As in his novels and essays, Wiesel weights his approach to Judaic destiny and the holocaust he survived, as testimony, but here in these affectionate clusters of Hasidic tales and legends of his childhood, he further reaches toward new generations as one who "transmits. . . to close gaps and create bonds." The mystic Hasidic movement, which ran counter to a more formalized, academic Judaism in the East Europe of the 18th century was conceived (or so it is popularly believed) by "the Baal Shem," a hazy figure to historians but to the Hasidim a fountainhead "where facts became subservient to imagination and beauty." ("If it is true, as the Baal-Shem says, for man to hide the light of dawn. . . simply by shielding his eyes with his hands. . . he can rediscover it by merely moving his hands.") The second group of tales concern the great Maggid and his school at Mezeritch about which it was said that, whereas ali men can say God exists and is of this world, at "Mezeritch they know it." It was the Maggid who adapted the concepts of Baal Shem through the new idea of the office of the Rebbe, who offered almost supernatural powers as well as wisdom, who spoke for God and interceded for man. There are tales of marvelous appearances and even denunciations of God for broken promises (possible when God was so close, so bound in love). Throughout the tales of other great Masters Wiesel reenters a dazzling world of religious certainties and "everything is possible." A revivifying collection.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1972
ISBN: 067144171X
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1971
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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