Review by New York Times Review
"Aelian, in the second century, said of the hyena fish - a creature no longer known to ichthyologists - that if you cut off its right fin and put it under your pillow, you will have terrifying visions." Combining scholarly authority with a moral allegiance to the arcane, the translator and editor Weinberger creates genre-bending essays and prose poems to help us see the world anew. This eclectic collection spans centuries and cultures and might make you wonder if there is anything its author doesn't know. A corresponding omniscience shapes the works themselves, as in "The City," a prismatic look at urban centers across time. This anthropological stance guides much of the book. First-person narratives channel explorers of the Amazon and the American West, while hybrid works like the title essay and "A Calendar of Stones" merge history, creation myths and other lore, revealing the earnest folly of our efforts to comprehend the mystical. The book's second half contains equally inventive cultural criticism, including essays on Herbert Read, Charles Reznikoff and Bela Balazs, and an intriguing comparison of translations of the I Ching. Weinberger often marshals fantastical-yet-real facts, in texts as brief and deadpan as anything by Lydia Davis. One powerful example lists interactions at the Berlin Wall, with the taunts and human gestures of the West followed by a meticulous Soviet-style log of censure and shots fired. Other incisive commentary includes "Bush the Postmodernist," an inspired review of George W. Bush's "Decision Points" by way of Foucault.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 11, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
A new book of essays proves to be as erudite, compelling, and delightfully strange as we have come to expect from Weinberger (An Elemental Thing, 2007). To describe these essays as poetic is to state something true and obvious but also perhaps to miss the point. As a poet and translator of poetry (most famously, the works of Octavio Paz), Weinberger's hyperfocus on the textures and rhythms and valences of language informs every aspect of his writing, as surely in a piece about ancient societies' reverence for sacred stones as in a deft takedown of George W. Bush's Decision Points (2010). But to imply that poetry, or a poetic sensibility, is something that can be added to essays like so much coffee creamer is to imply a separateness between poetry and essay that, Weinberger seems to suggest, does not or should not exist. So it is in this spirit that Weinberger shares his fascinations via an enlightening tour of East-West interactions: Zoroastrianism, the book of Genesis, Western impressions of the Buddha, the Mongolian conquest, and American interest in Indian classical poetry. Emphasizing symmetries between diverse cultures, he jumps around the globe, often without much context or explanation, which may put off some readers. But those comfortable with Weinberger's idiosyncratic style will find his enthusiasm contagious and delight in the fragments he holds up to the light.--Driscoll, Brendan Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This slim volume from Weinberger (The Walls, the City, and the World), a prodigious translator, editor, and author, provides abundant rewards for readers in essays that are short, dense, and rich with meanings and ideas. The selections display an aesthetic of distilled prose and a fascination with poking at the seams between reportage, fiction, and poetry. The book is separated into halves, the first of which is a sort of addendum to Weinberger's haunting, meditative 2007 An Elemental Thing. In these new pieces, Weinberger discusses history, nature, and mythology-among other things-and interrogates the traditional form and function of the essay. He opens with a chapter dissecting the story of Adam and Eve, and from there casts a wide net over topics including dreams, American mythologies, and a cultural taxonomy of stones. The second section of the book contains more traditional essays, some looking at particular works, and several in the more experimental vein of the first half. Of particular note are his essay on indigenous Mexican poetry and his notorious 2010 review of George W. Bush's memoir Decision Points, entitled "Bush the Postmodernist." The latter is a withering piece of prose that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and horrifying, as acute a look at the 21st-century American condition as any produced to date. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The accomplished essayist, editor, and translator marries a thirst for other worlds with a questing intellect in this challenging menagerie of writings, some previously published.Weinberger (The Wall, the City, and the World, 2014, etc.) opens with a sufficiently engaging revision of the Adam and Eve story and attendant superstitions but then launches into a rather cryptic continuation of his serial essay An Elemental Thing, which, despite its often elegant poetics, may confound anyone who has not read the earlier installments. It may puzzle even if one has, given the section's preference for the esoteric, the ethereal, and the enigmatic. However, the author saves it with brief but arresting curiosities from a selection of world subcultures. A writer of impressive, sometimes-daunting erudition, Weinberger offsets this first section's forays into the obscure with measured, eye-opening considerations of subjects ranging from incarnations of the Buddha and the I Ching to the literature of the city and Mongol history, including a devastating critique of an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. East Indian and Mexican poetry likewise get their due. These exhaustively researched pieces are richly detailed and unfailingly interesting. Contrastingly unrestrained yet telling is his scorched-earth review of George W. Bush's Decision Points. As an aesthete and literary archaeologist, Weinberger also exhumes and recoversor at least re-examinesthe artistic reputations of a number of half-forgotten poets, authors, and intellectuals who were lions in their days. This is done with admirable sobriety and finesse and without a trace of hagiography, though for some, it may tend to bog down in minutiae and oddity. Weinberger says of the I Ching, its fragments and aphorisms are meant to be dipped into at random. One might say the same of this book, which dazzles as a repository of knowledge and interpretation but otherwise may be an acquired taste. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
