Product Description
This study explores Heinrich BÖll's 'aesthetic thinking', as it is expressed in the author's disparate and voluminous writings on literature. BÖll's work in this field is situated in the multi-faceted context of social, political, and cultural developments in post-war Germany, and is shown to be an important adjunct to the novels and stories which were honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature.
An understanding of Heinrich BÖll's 'aesthetic thinking' can illuminate the writer's fiction in an intriguing way. In particular, BÖll's defence of the 'rationality of poetry' raises issues which reverberate in continuing debates on the social validity of literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the terrorists always win
Boll weaves an interesting story of a man in the public eye, who, along with his family, needs to be protected at all times. Security guards make a normal life nearly impossible for the family, which is rather fractured anyway. Throughout the book, Boll makes it clear that whether or not anyone will be assassinated, the terrorists have triumphed by forcing the family into isolation behind a sadly penetrable wall of "security".Not as sensitively written as some of Boll's earlier works, The Safety Net is still worth reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Miller, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, Heinrich Böll, John Ralston Saul, Liu Xiaobo, Alberto Moravia, Elizabeth Craig, International Pen, Homero Aridjis, Pen American Center, Pen Canada, Catherine Amy Dawson Scott, Jiří Gruša, Kurdish Pen. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 138. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt:Alberto Moravia.Alberto Moravia , born Alberto Pincherle (November 28, 1907 September 26, 1990) was an Italian novelist . His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism .He is best known for his debut novel Gli indifferenti (published in 1929), and for the anti-fascist novel Il Conformista (The Conformist ), the basis for the film The Conformist (1970) by Bernardo Bertolucci . Other novels of his translated to the cinema are Il Disprezzo (A Ghost at Noon or Contempt ) filmed by Jean-Luc Godard as Le Mépris (Contempt ) (1963); La Noia (Boredom ), filmed with that title by Damiano Damiani in 1963 and released in the US as The Empty Canvas in 1964; and La Ciociara filmed by Vittorio de Sica as Two Women (1960). Cedric Kahn 's L'Ennui (1998) is another version of La Noia .Biography Early years Alberto Pincherle (the pen-name "Moravia" is the surname of his maternal grandfather) was born on Via Sgambati in Rome, Italy, to a wealthy middle-class family. His Jewish father, Carlo, was an architect and a painter. His Catholic mother, Teresa Iginia de Marsanich, was from Ancona , but of Dalmatian origin. Her brother Augusto De Marsanich , Moravia's uncle, was an undersecretary in the National Fascist Party cabinet.Moravia did not finish conventional schooling because, at the age of nine, he contracted tuberculosis of the bone that confined him to bed for five years. He spent three years at home, and two in a sanatorium at Cortina ... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

I am not a fan of Heinrich Böll
This novel has the form of a police report. As usual with Heinrich Böll the subject matter is a confused mixture of religion (Catholic christianity) and left wing politics. The novel is apparently inspired by the political terrorism of the Red Army Faction in the 1970's Western Germany.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
An interesting fast read, but the translation from German left a choppy incomplete picture of some of the main antagonists in the story. It made a good selection for a book club, but the two movies made from it helped define the characters. I doubt if I will read any of his books again. MP

all right, not great
Book is greatly written. The way the author depicts the story one can easily imagine the scenes... long, long sentences that sounds as someone is talking to you. It is a convoluted story, many angles, many names to keep straight.. in the end? not that great of a story, nevertheless... not too bad..

The right of the press to pander vs. the right of the individual to privacy or, at a minimum, accurate reporting
Heinrich Boll (d. 1985) was one of the three greatest German novelists (along with Gunter Grass and W.G. Sebald) of the latter half of the 20th Century.This novella was initially published in serialized form in "Der Spiegel" in 1974.Boll wrote it midst public controversy in Germany over the reporting of political violence by a large-circulation newspaper, which Boll felt unduly transgressed the rights of individuals in a liberal democracy.

Katharina Blum is an attractive young woman with a strong sense of honor trying to make a living, independently, in the restaurant/catering field and taking care of the homes of affluent professionals.She is the epitome of the capitalistic ethic, a young woman from a working-class background attempting to secure for herself a comfortable petty bourgeois existence.By happenstance, she ends up entertaining, as a romantic interest, a fugitive who, unbeknownst to her, is suspected (wrongly) of terroristic activities.She is ensnared in the investigation, and then spotlighted and hounded by the large-circulation newspaper (the "News").The newspaper cloaks itself in the familiar homilies of a free press, but in actuality it wallows in the gutter of yellow journalism, and by the end of the novella it has sullied Katharina Blum, indirectly killed her aged and ill mother, damaged the lives of several unassuming friends of hers, and precipitated other unforeseen violence.

In addition to its critique of sensationalistic, irresponsible journalism, THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM also attacks the media's intrusion on individual privacy.Other themes or issues are wire-tapping, sexual harassment of attractive and socially vulnerable young women, the undue influence of the wealthy and connected, the hair-trigger readiness to accuse or tar someone as a communist, and Germany's repression of anything relating to Nazism.

Boll writes the novella as an after-the-fact account or report (although it is not presented in chronological order).The style is rather dry and almost dead-pan at times, and Boll takes pains to carefully parse words and meanings and to be meticulous in word choice, in marked contrast to the reporting of the "News."The account is compelling; despite some stylistic quirks, the book quickly draws in the reader and is difficult to drop until finished.THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM is not great literature, but it is literature with a social conscience, it transcends the particular circumstances that prompted its initial publication, and its heroine is an especially memorable one.

You can put your sympathy right back in the fridge where you keep all the rest of your feelings
A young woman's life is sullied by the tabloid press, when she gets caught up in a heady one-night love affair with a wanted criminal. After experiencing first-hand how the press can twist and turn and mess up lives, she calculatedly kills the reporter who destroyed her existence.
The dry reporting style, which switches viewpoint with rapid ease (to imply how pathetic justifications by many of the characters were), did not make it a page turner for me, but assisted greatly in reinforcing the message contained within the narrrative. However, I could not divorce myself from the impression that the author, through the narrator, was telling this story to make a statement, and that Katharina was merely symbolic for the state of a society and what people may do to one another to save their own reputation and hide. Hence I was never completely absorbed by the narrative, ever conscious of its purpose and its message.
A lift for the book: the irony in some of the one-liners, such as the one I used for introduction to this book. Who knows when that one may come in handy... ... Read more