounds complicated, that's because it is. "In my approach," she explains, "the biblical text is not allowed to stand alone, but has its boundaries blurred by later commentaries and by a persistent intertextuality that makes it impossible to imagine that meaning is somehow transparently present in the isolated text." She imagines interpretation to be part of the text itself, and not a second- order process that is derived from the text. It's a wise and receptive way of reading, and those willing to follow Zornberg's sometimes knotty prose will find, from time to time, clear bright observations about the way believers continue to experience Israel's slavery, freedom, and redemption even today. --Michael Joseph Gross.
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Particular Places: A Traveler s Guide to the Best Ohio Road Trips shows that there is much more to the Buckeye State than cornfields and cows. In fact, according to author Jane Ware, what a person can see and do in Ohio is truly amazing

For the traveler, traveling has become more rewarding than ever, said Ware. In Particular Places, we looked for distinctive and locally particular places to stay, eat, and see, along with good characters to hear about and sometimes meet.

Particular Places shows the best places to visit in 15 Ohio areas, including Marietta, Athens, Logan, Adams County, Yellow Springs, Lebanon, Granville, Mount Vernon, Coshocton, Amish Country, Maumee, Port Clinton, Sandusky, Lake Erie and the Lake Erie Islands.

And what a person can see and do in these 15 places is astounding.

According to the book, it s possible to eat raccoon and make your own golf club, to meet a horse rescuer and see the country s biggest horse-and-carriage parade, or to see a Stealth bomber and the world s only perambulator museum. You can even go to a washboard music festival, visit the world s only floating cranberry bog, or meet a baker who used to be a fashion model in Paris.

Ware not only gives readers a list of maps, phone numbers, and driving directions to each place, but she also includes a mix of fun trivia facts and opinionated insight on each destination.

I m thankful to these people, these events and phenomena, said Ware. They are making Ohio a better place to travel..
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