The Art of Cruelty
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2 out of 5 stars
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A great book ruined by the narrator
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When Roland Barthes's groundbreaking Mythologies first appeared in English in 1972, it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant works in French theory - yet nearly half of the essays from the original work were missing. This new edition of Mythologies is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic. It includes the brilliant "Astrology", never published in English before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fun and engaging
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Publisher's Summary
Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the 20th-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away? Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel.
In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.
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What listeners say about The Art of Cruelty
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Melina
- 11-14-17
Wonderful book, mediocre narration
The narrator mispronounces so many terms, artists, and theorists to the point of being distracting.
5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- joseph berry
- 08-15-17
Hugely powerful
Maggie Nelson is extraordinary Russia. The range of references is very broad and also very deep. The only negative I had was the new races voice I found it
too staccato and mannered. Nonetheless, the material was compelling enough that I listened to the end I have now ordered the book so that I can read it in hardcopy. It warrants that kind of attention.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 07-20-17
Great book!
I really enjoyed the book, as I do all of Maggie Nelson's writing, but given the density of the content, the narrator spoke wayyy too fast. Had to listen at 75% speed.
4 people found this helpful