Critical Essays

by Reinhold Grimm, Reinhold Grimm (Editor), John Simon (Foreword)

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

272 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1982

Reviews

[Slow Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some duller essays and then some genuinely illuminating ones to draw you back in. A few of his major ideas and themes emerge here —not everything is as well delineated as his ideas on secondary illiteracy, mind-industry and so forth, but lots of still-fresh ideas to chew on

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, because the author died, I picked up a book that’s been sitting on my shelves for decades. This essay collection is both dated and more interesting, at times, because it is 40 years old. The literary essays were of less interest to me than the political essays, especially “Toward a Theory of Treason,” “A Critique of Political Ecology,” and “On the Inevitability of the Middle Classes: A Sociological Caprice.” Enzensberger’s relatively old-fashioned Marxism is hardly heard here in the U.S. anymore and, therefore, it puts everything, especially environmentalism, in a different perspective. I’m glad I finally got around to reading this volume.

[Kathleene]

I'm reading this mostly for his essay, "Tourists of the Revolution," translated by Michael Roloff. The essay is in Part 3 "Sociology and Ecology." Although his focus is mainly on the touring of the Eastern Europe former Communist bloc, it's certainly an excellent comment on "post-revolution sight-see-ers" (my phrase), in places like Viet Nam, Cuba, Chiapas, just to name a few. This phenomenon is something I often explore in my own poetry, but with heavy doses of irony.

[Naushika · Rating 1 out of 5]

Im Deutschen: 20-zehn-Minuten-Essays, leider wirklich alle viel zu knapp und schlecht. Der Autor wird seinem warnenden Vorwort in diesem Sinne gerecht, keines der Essays schöpft ein Thema aus, geschweige denn geht ein kleinen wenig tiefer als die öberflächlichsten groben Strukturen. Besonders enttäuschend wird es dann, wenn man bemerkt wie viel Potential in den meisten der Themen steckt und das Enzensberger zumindest grundsätzlich eine kluge Antwort zu suchen scheint.