The Art Of Cruelty

Download or read book The Art of Cruelty written by Maggie Nelson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is criticism at its best." —Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art, Nelson’s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimately 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.

Download or read book Bluets written by Maggie Nelson and published by Wave Books. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . . A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.

Download or read book Our Kind of Cruelty written by Araminta Hall and published by Picador. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A searing, chilling sliver of perfection . . . May well turn out to be the year’s best thriller.” —Charles Finch, The New York Times Book Review “This is simply one of the nastiest and most disturbing thrillers I’ve read in years. I loved it, right down to the utterly chilling final line.” —Gillian Flynn A spellbinding, darkly twisted novel about desire and obsession, and the complicated lines between truth and perception, Our Kind of Cruelty introduces Araminta Hall, a chilling new voice in psychological suspense. This is a love story. Mike’s love story. Mike Hayes fought his way out of a brutal childhood and into a quiet, if lonely, life before he met Verity Metcalf. V taught him about love, and in return, Mike has dedicated his life to making her happy. He’s found the perfect home, the perfect job; he’s sculpted himself into the physical ideal V has always wanted. He knows they’ll be blissfully happy together. It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t been returning his e-mails or phone calls. It doesn’t matter that she says she’s marrying Angus. It’s all just part of the secret game they used to play. If Mike watches V closely, he’ll see the signs. If he keeps track of her every move, he’ll know just when to come to her rescue . . .

Download or read book Theater of Cruelty written by Ian Buruma and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Ian Buruma is fascinated, he writes, “by what makes the human species behave atrociously.” In Theater of Cruelty the acclaimed author of The Wages of Guilt and Year Zero: A History of 1945 once again turns to World War II to explore that question—to the Nazi occupation of Paris, the Allied bombing of German cities, the international controversies over Anne Frank’s diaries, Japan’s militarist intellectuals and its kamikaze pilots. One way that people respond to power and cruelty, Buruma argues, is through art, and the art that most interests him reveals the dark impulses beneath the veneer of civilized behavior. This is what draws him to German and Japanese artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mishima Yukio, and Yokoo Tadanori, as well as to filmmakers such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. All were affected by fascism and its terrible consequences; all “looked into the abyss and made art of what they saw.” Whether he is writing in this wide-ranging collection about war, artists, or film—or about David Bowie’s music, R. Crumb’s drawings, the Palestinians of the West Bank, or Asian theme parks—Ian Buruma brings sympathetic historical insight and shrewd aesthetic judgment to understanding the diverse ways that people deal with violence and cruelty in life and in art. Theater of Cruelty includes eight pages of color and black & white images.

Download or read book On Freedom written by Maggie Nelson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' OLIVIA LAING What can freedom really mean? In this invigorating, essential book, Maggie Nelson explores how we might think, experience or talk about the concept in ways that are responsive to our divided world. Drawing on pop culture, theory and the intimacies and plain exchanges of daily life, she follows freedom - with all its complexities - through four realms: art, sex, drugs and climate. On Freedom offers a bold new perspective on the challenging times in which we live. 'Tremendously energising' Guardian 'This provocative meditation...shows Nelson at her most original and brilliant' New York Times 'Nelson is such a friend to her reader, such brilliant company... Exhilarating' Literary Review * A New York Times Notable Book * * A Guardian and TLS 'Books of 2021' Pick *

Download or read book The Art Of Seduction written by Robert Greene and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-09-03 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Which sort of seducer could you be? Siren? Rake? Cold Coquette? Star? Comedian? Charismatic? Or Saint? This book will show you which. Charm, persuasion, the ability to create illusions: these are some of the many dazzling gifts of the Seducer, the compelling figure who is able to manipulate, mislead and give pleasure all at once. When raised to the level of art, seduction, an indirect and subtle form of power, has toppled empires, won elections and enslaved great minds. In this beautiful, sensually designed book, Greene unearths the two sides of seduction: the characters and the process. Discover who you, or your pursuer, most resembles. Learn, too, the pitfalls of the anti-Seducer. Immerse yourself in the twenty-four manoeuvres and strategies of the seductive process, the ritual by which a seducer gains mastery over their target. Understand how to 'Choose the Right Victim', 'Appear to Be an Object of Desire' and 'Confuse Desire and Reality'. In addition, Greene provides instruction on how to identify victims by type. Each fascinating character and each cunning tactic demonstrates a fundamental truth about who we are, and the targets we've become - or hope to win over. The Art of Seduction is an indispensable primer on the essence of one of history's greatest weapons and the ultimate power trip. From the internationally bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, and The 33 Strategies Of War.

Download or read book Something Bright, Then Holes written by Maggie Nelson and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-06-01 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Maggie Nelson’s name became synonymous with such genre-defying, binary-slaying writing as The Argonauts and The Art of Cruelty, this collection of poetry introduced readers to a singular voice in the making: exhilarating, fiercely vulnerable, intellectually curious, and one of a kind. These days/the world seems to split up/into those who need to dredge/and those who shrug their shoulders/and say, It’s just something/that happened. While Maggie Nelson refers here to a polluted urban waterway, the Gowanus Canal, these words could just as easily describe Nelson’s incisive approach to desire, heartbreak, and emotional excavation in Something Bright, Then Holes. Whether writing from the debris-strewn shores of a contaminated canal or from the hospital room of a friend, Nelson charts each emotional landscape she encounters with unparalleled precision and empathy. Since its publication in 2007, the collection has proven itself to be both a record of a singular vision in the making as well as a timeless meditation on love, loss, and―perhaps most frightening of all―freedom.