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Dewey Decimal Number: 843.6 EAN: 9780802132185 ISBN: 0802132189 Label: Grove Press Manufacturer: Grove Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 753 Publication Date: January 11, 1990 Publisher: Grove Press Studio: Grove Press Editorial Review: Product Description: This volume contains Philosophy in the Bedroom, a major novel that presents the clearest summation of his political philosophy; Eugénie de Franval, a novella widely considered to be a masterpiece of eighteenth-century French literature; and the only authentic and complete American edition of his most famous work, Justine. Related Items:      see moreAverage Rating:
 Rating:  - fast shipping, great conditionI received the item fast, the book is in great condition. Exactly what I needed as I ordered the book for a seminar. I haven't read it yet but will soon. Rating:  - obsessionAfter having seen the film "Quivers" about de Sade with Geoffrey Rush, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about the writer by reading his writing. The guy is obsessed with sodomy--it gets tiresome. His writing, though intelligently presented, is eclipsed by his incredibly juvenile and obsessive sensibilities. Not a favourite tome. Rating: - Good oneHe is a freak and that is why I like his writing. What a life this guy led. Rating: - Much more than I ever thought it would beAs one of the introductory authors mentioned "that those who read know of Sade, but very few ever actually read Sade." I was this person until I finally read this book. My one complaint is that prior to this I had never read Sade, so reading the introduction was a bit daunting. I didn't fully understand their references, those from his literature or historical. So if this is actually your first book of Sade's, or any of the others from this publisher, skip the introduction and read it at the end. The introductory essays seem to be written from the perspective of someone that expects their readers to be fairly well versed in Sade, a terrible thing if you never read Sade until now. So read them at the end and it won't ruin anything for you, rather they will enhance the work for you upon reading them in the end. I will say this about the introductory material though, the section with the historical time-line was superb. I found it very interesting as well as useful. I have a couple other editions of De Sade's works and this one appears to be the best by far, aside from the fact it's not very friendly from a portable stand-point, but the writing/translations seem better than some others I've come across. I would still say Sade is quite the controversial author and I've been getting into books of that nature as of late. As I am also currently reading Mein Kampf as I write this. I think a vast amount of people have opinions on these kinds of authors, but have never read their works. De Sade, for example, I think is typically unjustly demonized by a great many people. Hitler is a little more justified in being demonized, but I still think people should read his book before they start to exult some opinion on the person in detail. Sade, on the other hand, is little more complex and less obvious. His main problem is that he wrote Justine and in 18th century thinking, that is a grave enough sin in itself. Not so in the 20th century, though I don't think sadistic pleasure has fully outdone Sade yet, because he set a pretty strong precedent. Though, if he was going around doing the things he wrote about to women in "Justine," his demonization would be far more justified. As it is, he was involved with one girl, that was apparently willing at first, but changed her mind later. However, what was done is nothing compared to what he writes about or what is done to people nowadays, of course in that era, it was probably seen as far worse and shocking. Either way, the French government went through lengths to try and destroy his works, but thankfully for those astute readers they are here for us to enjoy, or be reviled by, as it is up to the reader to decide. I stress that it is up to the reader, opinions on works not being read are useless in my point of view, all you can merely say at that point is that "it is not something that interests me," but one should not delve into a conversation about the work in question! The first text is "Philsophy in the Bedroom," and what an interesting work that is. It is a mixture of philosophy, politics, and gratuitous sex. I will admit the homosexuality brought up in the writing caught me off guard at first, for it was unexpected. I typically do not go after that sort of writing, but the philosophical aspect is what kept me turning the pages. Though I must admit my own general deviancy, because some of the scenes were quite well done when the characters were not philsophizing. The part I struggled with though were the political discussions, I'm not an avid follower of politics in the 20th & 21st century, so I know quite a bit less about historical politics, unfortunately. I think a lot of the political discussions taking place between the characters focused on politics of that era (and are very specific to France), so any student of historical politics will likely find this vastly fascinating. The discusions on philosophy, such as the philosophy of crime leading to true freedom is quite a bit more interesting to me as I am more interested in philosophy in general. (Not that Sade has truly convinced me to go out and commit criminal acts by any means.) It shows that Sade was very well thought out in his writings because he makes fairly convincing arguments, though in terms of liberation, I believe it is up to the person. If you choose to live by such societal restrictions and your inner inhibitions coincide with the populace then you are free by your own point of view. If you find these things extremely limiting, then you are not free. I suspect Sade found societal normalcy a trapping that he sought to escape, thus he had a far different view on criminal acts. The next two sections were relatively short, especially the discussion between a Priest and a Dying Man, which is essentially a satirical work. It clearly shows the lack of love Sade has for the church. Since I essentially agree with this sentiment, I had no problems with this, but those people out there who are religious may have an issue with this. However, I can't see the devoutly religious enjoying Sade's work and sexual vulgarity in the least to begin with. Next we have "Marie du Franval", also known as "Incest" from another publisher. This story is quite different than some of his other works, it's not nearly as explicit, but it does cross one of the more extreme taboo lines between father and daughter. Interestingly it does have a fairly unhappy ending for his main character who ends up losing what he loves most. A curious ending for Sade, since Sade preaches full liberty in most of his stories (regardless of who it would hurt). Perhaps this was merely written creatively to switch up his usual works, a break from the norm and to show, as an author, he can work outside of his comfort zone (so to speak). The final part of this collection is the great apex of Sade's works. This is one of his most well known works and flows in conjunction, to a degree, with "Juliette." Here we have "Justine" the work that was Sade's undoing and got him put in prison, but made his works live on in infamy. This was, personally, my favorite tale in this entire collected works. That opinion, of course, may change as I read more, but so far I am summarily impressed. Justine has the greatest story and best blend of demented sex and philosophy in all the book. I can see why they saved this until the end. Justine is a lost child who seeks to guard her virtue above all other things. However, she is thrust through a sequence of very unfortunate circumstances and is debauched in some of the worst ways imaginable. However, all of her captors seem to be more than just a lout who is merely exacting pleasure for no reason. No, these characters a typically well educated, some are wealthy, and think about the philosophy and motivations of their particular desires. Not only do they think about their internal motivations, they are also happy to expound on this at length to their captives! The pinnacle of this is by far when she is taken captive by the monks, and I won't ruin it for anyone, but I'm sure this particular section is what did Sade in. Justine can never seem to "get saved" but rather goes from clutches to clutches of various captors, when all she wants is to live a wholesome life that she can be proud of. This will never be the case for her, and she is very disillusioned with life by the end. In the end the reader feels it is a very tragic tale over all. However, we'll see a wholly different perspective with her sister Juliette. A lot of people see the sadism and the lascivous sex as the trademark of Sade's work, others walk away having a different perspective on life in general. I feel I am one of the latter, because I had never particularly thought of the philosophy of commiting crimes. While some of the sexual deviancy is very strong, I felt I could stomach them better because they were written (of course doing a lot of this stuff in real life is very illegal, and some would likely kill a person), but if you are particularly weak hearted then this may be a text to avoid. All some people want to read are the sex scenes and they want to skip the philosophy, this is probably a lot easier to pull off. I would say the works are typically about half and half in terms of philosophy versus sex, and I found the mixture is really what kept me turning the pages. I always wanted to find out what the next antogonist of vices had in store for me next, and how would Justine react to that particular philosopher! All in all, I would recommend this great work, but I realize that this is surely not a work for everyone, so if what I've said appeals to you, read it, if not, don't read it. Rating: - a wonderful one-handed book...While it is interesting how the Marquis works in his philosophy (about 30 pages of orgy, around the same length of the most well-endowed man reading aloud from a political pamphlet one of them just happended to pick up on the way, followed about 30 more pages of orgy and so on), the desired effects are accomplished: the reader is left satisfied on the intellectual, philosophical, and yes, sexual levels. As for Justine, one can definitely feel for the main character and itch to read Juliette, a wonderful companion which is also available here at Amazon. Some of Sade's descriptions are not for the weak at heart though, but that's part of life and the risk you take in leafing through a book like this. I didin't really know a thing about actual libertinage before I read this book, but that certainly isn't the case now! I had only expected to be enlightened on a half-way intellectual level; I bought this book without considering the possibilites of the content suggested by the title. Sade's refreshing view of sex and world-view (which ranges from indifferent to - surprise - "sadistic" in every sense of the word) was indeed way ahead of his time. While you probably won't agree whole-heartedly with him, he definitely gives the reader something to think about as far as the darker side of the human mind is concerned. Enjoy! |
The rise and fall of muni-Fi (and rise again): Clearly, the largest story involving Wi-Fi in 2007 was the at-first continued growth in cities awarding contracts with no money involved on their part to have service providers build Wi-Fi networks--and the subsequent failure of these networks to be built. Starting quietly in late 2006, the market shifted for metro-scale Wi-Fi. During 2007, providers decided that bearing the full cost of a city-wide network without city contracts wasn't financially sensible.
The full scope of the low uptake rates in cities that had large portions of the network built out also became clear: rather than 15 to 35 percent of residents subscribing, just a few percentage points would put a network in the top tier. Revenue is apparently also pretty minimal even in cities like Taipei, Taiwan, the network provider for which was predicting 250,000 subscribers by the end of 2006, and had just 30,000 regular users each month at last public report in early 2007.
MetroFi started to tell cities that without an advance service commitment at a minimum level -- an anchor tenancy -- the company couldn't proceed on networks. In 2007, MetroFi lost half a dozen bids or saw contracts canceled due to this change. Its work in Portland, Ore., the biggest network it was building, won't be extended beyond current limited dimensions until additional capital or a city commitment is obtained; the city has said it won't commit to service fees, however.
Meanwhile, EarthLink lost its CEO Garry Betty in January due to cancer. A strong backer of new initiatives to change EarthLink's core business, his death was certainly one of the causes in a quick re-evaluation of the municipal wireless division. New CEO Rolla Huff pulled EarthLink out of new deals, suspended existing ones, laid off hundreds of employees while gutting the metro Wi-Fi division, and appears poised to leave currently built or underway networks, including their flagship Philadelphia effort. They may sell the division, but it's hard to see much worth in it given the current state.
In a smaller bit of news, Kite Networks, formerly known by various names, was sold by parent MobilePro to Gobility with conditions that according to SEC filings by MobilePro weren't met. Kite was once high flying, in the company of EarthLink and MetroFi as one of the major U.S. Wi-Fi network builders. Now it's still in that company, with work on its Arizona networks apparently halted. A suitor has emerged in the form of a regional telecom that specializes in the Hispanophone market (double entendre intended), and which thinks it could boost Tempe subscriptions from the current several hundred to about 300 times that number. Hope springs eternal.
And while AT&T was able to launch a Riverside, Calif., network with MetroFi handling the installation and operation, it backed out of St. Louis, Mo., due to a utility pole problem, and the bidding in Chicago, too. The Metro Connect consortiums in Sacramento and Silcion Valley were unable to raise financing despite the apparent blue-chip participation by Cisco, IBM, and Intel.
County-wide Wi-Fi was also hit again and again by providers who pulled out--CenturyTel in Pierce County, Wash., for instance--or problems with technology or utility poles. In a few scattered areas, Wi-Fi across counties has been built out, but it's not an idea whose time has yet come.
Muni-Fi isn't down for the count. While these high-profile networks in large cities and county-wide networks have mostly hit the skids, more modest networks with well-defined goals continue to be built with a focus on public safety and municipal uses in hundreds of small and medium-sized towns. Brookline, Mass., may be a good example, in which a public safety/public access network was built relatively quickly and with no reported problems.
And there's one big city success story: Minneapolis, Minn. While local provider US Internet wound up spending more than they'd intended, reports from the ground indicate that service works quite well, and subscriptions and interest are quite high. The company was able to respond almost instantly to the bridge collapse a few months ago by deploying additional mesh infrastructure to add network capacity in the area. And it says that it could reach positive cash flow in early 2008. One of their advantages? They secured a substantial commitment from the city for the services they built.
Other trends of the year gone by: Music and Wi-Fi are clearly more aligned, with the new Zune models and firmware from Microsoft allowing wireless sync (but not yet Wi-Fi purchases), and the introduction of both the Apple iPhone and iTunes touch, which allow music purchases over Wi-Fi but not synchronization. (While the MusicGremlin preceded both the Zune and iPhone/iPod options, it didn't seem to gain any market traction in 2007.)
Security continues to be a concern in 2007, although less of one as home users have clearly accepted WPA Personal, at long last, and networks are increasingly encrypted through better software from major hardware manufacturers. Wizards make encryption a no-brainer, when they work. Corporations stung by reports and by requirements from credit card issuers are also clearly protecting their networks better, although I'm sure we'll still see breaches at those firms that didn't cross every "t."
The 802.11n standard's emergence into an interim certified Wi-Fi state was also a significant milestone for faster wireless networking. Shipments of Draft 802.11n products in 2007 increased significantly, while prices dropped so much that it makes perfect sense to purchase a $50 to $80 Draft N router than a comparable G unit. Manufacturers made it clear as the year progressed that hardware sold today should generally be firmware upgradable to whatever the final, not much changed 802.11n standard is when approved in 2008.
Gadget-Fi continued on the rise, as an increasing array of devices included Wi-Fi as a connectivity option. Most notably, T-Mobile launched its HotSpot@Home service, the largest scale offering of converged cell/Wi-Fi calling. By year's end, they had four handsets for sale--two plain, a BlackBerry, and a clamshell--but subscriber numbers are unknown.
What's coming in 2008?
In-flight Internet (over Wi-Fi): 2008 is finally the year. It was supposed to be 2005. Or maybe 2002. But we should see a number of planes, mostly flying over the U.S., equipped with either in-flight Internet access or in-flight text messaging and text email. Connexion by Boeing's failure fortunately didn't discourage a half a dozen competitors who were in the R&D phase when Boeing wrote off its satellite-based Internet access venture.
AirCell, Row 44, OnAir, Aeromobile, Panasonic Avionics, and a T-Mobile consortium are among the announced or nearly announced firms with commitments or trials underway. AirCell and Row 44, focused on the U.S. market, plan to deliver Internet not voice to fuselages; OnAir and Aeromobile are working on mobile-based services, including voice, via existing cell phones and devices.
In 2008, American, Alaska, and Virgin America will launch trials over the U.S., and potentially move into production. OnAir should be expanding in Europe beyond the single French aircraft that's equipped in a trial now to RyanAir's fleet. And Aeromobile's Qantas trial could turn into real usage. There's likely action that will happen in Asia and the Middle East, too, that's not yet disclosed.
Other trends to watch
Wi-Fi in every smartphone with better integration. The iPhone was the leading edge, pun intended, offering 2.5G EDGE cell networking as part of the subscription price, along with seamless roaming to Wi-Fi networks. With RIM finally offering BlackBerry models with Wi-Fi, it's unlikely that any future smartphone model intended for serious users would lack the option.
Wi-Fi everywhere. Despite the setbacks in municipal Wi-Fi, wireless networks continue to expand, with better and better coverage found across larger areas and more locations. 2008 might be the year of hotspot saturation.
WiMax arrives. In 2008, we'll finally see production mobile WiMax in action in the U.S., and the questions about whether it works well enough and fast enough at the right price to beat current generation cell data networks, and make money for the disorganized Sprint Nextel will be answered. More certainly, Clearwire, with WiMax as its only option, will push aggressively to steal customers away from fixed, wired broadband, especially in markets with little competition.
Gadget-Fi a go-go. Wi-Fi will become an expected part of gaming consoles (already found in a few), cameras (found in crippled form in just a handful), regular cell phones (in dozens and dozens now), and music players (with more full functionality).
Three of them date from the '20s and '30s and were produced by Samuel Goldwyn. The 1926 silent The Winning of Barbara Worth gave Western stunt man and bit player Cooper his first featured role (by accident--the actor originally cast didn't report for work!). A cowboy whose visionary surveyor father aims to "redeem the desert and make it one fine garden," Cooper's character is the third corner of a romantic triangle, ordained by the Hollywood caste system to lose lifelong sweetheart Vilma Banky to engineer Ronald Colman. Colman has lots more screen time than Cooper and bears the moral-ethical brunt of the eco-conscious drama; he's also surprisingly persuasive wearing a sweat-stained Stetson and trading gunshots with the bad guys (if this were a sound film, Colman could never have gotten away with it). But the camera and the audience are locked onto Cooper whenever he's on screen. In longshot or vulnerable closeup, he's already one of the gods of the cinema. As for the movie, the quality of the print is excellent, its clarity intensified by bronze, yellow, and moonlit-blue tinting that often seems on the verge of resolving into full color. Director Henry King shows a good eye for action and bold vistas, and a visual adventurousness mostly absent from his later work.
Next up chronologically is The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), and the best thing about this misbegotten movie is Garson Kanin's description, in one of his Hollywood memoirs, of how Leo McCarey sold the idea for it to Sam Goldwyn. McCarey was, of course, a comedic master (recently Oscared for directing The Awful Truth), and his exuberant pitch convinced Goldwyn and his staffers that audiences would "piss" themselves laughing at this romantic comedy about a daughter of privilege (Merle Oberon) who falls for a rodeo rider (Cooper) and learns homespun values. Goldwyn paid McCarey off, assigned some writers to the script, then realized there was no real story--"no there there," as Gertrude Stein might have put it. The resultant unfunny and unromantic endeavor oozes bad faith from every pore, with neck-snapping life changes foisted on the hapless Cooper and Oberon from reel to reel, and excruciating scenes (jitterbugging in a drawing room, playing house back on Cooper's ranch) that strain charmlessly for McCarey's patented brand of fey. H.C. Potter directed, understandably without conviction.
We and Cooper are back on track with The Real Glory (1939). The reliable Henry Hathaway helmed this second cousin to his and Cooper's The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, with Cooper as an Army doctor assigned to the Philippine Constabulary on Mindanao in 1906. The movie was well-received when it came out; encountered in the shadow of the Iraq War, its tale of U.S. occupiers trying to help the local populace "stand up" against a fanatical and murderous insurgency takes on new fascination. There are some amazing passages--two horrendous murders by bolo knife--and the final battle sequence puts the CGI-riddled action films of the present day to shame. But the most impressive element is Cooper, and we can't improve on the verdict of that astute film critic Graham Greene: "Mr. Cooper ... has never acted better.... Watch him inoculate [Andrea King] against cholera--the casual jab of the needle, and the dressing slapped on while he talks, as though a thousand arms had taught him where to stab and he doesn't have to think any more."
For the final film in the set we jump into the '50s--the century's and Cooper's. Vera Cruz (1954) casts him as a former Confederate officer who's ridden into Emperor Maximilian's Mexico, hoping to make a fortune in the new civil war south of the border so that he can rebuild his own devastated homeland. Costar Burt Lancaster (whose company Hecht-Lancaster was producing) plays another mercenary, a real sociopath, and it's fascinating to watch these two stellar icons of very different Hollywood eras make common cause--Lancaster at the height of his grinning-predator mode, Cooper an aging knight whose aim is still true. Director Robert Aldrich keeps finding dynamic uses for the SuperScope format and flavorfully fills it with sublime uglies like Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Charles Horvath, Jack Lambert, and Charles Buchinsky-about-to-become-Bronson. Pieces of this movie found their way into the dreams of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone. --Richard T. Jameson
