A World Of Illusions
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The Book of Illusions
Auster's tale of obsession from the author of contemporary classic The New York Trilogy: 'a literary voice for the ages' ( Guardian) The Book of Illusions, written with breath-taking urgency and precision, plunges the reader into a universe in which the comic and the tragic, the real and the imagined, and the violent and the tender dissolve into one another. One man's obsession with the mysterious life of a silent film star takes him on a journey into a shadow-world of lies, illusions, and unexpected love. After losing his wife and young sons in a plane crash, Vermont professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours mired in grief. Then, watching television one night, he stumbles upon a lost film by silent comedian Hector Mann, and remembers how to laugh . . . Mann was a comic genius, in trademark white suit and fluttering black moustache. But one morning in 1929 he walked out of his house and was never heard from again. Zimmer's obsession with Mann drives him to publish a study of his work; whereupon he receives a letter postmarked New Mexico, supposedly written by Mann's wife, and inviting him to visit the great Mann himself. Can Hector Mann be alive? Zimmer cannot decide - until a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision for him, changing his life forever. 'A nearly flawless work . . . Auster will be remembered as one of the great writers of our time.' San Francisco Chronicle 'Auster's elegant, finely calibrated The Book of Illusions is a haunting feat of intellectual gamesmanship.' TheNew York Times
The Science of Illusions
A specialist in visual perception, Ninio (Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris) presents many classic and new illusions, explains the underlying logic of the various types, and suggests their value for neurological and physiological research. He does not provide an index. La Science des Illusions was published in 1998 by Editions Odile Jacob. Philip has translated widely from the French, including an autobiography of Francois Jacob. c. Book News Inc.
The End of Illusions
We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late 20th century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity might be on a progressive path to a better future seems like a grand illusion. And yet it is only now, as disillusioned citizens try to make sense of the new political landscape, that the real nature of this reversal is beginning to reveal itself: contemporary societies have undergone a profound structural shift over the last 30 years, in the course of which classical industrial society has given way to a new kind of modernity that is oriented toward the particular and the unique. But the pervasive singularization of the social also generates systematic asymmetries and disparities. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict between culture and identity, the exhaustion resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfilment, and the crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics and the social sciences generally and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.