Discover new books on Goodreads
See if your friends have read any of Jacques Coulardeau's books
Sign in with Facebook
Jacques’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jacques’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Jacques Coulardeau’s Followers (44)
1,102 books
|
261 friends
374 books
|
65 friends
168 books
|
5 friends
2,765 books
|
376 friends
100 books
|
50 friends
7,218 books
|
359 friends
24,039 books
|
3,660 friends
2,770 books
|
3,517 friends
More friends…
Jacques Coulardeau
Goodreads Author
Member Since
October 2013
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/drjacquescoulardeau
|
Cro-Magnon's Language: Emergence of Homo Sapiens, Invention of Articulated Language, Migrations out of Africa
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
Ivan Eve (Contributor)
3.25 avg rating — 4 ratings
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
L'Apocalypse selon Saint Jean
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
Annunzio Coulardeai (Illustrator),
Kévin Thorez (Illustrator)
really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 2 ratings
—
published
2013
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
STEPHEN KING, THE MAVERICK RAPSCALLION
liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
"Supernatural" Car Chase or Joy Ride?
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator)
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
—
published
2013
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
HANDEL’S AGRIPPINA MODERN INTERPRETATIONS AND THE ROLE OF COUNTERTENORS
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator)
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
THE INDIAN OCEAN FROM ADMIRAL ZHENG HE TO HUB AND SPOKE CONTAINER MARITIME COMMERCE
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
Sigiri Graffiti
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
Annunzio Coulardeau (Illustrator)
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
Freedom of Expression and Copyright The Foundations of All liberties
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
LOONY-LU & LULU: THE BELOVED SACRIFICED TO AND BY THE BELOVED, A MYSTICAL PARODY
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
THE U.S. SUPREME COURT A UNIVERSAL LESSON IN CONSTITUTIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
by
Jacques Coulardeau (Goodreads Author),
it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
Jacques’s Recent Updates
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book really liked it
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
SLAVERY AS WHITE ENTERTAINMENT It is stupefyingly interesting to read this book because the point of view is that of a slave, of THE slave Jim/James, who takes part in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying to escape from his father and from his g SLAVERY AS WHITE ENTERTAINMENT It is stupefyingly interesting to read this book because the point of view is that of a slave, of THE slave Jim/James, who takes part in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn, trying to escape from his father and from his good, white, civilized, entirely slave society. In this slave society, slavery is both a machine to make money, to get a profit without any work on the side of the beneficiary, the owner of the slaves, and at the same time, in the same place, with the same individuals, a machine to get as much pleasure as possible from beating the slaves, raping the slaves (only females, I am surprised), making them bleed, even to death, for a pencil or a mouthful of bread. All that is perverse, not by definition, but perverted by intention and will from the white slave owners. The fact that it is Jim, the slave, who is telling the story makes all that vicious and barbaric story a miracle of resilience and super strength. Jim is able to walk and run, even when his legs are bleeding from the lashing he has just received. This slave ordeal is supposed to make slaves obedient in pain, subservient in suffering, and yet Jim is made just the reverse in excruciating agony, and he is able to perform miracles, absolutely impossible actions. The episode of the boat is just funny by being that extreme and unbelievable, and what’s more, this ship is in the hands of a slave since the slave owner, the owner of the ship, does not exist anymore, dead and gone, might have been killed by the slave who took over the ship. But a slave cannot take over a ship, of course not, and he just causes the wreckage and destruction of the ship by overheating the furnace that explodes. And that’s how Jim saves Huckleberry Finn, but let his skin-white slave of an associate drown in the Mississippi, and that is more than funny, sinister indeed, since the skin-white slave could not swim, though there is no reason why Huckleberry would not know how to swim after his life of hunting and fishing, of living in the wild, as a white boy, hence protected and receiving all the respect he has the right to receive as a white boy. Not knowing how to swim is just plain incredible, whereas a slave not knowing how to swim is possible, and yet a slave not knowing how to swim? Incredible again because swimming is a natural activity for human beings, absolutely inherent in human physiology. I never had one single swimming lesson, and I learned how to swim by jumping from the ten-meter diving platform in the Bordeaux municipal swimming pool, on one happy spring afternoon. It is such elements that let me be rather dubious about this story. The linguistic stake on the other hand, is marvelously described. Slaves can speak perfect Shakespearean English, if they want (though I doubt it very much), but in front of any white chap, they translate their thoughts or their words into slave English. It is quite possible that the slaves might have had two levels of English, but it is rather surprising that it is stated, more or less, by virtue of not being stated at all, apart from circumstantially, that all slaves can do it. At the end of the novel, the Civil War starts for real. We are in spring 1861. Unluckily, that is not clear all the time. James’ forgiving mind at the end, when dealing with the judge, is surprising. In April or May 1861, I do not think the slaves who tried to escape slavery would have shown a lot of forgiveness. And why should they have? But all high school students should indeed be able to read this book, provided it is in all high school libraries. And there, I doubt it very much. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Feb 01, 2026 11:24AM
· like
· see review ·
preview book
See a Problem?
We’d love your help.
Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
James by Percival Everett.
Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Not the book you’re looking for?
Preview — James by Percival Everett |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book it was amazing
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
HE WANDERS, HE WANDERS, THE C-I-ATHIC FERRET MINT-SCENTED WATER I went back in my archives and found articles on Dan Brown’s books. I will republish them all soon. Digital Fortress (1998). Angels and Demons (2000). Deception Point (2001). The DaVinci C HE WANDERS, HE WANDERS, THE C-I-ATHIC FERRET MINT-SCENTED WATER I went back in my archives and found articles on Dan Brown’s books. I will republish them all soon. Digital Fortress (1998). Angels and Demons (2000). Deception Point (2001). The DaVinci Code (2003). The Lost Symbol (2009). Inferno (2013). Origin (2017). And now The Secret of Secrets (2025 I missed a couple, but more about it later. But most of those I followed, I covered both the book and the film adapted from the book. The last or maybe latest novel published in 2025 slowed down production. It took the author eight years, twice as much as before, to come to the end of this book, which I am going to cover now. Why might be a fair question. I might give some intelligence on the question along with the critique. But the place where the main action takes place, Prague, and the main participant, the CIA, may have had some weight in this project, slowing it down, if not purely imposing a negotiation, or the’ arrangement of some compromise with this CIA for the protection of its Brand name and brand image, in other words its reputation, if the CIA has one, meaning positive. Robert Langdon is more than positive, several times, and he asserts under the keyboard clicking of Dan Brown, that the CIA can block the publication of any book they want or impose severe cuts in it. The main action takes place in Prague in Czechia. The CIA operates there an enormous, clandestine, totally anonymous research center where they use some epileptic subjects recuperated from Russian orphanages. These are submitted to laboratory experiments without having been informed what it was about, without having been asked for their agreement, and without respecting any international convention on clinical trials on human beings. Death rate 50%. Two subjects were brought to this center. One died. The other survived but in a state that cannot even be qualified as acceptable, and certainly not humane. The CIA, hence the US government, recuperated an old bomb shelter of the Germans during WWII. They tremendously expanded it underground, under a park and an extremely important museum. At the very end of the novel, the laboratory explodes, and the damage is minimized on the surface because that would have been a second novel. Then – maybe, for sure, possibly, probably – the European Community would have gotten involved. That would have been an interesting cleaning-up mission. This novel reveals the US as the colonizer of the whole world, at least the whole world where it, the US, can put its dirty shoes, mainly Europe and the West. That’s my first remark, and the novel shows it in nearly graphic terms. How long will the world agree to play that game, or rather to be played as a stake, or a lottery reward, in that poker game with only one player, the USA, and of course its guns, loaded and ready to shoot. Look at Venezuela and read my lips. Monroe rhymes with My-Donkey. The real danger for the Europeans does not come from Mercosur, that is dangerous only to the agriculture of the countries where the real technical and industrial level of mechanization and technologization has not been reached. That concerns mainly France and its basically exporting agriculture, but not only. When you read that China has mechanized its cotton production up to 80 to 90%, you wonder about Europe. It is the same thing in China again for all sorts of crops, like corn, wheat, oats, and even more with soybeans, and the size of the fields and agricultural units are becoming enormous. In Latin America, concerned by Mercosur, we have exactly the same evolution that makes agricultural products frighteningly more profitable on the international market. The real global – or pretending to be global – colonizer is the USA, which practices piracy to impose its own objectives. In fact, we should have an alliance with South American countries, including Venezuela, to oppose and reject the American blackmail. But no, some in Europe do not want to scratch the dear friends in Washington DC who are getting rid of the Ukrainian cesspool and granting it, weapons, soldiers, and all, to the Europeans, and they are fighting to be first in the battalion that is going to recuperate a file that has been pestering Europe for so many centuries. And Europe has no weight in possible negotiations because Europe does not have the armed forces necessary, nor the economy necessary, nor the social stability necessary, which is completely stampeded by under NO control immigration from everywhere you can and may imagine, including more than five million refugees from Ukraine, all of them patriots ready to die for their countries, provided it is in Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and London. So, Dan Brown tells us, or rather tells the American public, that Europe is ripe for being entirely colonized by the CIA and the USA. And he is laughing at the heavy hangover the Europeans are going to have when they finally wake up from their slumbering and disquieting indifference and distraction in vain political games between extreme A and extreme B and in between C for centerfold, a beautiful picture of a sexy body at the bottom of their retinas, the poor Europeans. So, remember when you read the book that you are reading one of the numerous Bibles of Trump, who knows it is fiction, especially serialized fiction on TV or Netflix that Makes America Great Again. We, the Europeans, don’t seem to care. That is my second remark. The third remark is the style. It is becoming a standard model or architecture to have an average 145 chapters with an average length of less than five pages each. No length, no complication, just plain simple small chapters with a couple of facts and nothing else. It is already serialized for television. Each chapter is going to be one sequence, and altogether there might be 125 small one minute or one minute and a half sequences and five that may reach three minutes. Altogether, 203 minutes plus advertising, and that will be four episodes of 60 or 65 minutes all in all. That kind of serialization of the novel into small slices in great number destroys the architecture of the storytelling. We are not told a story. We are hammered with a mechanical shovel into accepting an exploded and unstructured story that we have to swallow slice after slice and say thank you for the small minuscule mouth-10%-ful modern cuisine in literature. If we don’t like it, we can always go back to Dickens, or after all, Stephen King, though even he, our master of us all, has to accept and be laminated into sliced baloney. Now, the fourth remark is no longer about literature but about the supposedly scientific content of the book: that reads most of the time as a PhD dissertation about Noetics, the newly devised science of human consciousness that the author accepts to drape into some kind of specter or ghost haunting our nights and slumbering moments in the daytime. “Thinking About Noetic. Noetic derives from the Greek adjective noētikos, meaning "intellectual," from the verb noein ("to think") and ultimately from the noun nous, meaning "mind." (Nous also gave in English the word paranoia by joining with a prefix meaning "faulty" or "abnormal.") Noetic is related to noesis, a rare noun that turns up in the field of philosophy and refers to the action of perceiving or thinking. The most notable use of noetic might be in the name of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a research organization based in California that is devoted to studies of consciousness and the mind.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti..., accessed January 10, 2026) Page 101 “noetic” is declared to be the antagon of materialism, as if we could live on immaterial consciousness of the simple conscious idea of a potato, and nothing else to survive. That level of absurd idealism makes any sane person completely lost in translation from here to there, from one black hole to another black hole. The idea is simple. Consciousness is a non -material, hence entirely virtual mass of data living its own life, produced by we do not know what, who or how, In some kind of cosmic niche that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and from which any glimpse of consciousness we may have about the meat we are eating, the wine we are drinking, the sex we are enjoying is nothing but some immaterial waves captured by our brain that does not invent anything but only receives these radio sound waves, if they are sound, but they might only be waves with no material dimension. We thus are in touch with a cosmic niche where all the knowledge and consciousness, past, present, future, in fact totally timeless, is accumulated and can be recuperated, piece by piece, by the gullible human audience who thinks they are thinking what they are thinking in their evanescent thoughts. And they assume that will impress us so much that we will accept all the rest, particularly that we can have Extra Sensorial Perception and thus practice any day, anytime, anywhere (page 81-82), pre-cognition, prophecy, soothsaying, augury, divination, astrology, human obsessive knowledge of the future, out of body experience, and who-knows-what-else. When we accept this total dematerialization of all mental, intellectual, sentimental, emotional data into that cosmic but uncatchable, unpositionable, and unidentifiable entity, we are supposed to understand that the CIA, Russia, and China are doing the same: they try to be the first to harness this cosmic consciousness data bank and control the whole humanity by injecting into this data bank what they want all humanity to believe and accept doing. The future, my dear babies, is totally locked in an absolute, three-tiered prison governed by three competing powers who will use the human prisoners in each prison to attack the other two prisons and destroy their prisoners till only one exists and controls it all. The perfect recipe for something that has nothing to do with fascism, nazism, communism, socialism, or any other [-ism] because it will end as a totally mechanical humanity in which there might be an elite of three times ten people playing an enormous chess game with the human puppets that we will all be. Welcome to the parallel universe that could be called the opera of the ghosts. Only the ghost puppeteers are humans, and all other beings are puppets, on strings, on rods, on hands, but puppets all the time. By the way, but I won’t enter this barrel of The last point is the reference to the Golem. “The Evolution of Golem The Hebrew ancestor of the word golem means “shapeless mass,” and the original mythical golems started as lumps of clay that were formed into figures and brought to life by means of a charm or a combination of letters forming a sacred word. In the Middle Ages, golems were thought to be the perfect servants; their only fault was that they were sometimes too literal or mechanical in fulfilling their masters’ orders. In the 16th century, the golem was thought of as a protector of the Jews in times of persecution. But following its entrance into English, golem acquired a less friendly second sense, referring to a man-made monster that inspired many of the back-from-the-dead creations of classic horror fiction. These days, the word golem is frequently used in the gaming world for a variety of foes and beasties made of materials ranging from ice to iron to even, in one game, candy.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti... accessed January 10, 2026) To transform this legend that could be perfectly antisemitic, as much as Judeo-protective, into the identity of the alter of Sacha Vesna, who suffers a strange case of Dissociative Identity Disorder that is added on top of her epilepsy. Dan Brown, here again, manipulates such medical phenomena and turns them into an impossible vision. A person who has a split personality, split into two very different characters, can get dominated by the alter, the one hidden from the public, the one the normal character may even not be conscious of at all, but then the alter does not get out of the body of the main character, the way he does on the plane going to the USA. He cannot either get out of the main character‘s body at all, the way he promised, more or less, to do as soon as Sacha Vesna is safe. Believing that he can take over the body of the main character to achieve his own objectives without the main character having any consciousness of what happened during these periods is a myth. Possible, partially maybe, but certainly not that radically. He pretends he is protecting Sasha Vesna, but he takes her body, hence her, into situations that are life-endangering. The case used by Stephen King in his latest novel Never Flinch, is a lot more credible because it is the famous man-woman division of a non-binary person. We all know some people around us who have a divided sexual identity, and that is becoming manageable in our societies. But one sexual identity cannot step out of the other sexual identity, except if it is to be forever with a special treatment that will turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man. Beyond that, it is a medical case. But what Dan Brown suggests is highly improbable, and that makes the story slightly awkward. Enjoy the incredible fable of the Golem of Prague, though the Golem of any city is generally some monstrous, violent, brutal, and aggressive male character. Why not a woman? Good question. Sexism has its own ways to turn into a story: the alter of Sasha Vesna is a male character, and he identifies (by disguise) with the Golem of Prague. There, the male identity has no fuzziness, flexibility, or uncertainty. I can't resist commenting on the inscription on this Golem's forehead. It's a Hebrew word, a triconsonantal word meaning "truth." But the Golem claims that removing the first letter of this word gives the word "death." Dan Brown should brush up on his Hebrew. While it's true that to get the word meaning "death," you have to remove the first letter of the word meaning "truth," you also have to add a second consonant between the two remaining ones. Note that Hebrew, like Arabic and most, if not all, Semitic languages, is read from right to left, but transliteration is read from left to right. This rewriting produces a second word meaning "death," but it's also a triconsonantal word. אֶמֶת מָוֶת truth death emet mavet alef-mem-tav mem-vav-tav Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Jan 11, 2026 08:30AM
· 1 like · like
· see review ·
preview book
See a Problem?
We’d love your help.
Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown.
Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Not the book you’re looking for?
Preview — The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown |
|
|
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book it was amazing
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
MULTIHEADED STORY: DON’T GET DISORIENTED The book is surprising because it does not contain one single element of extranormal behavior. Some behaviors are extreme, totally absurd, yet perfectly understandable when we take into account the circumstance MULTIHEADED STORY: DON’T GET DISORIENTED The book is surprising because it does not contain one single element of extranormal behavior. Some behaviors are extreme, totally absurd, yet perfectly understandable when we take into account the circumstances, the youth and education of the two criminals, since after all, there are only two criminals. The menial people of interest who intervened in the various situations to make them worse are not criminals, but only sadistic minds who enjoy the crimes of others by projecting themselves into these crimes. Hence, they are only voyeurs, and voyeurism is not one dot better than blindness. A voyeur is blinded by what he – or she – sees. In this situation, Holly Gibney is integrated as a bodyguard of a famous public speaker, a woman who advocates the right to abortion for women in an extremely hostile America. One of the two killers has made it his task to free the world of this anti-ethical person on the basis of the fact that there exists only one morality in this world, and it is the one that comes from God and his Bible. Abortion is the assassination of a child, and the one who advocates such crimes has to be eliminated from this godly, quasi-divine, definitely holy planet. If the man who wants to kill her were not stalking her from one city to the next, from one hall to the next, and from one venue to the next, it would be amazingly simple with no suspense. The suspense here is that we don’t know who he is, and he apparently changes his looks from time to time. The second plot is slightly more complicated. A cop who is going to be promoted is framed by his partner, who has some child pornography deposited in his home. A simple anonymous tip makes the police discover this literature, and it goes to court, and the supposedly guilty cop is sentenced to a severe prison term. In prison, as a child molester (that he is not, but it does not count in such a place), he is killed by another inmate. This boils in the head of one of the jurors of the trial. He voted for the prison term, but the motivations were not to have him killed, though everyone knows that child molesters in prison are quite in a demanding situation. This juror who knows the chap was innocent, that the pornographic literature was not actually the property of the accused cop (by the way, his partner gets the promotion), and he can prove it because Ms. Holly Gibney managed to get from the cop who sloppily had the one killed in prison indicted and tried for something he did not commit, the evidence needed here. It is the fact that the pornographic literature was put in plastic sleeves or protection that carried the fingerprints of the cop who would be killed in prison, since that cop received from the mail or whatever some comic books that were the proper size and that he handled with his own hands. But the prints were not on the pornographic magazines, only on the plastic sleeves. That is called sloppy police work. That’s where and when the juror who is suddenly looking for justice intervenes. He sends a letter to the local police telling them he will kill 13 innocent people and one guilty to balance the decision of the 12 jurors plus the prosecutor or DA, and Holly Gibney thinks the promised 14th victim will be the lawyer who did not do his job properly. And the killings start. Add to that the fact that a black gospel singer gets entangled in this situation, and she hires the Black helper used by Holly Gibney in her cases as her protector or bodyguard. At the same time, the sister of this young assistant, who is a poetess, is hired by the black gospel singer to sing, with her, one of the poems the young Black woman has just published. This young Black poetess is learning the job of being the performer of her own poems. And it is in this situation that the two fancy criminals come more or less together, though by accident, in their desire to burn down an old sports hall with several people inside, tied up and unable to flee, and the other menaces the hall where the black singer and the young black poetess are supposed to perform after the Black gospel singer has performed the national anthem to open some kind of sports event. And all is well that ends well, and that is the shortcoming of this novel. The end does not have any possible development later on, that would in any way start the whole shebang all over again, like in The Dark Tower series, to give only one example of a common structure of Stephen King’s stories. What happened to the guilty ones? The cop who made a sloppy investigation, and the cop who was the partner of the one accused and executed in prison, are eliminated by natural causes, like some kind of disease. The one who wanted to kill the abortion speaker ends up badly, but it is not even a powerful condemnation of this anti-abortion terrorism, because when you limit the problem of women’s rights, but also the problem of all non-binary genders in this world to only abortion, that makes the case weak and hardly worth mentioning. The criminal in this case is a stray dog who was mistreated by his father, who had killed his mother. Can do better. A deranged criminal has no nobility in his case, in his pursuit. He is a stray dog that has to be shot because he is hosting too many fleas. And the case of the juror who wanted to kill fourteen people is miserable. He is supposed to be some kind of non-binary male who pretends to be a female when he feels like it, and killing for him is an entertainment that provokes his own father’s memory and, at the same time, gives him some kind of consolation for not being able to be what he wants to be, because of a strong church influence in his family. All that is a lot, and it could be considered fascinating or entrancing, or whatever, which means you may or might lose your mind in this dramatic story. But the intricacy of the crisscrossing of the several lines of interest and the rather flat ending make it rather weak at the level of the social problems the novel and the characters should bring to the forefront. I am afraid, and that is an impression I have developed over the last two or rather three novels by Stephen King: they are weaker than usual, and, as Stephen King reports, I would agree with his wife Tabitha that it is not as powerful as usual. Graphic at times, but that does not speak to the deepest layers of our ethical mind, because Stephen King’s literature is always ethical, and in this case the ethics are rather loose. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Jan 06, 2026 01:18PM
· 1 like · like
· see review ·
preview book
See a Problem?
We’d love your help.
Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
Never Flinch by Stephen King.
Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Not the book you’re looking for?
Preview — Never Flinch by Stephen King |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book it was amazing
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
AUTISM FOR ALL THE “RAIN MEN” IN THE WORLD Daniel Tammet is an Asperger’s patient, hence autistic, at the savant end of the spectrum. His nine minds are mostly males, a few females, to prove the point that autism is not exclusively male. He wants to d AUTISM FOR ALL THE “RAIN MEN” IN THE WORLD Daniel Tammet is an Asperger’s patient, hence autistic, at the savant end of the spectrum. His nine minds are mostly males, a few females, to prove the point that autism is not exclusively male. He wants to demonstrate with these cases that autism can lead to excellence. So, he chose those who had already proved they were capable of some greatness. When you are autistic, there is a “disorder” medical side in it, but there is also, and that is the most important one, a “syndrome” side. The Syndrome side does not come from genes or even congenital elements in your life, or that of your parents. The “syndrome” side is the result of experience and the social-cultural-ideological environment. If you are vision-impaired at birth, something quite congenital indeed, if the world forgets or neglects to notice and does not do what is necessary to accompany the newborn, or even – cruelty or humor, though both idiotic? – makes fun of the strange way that newborn does things by closing his eyes to let his hands pile up his blocks or put upright his skittles, you cannot be surprised that he will lock himself, or herself, in his own ego-nutshell and reject the hostile outside world. He will be looking for an escape, for a place where he will be by himself, alone but protected against the “hostile” because “non-empathetic” world and the monstrous shadows agitating themselves and agitating you from the outside. That’s what Tammet is looking for, but at the same time, he is discreet and moderate as to the invasion of privacy such a search would be. So, he actually does not go to the real deep roots of the personal equations of these nine people. Some of the cases are poignant. Some other cases are simply banal. Tammet does not look for the cruel cases for whom the situation in which they are plunged is pure torture, if not retribution for the disorder these cases may introduce in the normalcy of the lives of people around them. It also shows, of course, how inappropriate the care needed for and by these autistic people is, how frustrating this care is, and some may say it is voluntarily alienating for the persons concerned, actually the autistic child and his parents. If you read this book with all the love and care any child should get, all the empathy and help they deserve, you might come to the idea that every single person is responsible for what these autistic children get, which means when an autistic child is mistreated, all the people around are ethically and morally responsible, accountable for this negative situation. The point is that social services and medical services will at once pretend they have more than enough cases, and too few personnel to be able to find the time to look after these autistic cases. True or false? Probably both, but have these professional people really done what was needed, what is needed, for the situation to change? Of course not, since they had to think of the damage caused by alcoholism, starvation or malnutrition, basic material wants and needs, sexual perversion (what is that word, perversion?), physical abuse, etc. So, autistic children are at the bottom of the emergency list. They did nothing, or at best, these professionals defended and developed a fully ostracized service that is so closed up, marginalized, and stigmatized, that no mentally decent parent will accept their children to be tied up in that psychiatric straitjacket. And if the autistic person is an Asperger’s patient, who cares? Let them be savant, and like Einstein invent a formula nearly one century before it can be proved true or false. Let everyone invent their equation and basta! E = mc2 and, as we all know, the sun shines where it is not night and cloudy. At night, all cats are black. In the shade, all colors are grey. In a straitjacket, all movements are constrained, restrained, and ego-strained. into a depressive syndrome, even a psychotic disorder, if not a schizophrenic delirium tremens. And the three are emerging “out of the depths,” in two words “De Profundis.” So, let them stay there. Is that barbaric? Probably. But who cares? Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU VERSION FRANÇAISE L'AUTISME POUR TOUS LES « DUSTIN & TOM » DU MONDE Daniel Tammet est atteint du syndrome d'Asperger, donc autiste, et se situe à l'extrémité surdouée du spectre de l’autisme. Ses neuf « personnages » sont majoritairement masculins, avec quelques femmes, afin de prouver que l'autisme n'est pas exclusivement masculin. Il souhaite démontrer, à travers ces cas, que l'autisme peut mener à l'excellence. C'est pourquoi il a choisi des personnes ayant déjà prouvé leur capacité à accomplir de grandes choses. L'autisme comporte un aspect médical de « trouble », mais aussi, et c'est le plus important, un aspect de « syndrome ». Ce syndrome n'est pas d'origine génétique ni lié à des facteurs congénitaux, ni à votre vie ni à celle de vos parents. Il résulte de l'expérience existentielle et de l'environnement socioculturel et idéologique. Si un enfant naît malvoyant, une malformation congénitale, et que le monde oublie ou néglige de le remarquer, ne fait pas le nécessaire pour l'accompagner, voire – par cruauté ou par humour, aussi absurde que cela puisse paraître – se moque de sa façon étrange de manipuler les objets, les yeux fermés, ses mains empilant ses cubes ou dressant ses quilles, il n'est pas surprenant qu'il se replie sur lui-même, dans une coquille de noix, et rejette le monde extérieur hostile. Il cherchera un refuge, un lieu où il pourra être seul, protégé de ce monde « hostile » car « insensible », ainsi que des ombres monstrueuses qui s'agitent et le tourmentent de l'extérieur. C'est ce que recherche Tammet, mais avec discrétion et modération, sans s'aventurer au cœur même de l'intrusion que constituerait une telle quête dans la vie privée. Ainsi, il ne s'attaque pas aux véritables racines des relations personnelles de ces neuf personnes. Certains cas sont poignants, d'autres simplement banals. Tammet ne s'intéresse pas aux cas cruels où la situation dans laquelle ils sont plongés relève de la pure torture, voire d'une forme de châtiment pour le désordre qu'ils peuvent engendrer dans la vie de leur entourage. Il montre aussi, bien sûr, à quel point les soins prodigués à ces personnes autistes sont inadaptés, frustrants, et certains diront même qu'ils aliènent volontairement les personnes concernées, en l'occurrence l'enfant autiste et ses parents. Si vous lisez ce livre avec tout l'amour et l'attention qu'un enfant mérite, avec toute l'empathie et l'aide auxquelles il a droit, vous pourriez en venir à l'idée que chacun est responsable du sort réservé à ces enfants autistes. Autrement dit, lorsqu'un enfant autiste est maltraité, toutes les personnes dans son environnement proche sont moralement et éthiquement responsables de cette situation négative. Le problème, c'est que les services sociaux et médicaux prétendent être débordés et manquer de personnel pour s'occuper de ces personnes autistes. Vrai ou faux ? Probablement les deux, mais ces professionnels ont-ils vraiment fait le nécessaire pour que la situation change ? Bien sûr que non, puisqu'ils devaient penser aux dégâts causés par l'alcoolisme, la faim ou la malnutrition, les besoins matériels fondamentaux, les perversions sexuelles (que veut donc dire ce mot, perversion ?), les violences physiques, etc. Résultat : les enfants autistes sont relégués au second plan. Ces professionnels n'ont rien fait, ou au mieux, ils ont défendu et développé un service totalement ostracisé, tellement fermé, marginalisé et stigmatisé qu'aucun parent sain d'esprit n'accepterait que son enfant soit enfermé dans ce carcan psychiatrique. Et si la personne autiste est atteinte du syndrome d'Asperger, en quoi importerait-elle ? Qu'elle soit donc un génie, et qu'à l'instar d'Einstein, elle invente une formule près d'un siècle avant qu'on puisse en prouver la véracité. Que chacun invente son équation et le tour est joué ! E = mc² et, comme chacun le sait, le soleil brille là où il ne fait pas nuit et où le ciel est sans nuages. La nuit, tous les chats sont noirs. À l'ombre, toutes les couleurs sont grises. Dans une camisole de force, tous les mouvements sont contraints, bridés, et l'ego est étouffé. Cela peut mener à un syndrome dépressif, voire à un trouble psychotique, si ce n'est pas un délirium tremens schizophrénique. Et ces trois phénomènes émergent « des profondeurs », en deux mots : De Profundis. Alors, laissons-les donc y rester. Est-ce barbare ? Probablement. Mais qu'importe ? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book it was amazing
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
BLACKER AND HARDER THAN EBONY, YOU’RE DEAD Is history a casino where, when “rien ne va plus,” no one can have any say on what is going to happen? The 19th century produced a vision of history in which the masses, luckily not isolated individuals, made BLACKER AND HARDER THAN EBONY, YOU’RE DEAD Is history a casino where, when “rien ne va plus,” no one can have any say on what is going to happen? The 19th century produced a vision of history in which the masses, luckily not isolated individuals, made history with the concept of the great evening, if not night, when everything was going to change, the whole plate of history and humanity would be washed away to let a completely new world emerge. That was difficult to conceive because would the people change overnight? Then Marx and Engels came on the stage, and their vision of the socialist revolution was simple. The class struggle between the working class, the proletariat, the lumpenproletariat, the three being the same, those who work on machines they do not possess but are possessed by the second class, against which they have to fight to the death. Annihilate the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, known as capitalism, establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, eliminate all the bourgeoisie, each bourgeois after each bourgeois, and then here we are. Naively provocative. In the USA, despite more than 150 years since their liberation, the Blacks, the ex-slaves, are still not equal despite all the fights and struggles of the blacks, of the proletariat, of even the loosely defined progressive class or forces. Jacques Roumain was dreaming that such a big, great, powerful evening and night would have made all Blacks free and equal. It never came. Now and then, some struggle and a lot of victims, too often, lead to a slight progress, but equality and total freedom, of course not. Some whites are even dreaming of banning the teaching of slavery, segregation, racism, discrimination, and erasing black history from history textbooks. MAKE ASSES- GAGA AGAIN, you know MAGA You'd better buy a new pair of boots. Many Asses are going to be kicked up and down, in and out, through and through. Better be well-equipped for the big ass-kicking festival. Jacques Roumain n’a pas la résonance nécessaire à la qualité de son œuvre car il est presque introuvable en anglais et il est donc enfermé dans un ghetto linguistique, malgré une içn fluence lourde de l’anglais de son voisin du nord tant au niveau du lexique, souvent – mais mensongèrement – transparent du français à l’anglais au niveau du lexique et de l’utilisation du vers libre avec une recherche de martèlement du lecteur, ou mieux de l’auditeur. C’est une poésie profondément orale, verbale, faite pour le foirail. Son temps était le temps de la radio. Jacques Roumain does not have the necessary resonance deserved by the quality of his work since he is almost unavailable in English, thus confining his works to a linguistic ghetto, despite a heavy influence from the English of his northern neighbor, both in terms of vocabulary—often, but deceptively, transparent from French to English—and in the use of free verse, with a deliberate attempt to hammer home the message to the reader, or rather, the listener. He is profoundly an oral, verbal poet, made for market squares and county fairs. His era was the age of radio. ...more |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book it was amazing
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
PEONY PAVILION, A MASTER PIECE. DIVINES FOURBERIES DE LA MORT – ou – LOVE’S TOILING LOAD INTRODUCTION I have just finished revising the 300-page, large-format text of the complete opera in its recent English translation (Wang Rongpei, 2014). I will now PEONY PAVILION, A MASTER PIECE. DIVINES FOURBERIES DE LA MORT – ou – LOVE’S TOILING LOAD INTRODUCTION I have just finished revising the 300-page, large-format text of the complete opera in its recent English translation (Wang Rongpei, 2014). I will now be revisiting the short (two and a half hours) video version, subtitled in English, of the full version (19 hours) presented in Paris in 1999-2000 at La Grande Halle de La Villette. As with the abridged version, I will focus on the love story, which some people compare to Romeo and Juliet. Throughout, I will then examine the English translation and the poetic style chosen by the translator. This poetic style corresponds to the overall poetic style of the Chinese version, but I will not discuss the poetry of the Chinese text. I am simply not qualified to do so. I will conclude with the quality of the singing in this Kunqu opera, an enormous vocal achievement that can be compared to Western operatic singing, since a CD of the opera's arias has been recorded by a Chinese-speaking soprano. To this music and singing is added, of course, the work of the actors and the set design, not to mention the choreography of their movements on a vast stage with practically no scenery, just a few pieces of furniture, tables, and chairs. I will contact the Festival d'Automne to see if I can access the entire 19 hours of recordings so I can work on the historical and political dimension of the opera, which unfolds against the backdrop of an attempt by the Mongols (who speak an agglutinative Turkic language, while the Chinese speak an isolating tonal language, hence the use of interpreters in negotiations between the two sides) to conquer China with the help of bands of "brigands" from southern China who speak Chinese. The Chinese, on a similar theme connected to peonies, have just produced a television series in Chinese with English subtitles, a copy of which I just received from the USA. The central theme in this same ancient period concerns the liberation of women within the feudal system of the Chinese Empire through entrepreneurship and commerce (even then!). This love story is only possible if one considers real space, the virtual space of the dead, and, within real space, the movement from one city to another according to the father's appointments and the attacks of the insurgents. Space is fundamental, and this is a key difference with Romeo and Juliet—a play to which Western critics compare this opera—which takes place entirely (or almost entirely) in the city of Verona. The opera's deus ex machina finale (reminiscent of Tartuffe) creates a forbidden space, like the city of the same name, because the emperor speaks from the wings, from the inside, as indicated in the stage directions (Voice Within). This creates two spatial dimensions that are not present on stage: one virtual (the realm of the dead), and the other "sociopolitical" (the imperial realm). One could speak of the vast stage space constantly traversed by the characters, who move as much as they sing and react, hence the idea that the stage space is the materialization of the actors' mental space. In China, this opera is staged in a natural setting with bodies of water, parks and gardens, bridges, and various pavilions. See the Chinese landscape in the illustration below, which wonderfully recalls a similar landscape by Renoir. Only a few excerpts of such productions are available on the internet (YouTube). The television series is enhanced with a television or cinematic set. That's a completely different story. The Chinese generally approach dramatic art by intertwining (in this case, in the 16th century) science fiction with nested parallel universes, spaces of depth or external extension, including virtual ones. Fasten your seatbelts. For the Chinese, love is a vital adventure in the face of life, which always ends in death. […] CONCLUSION IN THE FORM OF A PROMISE I just rewatched the DVD, and so I'll conclude here with a comment on the style of the show, on the sung and acted vision of this love story. I hope to have access to the complete recording, but 2 hours and 2 minutes compared to 19 hours represents only a small part of the story. And as a final note, I'd like to remind you that throughout, I've shared elements of Wang Rongpei's poetic translation. He is considered one of the best translators of Chinese culture by the Chinese themselves. The show is breathtaking. I'll only offer here a few personal reactions based solely on the DVD. The recording is of the production in Paris, at the Grande Halle de la Villette. A 19th-century architectural setting of steel and glass. This venue allows for technically demanding shows with reasonably large audiences. The set is twofold. It's made of wood produced by Chinese craftsmen. Minimalist, but of extraordinary quality. The stage furniture is purely utilitarian for the various scenes. Nothing is missing, but nothing is superfluous. This wooden set "floats" on a body of water, an allusion to the fact that the Chinese performed these operas in mixed gardens featuring natural elements and water pieces like ponds, lakes, and various canals or rivulets. In Paris, they added four ducks to give the set a more rural, even organic, feel. They show them to you in the "making of" featurette. The costumes were produced by the Chinese, in hand-embroidered silk. Here too, there is magic. Social hierarchy is shown through specific elements of these costumes, including the actors' (and actresses’) attire. The upper class has very long sleeves that allow for constant interplay of sleeves and hands to bring the sleeves higher than the wrists or down over the hands. It's surprising, but also hypnotic. This isn't only true for the women's costumes, especially since actors, apart from the main characters, can move from one role to another without necessarily adhering to gender or sex conventions. Some costumes belong to artistic genres, not typically considered operatic. This Kunqu opera blends and intertwines quite different genres: dramatic art and music, of course (it is said that there were four hundred traditional musical pieces in the author's time). It is suggested that the New York and Paris productions had more than two hundred musical pieces. These pieces were traditional and were not written down in the 16th century. A "score" was to be created much later, long after the date of composition and creation. The complete work seems to have rarely been performed, and the complete set of fifty-five scenes (not fifty-seven as repeated in the "making of") is based on a similar older production in Shanghai. We should briefly discuss makeup and hairstyles. The makeup sometimes resembles the makeup of certain circus clowns, but these makeups, sometimes extraordinarily complex, have meaning, a purpose: they are masks characterizing the characters who wear them. Many actors perform mime or stage acrobatics, including Liu Meng Mei, as he is being prepared to be hanged by his hands. This requires choreography of these gymnastic movements as well as acrobatic dance. There is even an intervention of puppets. Even the principal actors and actresses must be able to operate in all genres. It is worth adding a remark here about the mixing of styles. There is comedy at times, burlesque or almost farcical moments, like the scene involving the infernal judge, but there are also dramatic and tragic scenes, although, in scene 55, the play oscillates between the farcical obstinacy of Du Bao, and even Liu Meng Mei, and a tragicomic dimension, which here and there borders on an ideological or religious naiveté regarding death and life with resurrection in between, as if resurrection were a common, even daily, phenomenon. But let's not forget that such views are typical of Buddhism and Taoism. A spirituality that draws on Confucius is also frequently found. The music is exclusively Chinese, with authentically Chinese instruments. The musicians are not in a pit, but on a side stage in full view of the audience. Ultimately, the most surprising aspect is the vocal technique. It bears no resemblance to the classical Western voices found in European operas. Instead, it showcases perfectly mastered Chinese singing techniques. Both men and women sing across a much wider vocal range than classical Western opera singers. The men effortlessly transition from tenor, sometimes even baritone, to contralto. Similarly, the women can cover the range of a mezzo-soprano and a soprano, and sometimes even beyond, with true head voices. This music is mesmerizing, and the Chinese language conveyed by it becomes music that carries us away on a distant journey, like the music of a snake charmer. We are the snakes. But I will return to the conclusion of last year's first installment. For about 25, perhaps 30 years, the Chinese have been engaged in rediscovering ancient forms of culture, and they are using this as a catalyst for social and cultural unity within diversity in China, and for a renaissance of classical, ancient, and modern forms of Chinese art targeting the world beyond China or its provinces. But this is not unique in Asia. Consider the return to ancient forms of culture in the Philippines, some frankly ante- or pre-colonial, encompassing languages, themes, and bodywork as well as costume. It is a renaissance, not a resurrection, because it was never utterly lost, of the traditional handcrafted loincloth as an artistic form of clothing for men. Women, on the other hand, retain traditional handcrafted costumes, but without the same level – far from it – of nudity as men. Currently, it has become a rapidly growing social activity, from primary school children (class projects being mandatory) to university students, and, apparently, even to professional adults in music, dance, and the heritage of old hunter-gatherer communities transitioning to agriculture many centuries ago. The 20th and 21st centuries in Asia are marked by the transformation of these regenerated and revitalized cultural forms into exportable, tourist-oriented cultural products. The resurgence of these cultural forms, which colonialism, as we know, would have liked, and even been able, to destroy, is like revenge from the history of peoples against the mad post-Columbian adventure. It makes you want to live another twenty years to see what it will be like, say in 2050. I will be one hundred and five years old then. I've already ordered the birthday cake. We just need to imagine what, in Livradois-Forez, the « bourrée sans culottes » could be. You must have understood that I consider this opera a masterpiece, and that the Kunqu opera genre is unique and should bring about a renewal in theatrical and operatic art. A much-needed renewal to creatively address the challenge of Artificial Intelligence. But this AI is an existential and spiritual challenge that we must face and resolve to our advantage. We might, perhaps, have to summon an Infernal Judge to pull us out of the impasse we are digging or burying ourselves into, creating ruts that will completely block us. Fortunately, electric motors cannot be flooded with fuel, gas, or diesel. There is a sense of humor in Kunqu opera that ultimately makes the dramatic architecture thrilling. ...more |
|
|
Dec 05, 2025 05:33AM
· like
· see review ·
preview book
See a Problem?
We’d love your help.
Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
The Complete Dramatic Works of Tang Xianzu by Tang Xianzu.
Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Not the book you’re looking for?
Preview — The Complete Dramatic Works of Tang Xianzu by Tang Xianzu |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book really liked it
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
GAY TRIAD, QUEER TRIO, AND MUSICAL TRIPLET IN A QUEEN-SIZED BED Three men fall in love, and they decide to experiment with a throuple sexual come-together. They are gay, one is an exclusive bottom, and the other two are exclusive tops, and they find t GAY TRIAD, QUEER TRIO, AND MUSICAL TRIPLET IN A QUEEN-SIZED BED Three men fall in love, and they decide to experiment with a throuple sexual come-together. They are gay, one is an exclusive bottom, and the other two are exclusive tops, and they find the situation particularly attractive, exciting, and sexually enticing. But the story is told from the outside by one member of a gay couple who do not want to get into that sort of experimentation. That definitely limits the range of the story itself since it is de facto marginalized by the indirect telling, and from a narrator who is definitely not ready to experiment. Hence, this indirect and standard gay married intermediary weakens the story to an exotic trek in gay land. One top, the oldest participant in the triad, is a marine officer. The second top was a marine under this marine officer, but he got out of it. The bottom is quite younger, and he is from nowhere in particular. He does not have any social dimension, apart from being the bottom of the other two. That marginalizes them in their experiment. The older top is the only one who has a real social position, but it is practically absent from the story. For the Marine Corps, whose officer he is, he is straight, normal, banal, without any gayness at all. In other words, he is socially incognito, unknown, unseen. The other two are some sort of gay individuals who do not have to have a social position, a job, an income, etc. This is a cliché gay situation. That does not really exist, except if you are making a living with your sexuality. The younger top is the son of a very conservative preacher of some unclear affiliation, and his wife, and both expelled him from the family, and the preacher is discovered, or simply asserted, since there is no real prosecution, as first, having a femme entretenue mistress somewhere in town, and second, being a regular thief of the very funds of his religious institution. Liar, hypocrite, and fornicator, all three (another triad) in one man. And when he is discovered as such, he changes his tone about their son and decides to reestablish some normal relationship. The three gay men are invited for Christmas, and they clearly say they will go. Yet the last scene of these three gay men is a Christmas party in which the two tops become two Father Christmases and they celebrate Christmas with a sex party, the two tops having sex with the bottom, burying their sex spears together in the back alcove of the bottom. I guess, though it is not specified, the father and mother of the younger top are the audience. Not clarified in the text. Since those three individuals only share sex for our enjoyment, the novella turns into some erotic trek in explicit porn literature that depicts and supports a promiscuous situation. These three men do not do anything else in life, at least two of them don't, and the oldest one is always available, any time, any day, any night. So, I came out of the story rather disappointed, and I remembered the erotic novels of Anne Rice under the name of A.N. Roquelaure, The Sleeping Beauty Quartet. That too was explicit, but the young men and women were the daughters and sons of top people in society, and they were spending some time in this special sexual reservation to get broken in their straightness, normalcy, and condescension, if not arrogance. It's true that being a young male from a top family and spending 24 hours chained naked to the wall, anally impaled onto some kind of long protruding knob, and being the toy of all the adult members of the club, coming there only to play with these young people, take advantage of them, is quite more open with that kind of back and front open access for boys and girls. Anne Rice is better because she did not segregate the boys from the girls, the men from the women, and all sorts of connections were possible. No gender discrimination, which is not the case with C. Travis Rice. Just a last note on this erotic writer. His “Travis” middle name is in fact the middle name of his father, Stanley Travis Rice Jr., and probably that of his grandfather. This reveals an emotional deficit in his relationship with his father, who died in 2002. If you do not like fornication, having sex for the very sake of sex itself, you don’t need to get into the book, be you gay, straight, bipolar, bi, or whatever in the LGBTQIA+ planet. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Sep 14, 2025 02:12AM
· like
· see review ·
preview book
See a Problem?
We’d love your help.
Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of
Party of Three by C. Travis Rice.
Thanks for telling us about the problem.
Not the book you’re looking for?
Preview — Party of Three by C. Travis Rice |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book really liked it
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
STARVATION AND GLUTTONY IN A DARK WITCH-HAUNTED FOREST The Grimm brothers are still causing great damage in the world with stories that initially were the collecting and the correcting of folktales without changing them, but choosing the most popular STARVATION AND GLUTTONY IN A DARK WITCH-HAUNTED FOREST The Grimm brothers are still causing great damage in the world with stories that initially were the collecting and the correcting of folktales without changing them, but choosing the most popular and extreme versions they encountered. The people after them all tried – Charles Perrault, first of all, even if he did not appear on this planet after the Grimm brothers – to soften the great horror that inhabited these stories. Stephen King is just doing that with this tale. Some changes are innocuous, maybe innocent, like the covering up of the lying of the kids taken red-handed in the process of eating the witch’s house. The original makes the witch say in the form of a question: “Nibble, nibble, little mouse, Who is nibbling at my house?” And of course, “The children answered: “It is not I; it is not I – It is the wind, the child of the sky.” Note how the two children answered in the first-person singular. In other words, the two children answer together something that is supposed to self-cover each child separately. But Stephen King takes off the question and then the answer is not needed, so that the self-centered egocentrism of each child and the lying of the children together is like a reflex. Children are born liars. Then they deserve a punishment, a second punishment, because they already deserve one for their gluttony and their stealing, instead of knocking on the door and asking for permission to eat the house. Who is dumb enough to ask such a question of the owner of the house? And that is not all. These children are real nuisances. They kill the witch in a very ugly way, and they steal her treasure. Totally immoral. I am told children like such stories. Sure! Like setting afire the tail of their cats. But you can do better than stick to the traditional ugliness of such stories. And as for rewriting the story to make it up-to-date in our modern world of smartphones and Artificial Intelligence, I did not notice any real change along such lines. Imagine the kids arriving in the forest, lost and abandoned, and Hansel getting his smartphone out of his pocket to call 911, and finding out “there is no connection,” the first time. And the second time, “Sorry, no juice, no electricity, you must have forgotten to have it recharged.” And that’s where the kids would be ingenious enough to find another solution to get the cops aboard. Here, there is nothing of the sort. Imagine the same set of four people starving in their home and homeland, like children and grown-ups in Gaza. There, Stephen King would have done something strong and human, if not humane. But no, milkmaid, no way. Let the witch, whose first name must start with a B, starve the people of Gaza and roast a few children for that B-witch to satisfy her ravenous hunger. It is what you call plagues in the Bible, but nowadays plagues do not come from God or some Messiah. They come from some very nasty people. Conclusion. Weak and too far from the real world to enable any connection with the real world, except that children are liars and thieves. The illustrations by Maurice Sendak are nice, colorful, and kind of childish. The forest scenes really surround the story, the kids, and lock them up between trunks, branches, and foliage. This can be the real dimension that could generate fear among the children. There really is a peculiar fear that can be called forest claustrophobia, and Sendak builds it up on many pages. And yet, Stephen King wrote two novels that echo such fear: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) and Gerald's Game (2017). The latter is for young adults or less young people, certainly not for children, even if it follows the Brothers Grimm’s model. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU VERSION FRANÇAISE FAMINE ET GOURMANDISE DANS UNE SOMBRE FORÊT HANTÉE PAR DES SORCIÈRES Les frères Grimm continuent de causer de graves dommages dans le monde avec des histoires qui consistaient initialement à recueillir et à corriger des contes populaires sans les modifier, mais en choisissant les versions les plus populaires et les plus extrêmes qu'ils rencontraient. Après eux, tous ont tenté – Charles Perrault, en premier lieu, même s'il n’est pas apparu sur cette planète après les frères Grimm – d'atténuer l'horreur profonde qui imprégnait ces histoires. Stephen King fait exactement cela avec ce conte. Certains changements sont anodins, voire innocents, comme la dissimulation du mensonge des enfants pris en flagrant délit de dévoration de la maison de la sorcière. L'original fait dire à la sorcière sous forme de question : « Grignote, grignote, petite souris, Qui grignote ma maison ?» Et bien sûr, « Les enfants répondirent : « Ce n'est pas moi ; ce n'est pas moi ; C'est le vent, l'enfant du ciel. » Remarquez comment les deux enfants ont répondu à la première personne du singulier. Autrement dit, ils répondent ensemble à une question avec une réponse censée les couvrir individuellement. Mais Stephen King supprime la question et la réponse devient alors inutile, de sorte que l'égocentrisme individualiste de chaque enfant et le mensonge des enfants ensemble sont comme un réflexe. Les enfants sont nés menteurs. Alors ils méritent une punition, une deuxième punition, car ils en méritent déjà une pour leur gloutonnerie et leurs vol, au lieu de frapper à la porte et de demander la permission de manger la maison. Qui est assez stupide, d’ailleurs, pour poser une telle question au propriétaire de la maison ? Et ce n'est pas tout. Ces enfants sont de véritables nuisances. Ils tuent la sorcière d'une manière très ignoble et volent son trésor. Complètement immoral. On me dit que les enfants aiment ce genre d'histoires. Bien sûr ! Comme mettre le feu à la queue de leurs chats. Mais on peut faire mieux que de s'en tenir à la laideur traditionnelle de ces histoires. Quant à réécrire l'histoire pour la rendre actuelle dans notre monde moderne de smartphones et Intelligence artificielle : je n'ai pas remarqué de réel changement de ce genre. Imaginez les enfants arrivant dans la forêt, perdus et abandonnés, et Hansel sortant son smartphone de sa poche pour appeler les secours avec le 18, découvrant une première fois : « Pas de connexion.» Et la deuxième fois : « Désolé, pas de batterie, pas d'électricité, vous avez dû oublier de la recharger. » Et c'est là que les enfants seraient assez ingénieux pour trouver une autre solution pour embarquer les flics dans leur affaire. Ici, rien de tel. Imaginez le même groupe de quatre personnes mourant de faim chez elles, sur leur terre natale, comme des enfants et des adultes à Gaza. Là, Stephen King aurait fait quelque chose de fort et d'humain, voire d'humaniste. Mais non, pas de Perrette au pot au lait, hors de question, nenni. Laissez donc cette sorcière – dont le prénom doit commencer par un B – affamer les habitants de Gaza et rôtir quelques enfants pour que cette sorcière B apaise sa faim. C'est ce qu'on appelle des fléaux ou des plaies dans la Bible, mais de nos jours, les fléaux, comme les plaies, ne viennent pas de Dieu ou d'un Messie. Ils viennent de gens très malfaisants. Conclusion. Conte faible et trop éloigné du monde réel pour permettre un quelconque lien avec le monde réel, si ce n'est que les enfants sont des menteurs et des voleurs. Les illustrations de Maurice Sendak sont jolies, colorées et plutôt enfantines. Les scènes de forêt entourent vraiment l'histoire, les enfants, et les enferment entre des troncs, des branches, et du feuillage. C'est peut-être la véritable dimension susceptible de générer la peur chez les enfants. Il existe une peur particulière que l'on pourrait appeler la claustrophobie forestière, et Sendak la développe sur de nombreuses pages. Pourtant, du côté de Stephen King, je connais deux romans que Stephen King a écrits et qui se font l’écho à cette peur : La Fille qui aimait Tom Gordon (1999) et Le Jeu de Gérald (2017). Le second est définitivement pour jeunes adultes ou autres moins jeunes, mais pas pour les enfants, même dans la perspective des frères Grimm. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
|
Jacques Coulardeau
rated a book really liked it
|
Error rating book. Refresh and try again.
Rate this book
Clear rating
|
|
ONCE A CHRISTIAN SLAVE IN MEXICO, NOT FOR VERY LONG! This book is important if you want to try to understand how slavery worked for Black Africans in Mexico. One thing is sure. It did not work the same as in North America under the English and then Br ONCE A CHRISTIAN SLAVE IN MEXICO, NOT FOR VERY LONG! This book is important if you want to try to understand how slavery worked for Black Africans in Mexico. One thing is sure. It did not work the same as in North America under the English and then British authority. It did not work the same as in other South or Mesoamerican countries, including the West Indies. But in Mexico, like in so many other countries in the Americas, there are no serious archives about slavery: number of captured Africans in Africa, number of Africans actually and forcefully embarked in Africa, how many ships departed from Africa, how many ships arriving in the Americas, number of embarked Africans and delivered Africans, the destinations of these Africans, their names, ethnicity, origins, languages, religions, or any data about them apart from sex and estimated age. And the most important word here is “estimated.” They were granted names, and that was the first difference between the British Protestant procedure on the one hand and the Spanish, Portuguese, and French Catholic procedure(s) on the other hand. On the Catholic side, Christening was a rule. The slaves had to be baptized, and thus given some Christian names sanctified by the christening ritual. On the Anglo-Saxon side, there was no christening (just haphazard name-giving), and certainly no ritual of any sort, except the imposition of a name of any sort, according to the caprice or caprices of the buyers. We know today what entering the fifth century of slavery, segregation, discrimination, etc. has produced in the USA. The Blacks, no matter how much hybridized, are still classified as Africans and are still the victims of rejection, discrimination in health, school results, jobs and qualifications, employment, and all sorts of social protection. Affirmative action has been repeatedly rejected in the USA, including by the Supreme Court, like the case pending in 1973-74 at the University of California at Davis, where I arrived in September 73. We don’t see that in Mexico, to the point that some people consider the Black Africans to have become invisible in Mexico. How can we reconstruct a history that explains this fact? That’s the challenge. But there are no archives of the slave trade or slavery. The author had to find a way to circumvent this handicap and find some feasible records enabling these Afro-Mexicans to be recaptured in their Africanity. He chose, but there was no choice since it was the only possible resource, to go into the records of the courts, both the religious courts (local and Inquisition) and the political courts (local and Crown). What kind of trials can be found there? And that is the second difference with North America. Since these slaves are Christians they have to abide by all the rites and obligations of their Christianity: christening of course, then religious education, participating in the various services (choir boys for example), and all the religious rites and sacraments: First and Solemn Communion, and then regular communion based on proper confession, marriage, going to church for services every time it is needed (on Sundays, for Nativity, Passion, Assumption, and some other celebrations). What may have become an exception (as compared to none at all before) in the 19th century in the Protestant USA was a Christian right from the very start in Catholic Latin America. That implied that any time there was a problem for the slave, this very slave could go to court and get into a lawsuit. This also implied the slave owners had rights as proprietors, but not beyond clearly defined lines. Violence was common, even killing a slave for any reason, but in this case, anyone could sue the slave owner, or the European culprit for abuse of violence, including at the initiative of a religious court or a political court, including the Inquisition and the Crown (its representatives). One instance is quite important. All slaves, no matter where they may be, had the right to be free on Sundays to fulfill their religious obligations, among which marital or matrimonial duties were at the top of the list. So, Herman L. Bennett is exploring the cases he came across in these registers or records. Slaves versus slave-owners of course, but also all sorts of problems in the neighborhoods where the slaves lived and here we hit a third difference: in Mexico, and in Latin America (including Louisiana before being sold to the US) there is a very high level of manumission, hence a great number of ex-slaves or their descendants who managed to get freed by this procedure: they bought up their freedom, or someone bought up their freedom in their place, and stead. They were granted their freedom on any occasion, particularly after some satisfactory service. Many slaves, at least the household slaves, were not confined to a clearly defined space. They could go around to purchase goods, or to deliver messages or goods. What’s more, they could be used as a guarantee by their owners in some commercial transactions, and this was particularly important since it granted the slaves a social and economic value. If they had such a value, then why not have it all? It encouraged and developed the consciousness and the desire to be an individual who could control his life or destiny. It is not a desire, a simple wish, a deeper frustration, pure alienation. It builds in their minds the consciousness that they are good enough to guarantee a deal. And they should be good enough to be free because they already have and are a social entity due to this kind of use. That's where we have to be prudent because these courts and these cases concern only some people, a minority, and the majority are not directly concerned. But they are under the influence of such cases. In these cases, they can have witnesses, and some of them can be slaves, and their words are just as valuable as the words of free people. Among the free people, there might be hybridized or creolized descendants of slaves who would be considered black in North America, since ONE drop of black blood makes you black in this country. And that brings us to another dimension and difference: neighborhood and family connections are important. Cousins, nephews, uncles, aunts, and neighbors are natural witnesses in any case, and they are recognized, no matter whether they are free, slaves, or have any level of black blood in their veins. The “cousin” relation between two people who are living in a common law or official marriage, or who want to get a license to marry, is essential because the catholic church tries to control inbreeding or consanguinity. For a religious court, it is a sin; for a royal court, it is a misdemeanor or even a crime. Yet licenses may be granted in such situations for various local reasons, or because it is too late since the people applying for a marriage license have already entered some common law marriage, hence an unofficial sexual relationship with even one or two children. A license might make the sin or misdemeanor negligible. There is no obligation for a slave to marry a slave, and some slaves think marrying a non-slave might be enough to get free, which is not the standard rule. In the same way, a child born from a slave mother is not necessarily a slave, sold away by the mother’s slave owner. The child has to be christened first thing after the delivery and birth, and then all possibilities are open. But Herman L. Bennett insists on the symbolic dimension of this situation. Africans arrived in the Americas with their surviving African symboleracy, which will be deculturized when they arrive, but only on the surface. A deeper layer will survive and be projected into the symboleracy they have to integrate. They have to become Christian slaves. They are thus acculturized into this new symboleracy of Mexican Christian society. Bennett is conscious that there is a transfer from the gods and spirits of their original symboleracy, gods and spirits who survive in the deeper subconscious of the slaves who adopt on the surface a Christian look centered on Jesus Christ, and that is where Bennett could go slightly further, by taking into account the third element, the Indians, mostly female Indians since the males have been eliminated by the Spanish genocide et culturicide (whereas woman were only the victims of the epidemics more than the military violence. These Indians, mostly women are concerned here, were also obliged to shift from a Maya, Aztec, or some other cultures and languages present in Mexico to the Christianized surface. Same problem as before. The old Indian symboleracy is deculturized on the surface, though kept at a deeper level, and they have to become Christians and be acculturized into Christianity, on the surface, of course, with the deeper Indian symboleracy kept subconsciously. Mexico is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, therefore the Holy Virgin Mary, and yet she has been replaced by the Blessed Virgin Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the Virgin Mary has thus been Mexicanized. These two situations transfer some god or spirit from the older symboleracy, that are deculturized as Indian and acculturized into Jesus Christ (or vice versa, if you want, the result is the same), who is acculturized into the symboleracy of the Black Mexican or the Indian Mexican under Spanish Christian rule. Both the Afro-Mexican and the native Mexican are endowed with the very special ideology of Jesus Christ, love, and the promise of a paradise after death, the Messianic Jerusalem, which they certainly did not have before. Let us think of the obligation for dead Mayas to descend into Xibalba and face the Death Lords and their testing trials, if not ordeals. Few can survive these trials and emerge to climb the sacred Ceiba tree towards true paradise, “chaan.” Note in the following dictionary entry by John Montgomery in the Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs, available online at http://www.famsi.org/mayawriting/dict... (Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. FAMSI) strong homophony links this paradise to a vision of a "captor", a supreme being who holds man in mastery, but also to the number "four" (strongly symbolic in Maya because they are the four cardinal points) and the "serpent" whose symbolism is even more complex and certainly ambiguously hostile since it is the Feathered Serpent, Kukulkan, the controversial god of human destiny. Let us note in the glyph (without covering all its symbolism) the three oblique bars, then the three liquid beads (blood, sperm, water) and the three vertical bars, three times three, and this number "three" is the symbol of the blood self-sacrifice required by the gods and voluntarily given to the gods. CHAAN/KAAN (chaan/kaan) (T561c) 1> noun "sky"; chaan in Ch'olan, kaan in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> (John Montgomery) Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake." (Peter Mathews) CHAN/KA'AN (chan/ka'an) (T561) 1> noun "sky"; chan in Ch'olan, ka'an in Yucatec 2> noun "captor" <> Homophonous or semi-homophonous with chan/kan "four" and "snake." Important research is to be done in older forms of these deculturization-acculturization procedures and patterns to find how the transfer is possible. Jesus Christ is sacrificed on the cross and corresponds, for one instance only, to Jun Nal Ye, the Maize God of the Mayas who was sacrificed a long time ago and was revived by the Hero Twins, who were both thrown into a furnace and their ashes thrown into a river for them to resuscitate and come back to the Death Lords for vengeance, and they revive the Maize God who will die in every fall and resuscitate in every spring provided humans present him with enough blood offerings. Note how Jun Nal Ye is revived by the blood of humans being sacrificed or self-sacrificing for him, as opposed to Jesus shedding his own blood and dying to regenerate the human species out of sin, if they want to share communion in this blood-exchanging rite, the Eucharist and communion. The transfer is nevertheless symbolically easy. It is more complex with Africans, but we have to go into the Vodun tradition coming from Africa, and the Christian saints, God, and Jesus are transferred into the gods, spirits, and saints of the Vodun tradition ((donation of blood from the requester and the priest – some would say sorcerer or witch – officiating on the requester’s request). That would explain why the deculturization-acculturization procedure worked so easily in Latin America. The transfer is a blood offering. We can represent this double transfer (see below). The two cycles are simultaneous in the two human beings concerned and reciprocally supported by the two human beings again. "I do it, you do it, and then we ask a priest to marry us in this new common vision and project." The Christianization of the two Indian and Black African sides makes them man and wife, hence human. That's by far the best side of the book, and people curious about concrete real cases will find hundreds of them in the book, some described and discussed at length. That’s why racial elements are just ethnic characteristics that do not imply any inferiority or superiority. These elements are just identifying traits that do not carry any discrimination. No possible comparison with the USA, where the police, at times, some vigilantes still kill young black males at street corners for any reason you can think of. [The Graph cannot be uploaded.] For the readers who want to see this discourse in literature, I would advise looking for Anne Rice and the few books dealing with it, particularly Merrick, a novel bringing the Vampire Louis and the witch Merrick together using black magic connected with old temples in Guatemala. It deals with a mask from long ago and the Indian civilizations of the first millennia after JC. That mask gives you the power to see beyond the surface of reality, hence, to communicate with the dead since Louis wants to communicate with Claudia, the child he turned into a vampire a long time ago, and Lestat de Lioncourt has been obliged to destroy her because a child turned into an eternal vampire is a very bad perverse idea. Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU ...more |
|
“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”
― William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
― William Blake, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion
“Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
― Criss Jami, Killosophy
“Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.”
― Plato, The Republic
― Plato, The Republic
“For love is a celestial harmony
Of likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other's joy and true content,
Which they have harbour'd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov'd to be.”
― Edmund Spenser, Fowre Hymnes
Of likely hearts compos'd of stars' concent,
Which join together in sweet sympathy,
To work each other's joy and true content,
Which they have harbour'd since their first descent
Out of their heavenly bowers, where they did see
And know each other here belov'd to be.”
― Edmund Spenser, Fowre Hymnes
Goodreads Authors/Readers
— 56077 members
— last activity 1 hour, 38 min ago
This group is dedicated to connecting readers with Goodreads authors. It is divided by genres, and includes folders for writing resources, book websit This group is dedicated to connecting readers with Goodreads authors. It is divided by genres, and includes folders for writing resources, book websites, videos/trailers, and blogs. Feel free to invite some friends to join our Round Table community!http://www.goodreads.com/group/invite_members/26989-goodreads-authors-readers -Vincent Lowry (Moderator, Author, & Photographer) *Masthead photo: Taos, NM (c) 2021 by Vincent Lowry Slide Show: http://youtu.be/QKOPP4kIGLc Authors and readers are invited to check out these additional links: 1) The Author Resource Round Table on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/group_folder/116489?group_id=26989 2) The E-Author Resources blog: http://eauthorresource.wordpress.com/ 3) The Book Video blog: http://ratemybookvideo.wordpress.com/ ...more
Goodreads Librarians Group
— 313185 members
— last activity 1 minute ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Librarians Group is the official group for requesting additions or updates to the catalog, including: * Adding new books or editions * Editing book information (including covers) * Combining and merging book editions * Edits to page counts, quotes or awards * Correcting author profiles for authors not in the Goodreads Author Program If you're a Goodreads member with a new request, click Join Group. Once you're added to the group, you can post your question following this link. Simple requests (e.g. page count updates) typically take around 48 hours depending on the volume of requests, while more complex requests could take up to a couple of weeks (e.g. adding a new book). Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide. Keep in mind that Librarians don't: * Grant or give insights into Librarian applications / Librarian status * Move ISBNs or ASINs between editions * Help with non-catalog Support questions (e.g. How do I reset my password?) For help with these queries or to submit general questions, comments or feature requests, try Goodreads Help or use the Contact Us form. If you're a Librarian and want to process requests, please refer to our Librarian Manual to ensure edits are performed in line with Goodreads policies. ...more
