Product Description
In August of 2007, Denmark's renowned Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presented Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004, the first major retrospective devoted to Avedon's work since his death in 2004. (With stops in Milan, Paris, Berlin and, Amsterdam, the highly-anticipated exhibition concludes in at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in October of 2009.) This beautifully produced catalogue, designed by the renowned Danish graphic designer Michael Jensen, features deluxe tritone printing and varnish on premium paper, and includes 125 reproductions of Avedon's greatest work from across the entire range of his oeuvre--including fashion photographs, reportage and portraits, and spanning from his early Italian subjects of the 1940s to his 2004 portrait of the Icelandic pop star, Bjork. It also contains a small number of color images--including one of the most famous photographic portraits of the twentieth century, "Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent" (1981). Texts by Jeffrey Fraenkel, Judith Thurman, Geoff Dyer, Christoph Ribbat, Rune Gade and curator Helle Crenzien offer the most sophisticated and thorough composite view of Avedon's work to date. All color separations byRobert Hennessey. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A glorious collection of 20th Century portraits
This book has a permanent spot on my coffee table. From Avadon's early fashion photography in 1950s Paris to his mature work in the American West, this book is a joy and inspiration.

Great Masterpiece
Excelent review of one of the most talented photographers in the 20th century. A book that must be in any personal library of any professional or amateur photographer.

ID photo collection..?!
..in the beginning, I think this is the best collection of Richard Avedon's artwork, but it's not. I would say this book is just a collection of kind of collection of photos for Identity card, over 60%. Be honest, I have over 80 photo books from different photographers, but obviously this is not my favor.

Spectacular
Richard Avedon is undeniably one of the most influential fashion and portrait photographers in history. This is a great collection of some of his best work. A great book to own.

Avedon's People
According to photographer Anthony Snowdon, a viewer, when looking at a picture, should not be able to tell who the photographer was. That may be true about his own photographs; he was wrong, however, when it comes to the work of Richard Avedon. Many of his photographs are instantly recognizable as uniquely his or the shots of someone imitating him. Mr. Avedon gave the world the portrait where the subject, often powerful and famous-- although that is not the case in his series "In The American West" when he shot unknowns-- is photographed looking straight into the camera without flattering lighting or camera angles before a white background. These models rarely smile although Janis Joplin and Willem de Kooning are two exceptions.

This latest collection of approximately 200 of Avedon's photographs is the catalogue that accompanies a traveling exhibit of the master photographer, which began at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and will close in San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. It must have been a difficult assignment to select the images that are reproduced (so beautifully) here. Many of Avedon's most famous photographs are included although there were some that I had never seen before and some I missed seeing. (For example, I would have included the magnificent shot of Tina Turner that usually fills a museum wall when it is exhibited.) The one color photograph by Avedon here is the famous or infamous, depending on your point of view, of Nastssja Kinski and the Serpent (1981). Several fashion shots are included. My favorites are the two of the model Dovima-- with the elephants in 1955 and in front of the pyramids in Eqypt in 1951.

The photograph of Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, naked and embracing, that was-- I believe-- the cover for an issue of "Evergreen" magazine in 1963 made the cut, as did Andy Warhol and members of the Factory (1969). Some of my favorites, although I cannot always say why, are the shot of Bob Dylan taken in 1963 where he looks to be about 13, (I think it is the tilt of his head that intrigues me) W. H. Auden standing in the snow in New York in 1960 and The Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Photography doesn't get better than that shot.

Avedon always said that he just photographed the surface and that the viewer only gets whatever the photographer sees in a brief moment of time. He contended also that the photograph usually tells you more about the photographer than the subject. On the other hand, the writer Albert Camus said that we are all responsible for our faces after the age of forty. Some of these portraits cry out with Camus' message. I would nominate the image of Truman Capote (1974). The word "dissipated" comes to mind immediately. Contrast the Capote photograph with, say, those of the Dalai Lama and Salman Rushdie, from whom a sense of peace emanates. It is poetic justice that the artist Francis Bacon's own face takes on the grotesque shape of many of the faces in his paintings. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1957), looking into Avedon's lens, would make you believe that the rest of the Royals were right about them, that they were dreadful people.

Accompanying this great photography collection are essays by several writers and art and photography critics assessing Mr. Avedon's contribution to 20th century photography including Helle Crenzien, Geoff Dyer, Judith Thurman, Michael Juul Holm, Rune Gade, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Christoph Ribbat. If you do not read all the essays, do not miss Geoff Dyer's discussion on what has become Avedon's signature, the portraits where the models are in front of a stark white background where the people who posed for him, if not known to the public before they sat for him, were famous thereafter. The people included in In the American West series-- drifters, waitresses, coal miners, truckers-- are every bit as engaging as those of the rich and famous and are now just as immortal. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (21)

DEEP AND MEANINGFUL
A tried and true essay of many years. Not the sort of book you can read during the TV commercials, but well worth the effort.

A true classic worth visiting
Written shortly after his mother's death there is a very dark and mortal tone in this reading. Roland Barthes refers to life and death heavily throughout the book and the ongoing intermingling of those themes comes to a climax towards the end. This particular aspect of the book really grabs the reader in many ways. I found myself torn, often times within minutes, between feeling able to be one with the author then finding him alien. The roller coaster of emotions that are portrayed are symbolic of life itself as we grow, learn, reach, and find disappointment because of limitations caused by time and death. Does the photograph capture life, or does it capture death?

Barthes reaches controversy in Camera Lucida when he eludes to amateur photographers' mastery of photography over the professional photographers. No doubt there were many professional photographers enraged by this conclusion therefore finding the book to be no more than the ramblings of a broken man. Admittedly I was taken aback, but held my emotions in check (as much as I could) as I continued on with the book.

I think Barthes got it wrong then, but does he get it wrong now? I think one could argue that with the price of quality photographic equipment in the price range of the average consumer we stumble upon much more than the ordinary when perusing through images online. Does more photographers (and easier sharing methods) mean we, as a community, are getting better? And if so, does that mean that the gap between quality from the "professional photographers" and the "hobbyists" is closing? Maybe he never had it wrong all along.

One of the best aspects of a book like Camera Lucida is that it raises more questions than offers answers.

camera lucida
Great book for ALL photographers.It is out of print and available on here for a great price.Everytime I have read it, it offers new insight on how I view photography

Excellent Book!
I got it a few weeks ago, it is an excellent edition, eventhough is at a very good price it has a very good printing quality, nice paper (thick an white) and very good bookbinding.

As for the book itself, it is very good as a philosophycal view on photography, it does seem very good at this point, nevertheless I am still reading it.

confession
i want to plug in the revolution (digital) to this book, in the style of mad libs.

meanwhile i haven't read camera lucida for a while. ... Read more

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2008 limited edition printing in deep navy blue color leather with gold gild lettering and design on cover and spine. Gold gild on page ends. Moir end papers in front and back covers. Has 960 pages. ... Read more

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Award-winning literary journal contains an interview with Walter Murch conducted by Michael Ondaatje and a cartoon by Margaret Atwood. ... Read more

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With a new Introduction by Geoff Dyer
Commentary by Anthony Burgess, Jessie Chambers, Frieda Lawrence, V.S. Pritchett, Kate Millett, and Alfred Kazin

Of all Lawrence's work, Sons and Lovers tells us most about the emotional source of his ideas," observed Diana Trilling. "The famous Lawrence theme of the struggle for sexual power--and he is sure that all the struggles of civilized life have their root in this primary contest--is the constantly elaborated statement of the fierce battle which tore Lawrence's family."

Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama, and it is now widely considered the major work of D. H. Lawrence's early period. This intensely autobiographical novel recounts the story of Paul Morel, a young artist growing to manhood in a British working-class family rife with conflict. The author's vivid evocation of the all-consuming nature of possessive love and sexual attraction makes this one of his most powerful novels.

For the critic Kate Millett, "Sons and Lovers is a great novel because it has the ring of something written from deeply felt experience. The past remembered, it conveys more of Lawrence's own knowledge of life than anything else he wrote. His other novels appear somehow artificial beside it."Amazon.com Review
Sons and Lovers was the first modern portrayal of a phenomenon that later, thanks to Freud, became easily recognizable as the Oedipus complex. Never was a son more indentured to his mother's loveand full of hatred for his father than Paul Morel, D.H. Lawrence's youngprotagonist. Never, that is, except perhaps Lawrence himself. Inhis 1913 novel he grappled with the discordant loves that haunted him allhis life--for his spiritual childhood sweetheart, here called Miriam, andfor his mother, whom he transformed into Mrs. Morel. It is, by Lawrence'sown account, a book aimed at depicting this woman's grasp: "as her sonsgrow up she selects them as lovers--first the eldest, then the second.These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of theirmother--urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love,because their mother is the strongest power in their lives."

Of course, Mrs. Morel takes neither of her two elder sons (the first of whom dies early, which further intensifies her grip on Paul) as a literal lover, but nonetheless her psychological snare is immense. She loathes Paul's Miriam from the start, understanding that the girl's deep love of her son will oust her: "She's not like an ordinary woman, who can leave me my share in him. She wants to absorb him." Meanwhile, Paul plays his part with equal fervor, incapable of committing himself in either direction: "Why did his mother sit at home and suffer?... And why did he hate Miriam, and feel so cruel towards her, at the thought of his mother. If Miriam caused his mother suffering, then he hated her--and he easily hated her."Soon thereafter he even confesses to his mother: "I really don't loveher. I talk to her, but I want to come home to you."

The result of all this is that Paul throws Miriam over for a married suffragette, Clara Dawes, who fulfills the sexual component of his ascent to manhood but leaves him, as ever, without a complete relationship to challenge his love for his mother. As Paul voyages from the working-class mining world to the spheres of commerce and art (he has fair success as a painter), he accepts that his own achievements must be equally his mother's. "There was so much to come out of him. Life for her was rich with promise. She was to see herself fulfilled... All his work was hers."

The cycles of Paul's relationships with these three women are terrifying at times, and Lawrence does nothing to dim their intensity. Nor does he shirk in his vivid, sensuous descriptions of the landscape that offers up its blossoms and beasts and "shimmeriness" to Paul's sensitive spirit. Sons and Lovers lays fully bare the souls of menand earth. Few books tell such whole, complicated truths about the permutations of love as resolutely without resolution. It's nothing short of searing to be brushed by humanity in this manner. --Melanie Rehak ... Read more

Customer Reviews (81)

On the border of modernity
This great and slowly moving novel remains one of the final great works in the English Romantic tradition. D.H. Lawrence's conservative style almost wants to remain in the pre-industrial world. This wonderful novel is both an oedipal portrait of a bourgois mother and her domestic conflicts with her mismatched and drunken husband and her future attempts to conserve her possession over her children. Paul Morel is the central figure, whose life revolves around his struggle with his love of two women and his devotion to his mother. Sons and Lovers is at its core about the dehumanizing effects of the modern world. It is no longer possible to live in peace and harmony with ones environment. Man has now been reduced to his functions. Although this novel does not really get going until the second half, the final passages remain some of the finest of English writing. A great though often dreary classic.

Sad and lovely
It was a pleasure to read this book,written in such a simple, crisp style and yet conveys the gravity of emotions between mother and son flawlessly with beautiful prose, subtle expressions, quiet reflections and profound discoveries.This is a true classic.

Overdramatic, largely biographical novel of the author's early life
Sons and Lovers is D.H. Lawrence's highly autobiographical novel of the early years of a young man's life in mid-nineteenth century England. As such, the book is very intense emotionally, as Lawrence seems to convey his own strong feelings about his family into his characters. One result of this exaggerated level of emotions is a constant state of tension and unreality. A simple scene becomes a moment of high drama and the constant repetition of such scenes eventually dulls the reader to those moments of genuine crisis.

The book begins with the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Morel. Gertrude is an educated, sensitive woman who marries Walter because of his physical appearance and charming personality. She also believes, falsely as it turns out, that he does not drink and is the owner of this own house. Mr. Morel is a miner and the family lives in "The Bottoms," a hardscrabble mining community. It soon becomes clear that he cannot cope with the responsibility of raising a family that grows to four children. In response he turns to drink and abusive language (although no real violence) toward his family, and especially toward his wife. Throughout the book Walter is portrayed, not as an evil man, but as one defeated by life. His family comes to despise him and at the same time love him, depending on his moods and behavior.

William, the first child, is athletic and intelligent. He grows to manhood early in the book and leaves to go to London to seek his fortune, but comes to a tragic end. The second child, Annie, has only a modest role in the novel as benefits a book with this title. Paul, the third child, is the main character and Lawrence's alter ego. Unlike his siblings, Paul is sickly and unathletic, and he and Mrs. Morel develop a strong attachment for each other that carries throughout the book.The final child, Arthur, also plays a minor role in the plot.

The book is divided into two parts; the first largely concerned with the early years of the Morel family and the second with Paul and his love affairs. As a teenager he meets Miriam, a young girl on a nearby farm. Paul develops a fondness for the whole family and he and Miriam become entangled romantically and the understanding is that they will marry some day.But neither Paul nor Miriam can make a sufficient commitment to this idea and even when Miriam finally does so Paul is incapable of a similar response. At this point an older woman, Clara Dawes, comes into Paul's life. She is married to Baxter Dawes, a brutish man from whom she is separated. Paul is attracted to her physically and they begin an adulterous relationship. But again Paul has difficulty sustaining a mature relationship and is constantly torn between his love for (and even dependence on) his mother and his wish for a mature and stable relationship with a woman.

The novel is also infused with a heavy dose of religion. Miriam in particular, is described as highly religious and even derogatively referred to as a nun. The religion view that sex is something dirty is also evident.

It would help, given the nature of the book, to read a biography of Lawrence before tackling this novel. Many of the characters in the novel act in dysfunctional ways and the reader wonders how much of their behavior is a reflection of Lawrence's own life experiences.

It is difficult for me to rate this book much above three stars because of the depressing tone and unrealistic behaviors of the characters. One wants to say to Lawrence, "get some psychological help before writing about your life!"On the other hand it is a fascinating story written by one of the outstanding English writers of the nineteenth century. It is not his best work, but still quite good in many respects.

Touched by genius...
D.H. Lawrence was a guy that came out of the womb knowing how to write. You read his prose and his innate genius quickly becomes self-evident--this is an artist for whom the creative act of literature is akin to a Mozart symphony--airtight, beautiful, logical, NATURAL. Floooooowing.

Compare Lawrence with someone like Wallace Stegner--the latter being a writer with a fair amount of talent and a heckuva lot of dedication...but whose works seem...synthetic. Over-written, almost. As if he would look at a sentence and say, "This needs another adjective here--and a polysyllabic synonym for this word here."

With Lawrence, there is no sense of writerly straaaaaaining for profundity...no sense of sweaty self-consciousness. The sentences seemingly emanate from the ether, with a fundamental soundness and beauty which only a tiny, tiny few lucky people are capable of creating.

Stegner could study the craft of writing for thirty years and still produce an inferior book to the twenty-seven-year-old Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Lawrence had IT. He was the real deal. The genuine article. He WAS Mozart (Stegner was you-know-who).

Sons and Lovers is a masterpiece. Not without its flaws, surely, but a masterpiece all the same. Some parts drag; some parts are choppy; some parts are frankly uninteresting. Notwithstanding that, it is just a single rung below Lolita and Under the Volcano in terms of quality.

The MLA concluded that Sons and Lovers is the ninth best novel of the 20th century--and it's hard to quibble with that assessment. (Even though it is ranked AHEAD of the supernally brilliant--and better--Under the Volcano.)

If you are a serious connoisseur of literature, this is one you have to get under the belt.

indescribable
Wow...I don't remember the last time that I've read a novel that would bring out in me such immense sensitivity as this one. With incredible detail Lawrence describes his life and ihs biggest loves. Perhaps I should not be writing this review because I only read 200 pages so far, but it is just too breathtaking. ... Read more

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Alive with insight, delight and Dyer's characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography, music. Across ten years' worth of essays, Working the Room spans the photography of Martin Parr and the paintings of Turner, the writing of Scott Fitzgerald and the criticism of Susan Sontag, and includes extensive personal pieces - 'On Being an Only Child', 'Sacked' and 'Reader's Block' among many others. Dyer's breadth of vision and generosity of spirit combine to form a manual for ways of being in - and seeing - the world today. ... Read more

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Booker wining novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and critic - even admirers rarely know John Berger in all his literary incarnations. This collection of essays will, for the first time, take a definitive look at his extraordinary career.Far from being footnotes to the main body of work Berger's essays are absolutely central to it. Many of the ideas of the groundbreaking Ways of Seeing were presented first in essays published in New Society. Polemical, reflective, radically original, Berger's wide-ranging essays emphasise the continuities that have underpinned more than 40 years of tireless intellectual inquiry and political engagement. Viewed chronologically they add up, in fact, to a kind of vicarious autobiography and a history of our time as refracted through the prism of art. Edited by Geoff Dyer, and published on the occasion of his 75th birthday, this is an essential collection by one of the world's greatest writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

high level reading
I was introduced to Berger's writings by an artist and art department chair. These are high-level reading, not fluffy, essays. I love his up-front, no-nonsense writing style. Berger writes about life and art. His essays are primarily art philosophies and critiques, and even when he writes of his daily life, art is still the point. There are wonderful lessons in his writings, some academic lessons and some life lessons. I find these readings enhance my studio art classes.

Art writing of the first order
Berger is a truly great art writer - one from whom you can really feel the love for and fascination with art, the struggle to make sense of the ineffable effects art has had on him, and whose genuine goal seems to be helping the reader (and perhaps himself) understand art better (as opposed to more recent criticism whose raison d'etre seems to be maximizing obfuscation).Berger's gentle, ruminative style is pleasurable but can at times seem a bit wispy, giving him a somehow old-fashioned feel - I found myself at times wishing for a little more 'tooth' - but the breadth and depth are such to make that a fleeting concern.

Attention must be paid!
Most of us, most of the time, are satisfied to be awed, intrigued, excited, even enraptured by art without developing any critical understanding of it. John Berger takes an addional step. A thoughtful critic and an excellent writer, he has been sharing his understanding with readers for more than 40 years. This book collects in one place nearly 600 pages of his essays on painting, architecture, photography, drama, and literature.

Berger on Pollock: Imagine a man brought up from birth in a white cell. And then imagine that suddenly he is given some sticks and bright paints. He would want to express his ideas and feelings. He would have nothing more than the gestures he could discover through the act of applying his colored marks to his white walls.

Berger on Picasso: The romanticism of Toulouse-Lautrec, the classicism of Ingres, the crude energy of Negro sculpture, the heart-searchings of Cézanne towards the truth about structure, the exposures of Freud. All these he has recognized, welcomed, pushed to bizarre conclusions, improvised on, sung through in order to make us recognize ourselves in the parody of a distorting mirror.

Berger on Joyce: Deep down, beneath the words, beneath the pretenses, beneath the claims and the everlasting moralistic judgment, beneath the opinions and lessons and boasts and cant of everyday life, the lives of adult women and men were made up of such stuff as this book [Ulysses] was made of: offal with flecks in it of the divine. The first and last recipe!

Four decades of thoughts such as the above: the accreted insights and enthusiasms of a restless intellect steeped in the arts. Berger began commanding attention in the 1950s. With this book, he commands it still.

John Berger is what politically engaged criticism should look like
This book is what politically engaged leftist art criticism should look like. This is what American art criticism WOULD look like if we could wrest it away from the academic theory cliques and their exclusionist jargon (in which they, without a hint of irony, frame a discourse of 'inclusion'). A left-wing pirate's treasure chest of golden ideas and silver sentences, this is a book to read, re-read, admire and argue with. Berger is the art critic other critics should learn from.

Indispensable
I happened to pick this book up in a store because I had read one novel of Berger's, Pig Earth, which I thought was very good.I knew he was an art critic, but I never had any particular urge to read art criticism; I didn't think visual art needed a lot of explaining.Just reading the three page essay on Jackson Pollock convinced me that, at least regarding the type of criticism that Berger writes, I was wrong.In a few sentences, he seems to capture the essence of what an artist has accomplished (or is trying to accomplish) in his or her work, and makes the work more vivid and meaningful than it was before.Here is clear proof that finding words for one's experience of a work of art doesn't devalue it but makes it richer.

One of the things that makes these essays so gripping is that Berger is interested in something that seems to have fallen out of fashion in criticism: using art to identify the predicament of a culture. I remember, even before I picked up Pig Earth, being worried by the fact that Berger is a lifelong Marxist.But there is nothing doctrinaire or repetitive about his explanations of phenomenon; he is a free intellect, and I would argue that just because Marx's solutions have been widely discounted does not necessarily mean that his diagnoses are also invalid.In any case, Berger's priorities are always first exploring his subject, not imposing an orthodox framework on them.

The book, also, is not just about art.Berger is a real man of letters; his essays range over every art form and subject, and in the space of a few pages he can marshall support for his points from a novelist, painter, poet, photographer, and historian.He is never pretentious, because his primary objective is always communicating his argument with urgency.I bought this essay on the strength of the Pollock essay alone, and I've discovered so many more that I could read again and again; this is really one of my treasured books (a good measure of which is the frequency with which it comes into the bathroom with me).

The tight construction of Berger's essays makes it hard to quote a section and have it make sense as an argument, but here are a few samples: "Nobody who has not painted himself can fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse's mastery of colour.it is comparitively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one colour to dominate or by muting all the colours.Matisse did neither.He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby."

Or, in the essay on our changing relationship with animals: "Public zoos came into existence at the beginning of the period which was the see the disappearance of animals from daily life.The zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters.Modern zoos are an epitaph to a relationship which was as old as man."The essay on animals had a passage on nearly every page which made me want to put the book down and think for a few minutes, and I hope I'm not doing it a disservice by quoting a fragment.Buy the book and read it all; there are few other collections that contain such a breadth of knowledge and insight.Seriously, this is value for money. ... Read more

Product Description
Danish photographer Jacob Holdt is internationally revered for his vision of America, as portrayed in classic volumes like American Pictures and United States 1970-1975. It is a vision which has inspired many, both in its extremity (the director Lars von Trier is reputedly a fan) and in its tenacity. Holdt arrived in the U.S. in the early 70s with almost no money, and hitchhiked all over the U.S., earning a living by selling blood, and proceeded to build an amazing portrait of the margins of America over the course of his 100,000-mile journey. This monograph continues Holdt's fascination with American society, with a portfolio of photographs from the 70s to the present. Holdt's photographs document the social realities of the people he travels with, spanning the demographic from poor families to millionaires, junkies and even members of the Ku Klux Klan. ... Read more

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Luke arrives in a city very like Paris and falls in love with a Serbian woman called Nicole. Devoid of ambition or purpose, his menial warehouse job leads him to meet Alex who has fallen for a young Italian woman. The two couples soon become inseparable in a city where Ecstasy has replaced alcohol. ... Read more

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Paris Trance???
This must be a mis-titled or earlier version of "Paris Trance." ... Read more

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Anthony and Gloria are the essence of Jazz Age glamour. A brilliant and magnetic couple, they fling themselves at life with an energy that is thrilling. New York is a playground where they dance and drink for days on end. Their marriage is a passionate theatrical performance; they are young, rich, alive and lovely and they intend to inherit the earth. But as money becomes tight, their marriage becomes impossible. And with their inheritance still distant, Anthony ang Gloria must grow up and face reality; they may be beautiful but they are also damned. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (62)

How do you decide which reprint to buy? The choices, the choices.....
Fitzgerald's "The Beautiful and the Damned" is one of the great American novels and well worth reading. And if your personal copy's in the same shape as mine, you probably need a new one. But it's now out in the public domain and a plethora of reprints are available, mostly from Print on Demand Publishers. So, as a previous reviewer asked, how do you decide which one to buy?

Because, believe me, there's some truely awful reprints available. To start with, when looking to pick up a copy of this book, CHECK THE PUBLISHER CAREFULLY and make sure you order a version that's what you think it is. The reason for this is....

Amazon associates reviews of a book with many different versions of the same book from different publishers. Unfortunately for us customers, Amazon is seeing a growing plague of new Print-On-Demand Publishers (one of whom, CreateSpace, is owned by Amazon) who are specialising in reprinting copyright-expired books. Such as "The Beautiful and the Damned." Some of these publishers produce quite good quality books, some do not. What you do need to do is check the publisher carefully for all these older "copyright expired" books.

An outstanding example of "not good quality" is the imprint of "The Beautiful and the Damned" published by General Books LLC. The version published by General Books LLC is scanned in using OCR technology (and using pretty poor quality OCR scanning equipment and software from the look of their books), is overall of very poor print quality, uses automated reproduction with no index, no illustrations and an excessive number of typos.

To quote some specifics from the publisher's own web site:
"We created your book using OCR software that includes an automated spell check. Our OCR software is 99 percent accurate if the book is in good condition. However, with up to 3,500 characters per page, even one percent can be an annoying number of typos....

After we re-typeset and designed your book, the page numbers change so the old index and table of contents no longer work. Therefore, we usually remove them. Since many of our books only sell a couple of copies, manually creating a new index and table of contents could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price....

Our OCR software can't distinguish between an illustration and a smudge or library stamp so it ignores everything except type. We would really like to manually scan and add the illustrations. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....

We created your book using a robot who turned and photographed each page. Our robot is 99 percent accurate. But sometimes two pages stick together. And sometimes a page may even be missing from our copy of the book. We would really like to manually scan each page and buy multiple copies of each original. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....."

General Books LLC are flooding Amazon with these low quality publications (450,000+ listed under General Books LLC so far) and, unfortunately, many of them have the reviews associated with the original or with better quality imprints associated with them. For the buyer that's not aware of this publisher this can result in a rather unfortunate purchasing decision.

A good rule of thumb for these Print on Demand publishers is to take a look at the cover - if it's a good quality illustration that reflects the content, there's a table of contents, and when you do the Look Inside thing there's no disclaimer saying you're looking at another book, and they've stated that they used facsimile reproduction technology (rather than OCR), it's usually a pretty safe bet. Conversely, if any of these are missing, you're taking a chance on the quality. I've bought a few based on my selection criteria above and they've been good quality. General Books LLC however, is a publisher to steer clear of at all costs.

If you have been unfortunate enough to buy the General Books LLC version by mistake, you can return to Amazon for a full refund (but check Amazon's return policy and process first).

obviously a classic, but which edition is the best buy?
Fitzgerald's tale is obviously a classic, but which edition is the best buy? There are so (or is "too"...) many available. Personally, I likethis editon The Beautiful and Damned (yes, you need to click the link to see which one it is as Amazon combines many reviews together), especially because of the captivating cover shot. A great value IMHO.

Hidden Treasure in the Shadow of Gatsby. . .
The American reading public seems to reduce `classic authors' to one-hit wonders: The Stranger, Catcher in the Rye, Vanity Fair, Frankenstein, Catch-22, Oedipus the King, etc. One great work seems to exhaust us and we move on. The only real exceptions are situations in which the author has two great works of moral equivalency: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Iliad and The Odyssey.

A victim of the one-book limit on our memories is The Beautiful and Damned. No, it's not as good as The Great Gatsby. But then again -- to paraphrase Joseph Heller -- neither is any other American novel. If it weren't for Jay Gatsby, however, this other work by F. Scott Fitzgerald would likely get suggested more often as `the Great American Novel'.

I was blown away by it. The novel is divided into roughly three parts, following the third decade of life of a useless Harvard alum living in New York City named Anthony Comstock Patch. The first period is youthful exuberance. It reads like it was written by a kid who woke up one day being after being anointed the Chosen One by the gods of literature. It's got this `Wow, I can write beautiful prose about anything!' euphoria to it. The prose dazzles and sparkles as it careens from one pointless bit to another as it lampoons the East Coast elite. It shifts tenses for no reason, abruptly goes into the format of a play for couple of pages at a stretch and generally dances its way through the nonadventures of several extremely wealthy young men. The words on the page are relentless brilliant. Even getting up to leave is memorable: `Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoat. . .'

This first section is hilarious. Typically, when I discover something from before WWII that was meant to be humorous, I cringe to myself because it's so not funny. The opening of this book, after a slightly dry description of Anthony Patch's familial background, satirizes the wealthy, their pretensions, their sense of entitlement, their superiority, with unerring accuracy. It's laugh-out-loud funny but never mean-spirited.

I hate spoilers. Suffice to say that the second and third sections get uglier as relationships get more serious. What we forgive in the young we find more disappointing in people as they age. (A Peter Pan with a puffy-eyed hangover at thirty is not a pretty sight.) The prose loses little momentum as the story flirts with disaster.

In addition to the writing itself, what really struck me was how Fitzgerald could create a sense of empathy for such appalling characters. If Anthony Patch was a real person, he'd be the poster boy for Marxism. Yet Fitzgerald can get us to care about him and his ilk, people who are in truth little more than lazy, absentmindedly racist, decidedly misogynistic alcoholic snobs. (Indeed, this novel could be read as the parable about the consequences of misogyny on men.) If someone told me that it would be possible to write a novel in which you feel for a character who jokes about kicking a kitten -- we're left hoping it was a joke -- I would have said it was impossible, but there you have it.

The novel also makes the time period covered, from shortly before WWI to the Roaring Twenties, come vividly alive. Anthony Patch becomes the embodiment of America, starting in innocence, becoming disillusioned with war and ending in the boozy disillusionment of Prohibition. (And no, that's not really a spoiler.) It's not simply Anthony: the novel is animated by consumer products of the period, suggests a critique of suburbia forty years head of its time and is filled with fascination with those new technologies, the car and the feature-length film.

In short, The Beautiful and Damned probably offers more per page than just about any other novel you might read. Except The Great Gatsby.

This review is based on an out of print hardback from the library, not this particular edition.

Great Book for any Fitzgerald Fan!
Great book for any Fitzgerald fan!This was my guide to living life in my twenties, lol!I've heard it called a hard book to read, and I can see that.But there is great satisfaction upon finishing the book.I guarantee it!

A must-read--before it's made into a movie
Nearly ninety years after its first publication, _The Beautiful and Damned_ is still a shockingly relevant account of the entitlement class, the children of the rich or privileged who don't know how to navigate through life without big money.And, it's a New York City novel--written as only a mid-westerner can.It seems to me that because New Yorkers are too much in the middle of it to see themselves clearly, an intelligent "outsider" like F. Scott Fitzgerald must come along.To write as well as he did, Fitzgerald let the city inhabit him.New York got into his blood, and he recorded it in narrative right down to the dirt under the carpet.Fitzgerald's details lead the reader into the depths of the beautiful and doomed couple, the Gloria-Anthony entanglement, as they are part and parcel of the extremes of poverty and wealth (in the World War I era or the roaring 20s).

I don't know how Fitzgerald knew what he knew about the human psyche, or specifically about how a young man might react when he is good-looking and swimming in money and New York, but Fitz's life at Princeton University among this set of people gave him the environment in which to observe; Fitzgerald supplied the story around which the narrative coheres.Of course, there are autobiographical elements to this novel--a lot of himself and Zelda--but what the literary art requires is critical distance.To put his main characters through some shameful scenes, Fitzgerald had to know what tough love is in the New York City context.He had to put his couple to the test, people who from birth had relied on the "religion" of charm and money.And the author had more than just critical distance: F. Scott had them down right!Every expression, every word.Gloria: "This is life!Who cares for the morrow."And you can see Anthony deciding to have one more drink, his speech becoming slurred, his manners maudlin.While Anthony and Gloria wait for his inheritance, we find out what they're made of.

Most pleasurable about Fitzgerald's craft is his carefully-controlled technique of letting Anthony and Gloria visit hell (the "damned" in the title) while softening the harsh surgery-like light with well-timed, well-handled, lyrical sentences.In a single beautiful line, the passage of the winter sun describes both Fitzgerald's craft and his beautiful couple's descent: Gloria "lay still for a moment in the great bed watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its passage through the leaded panes into the room" (p.173).Fitzgerald knew how to show the attenuated and refined way downhill.

One more thing about the craft of writing: Only the omniscient narrator technique--which Fitzgerald employs--can show characters in shameful acts and show what they're thinking, and the circumstances in which they got there, and how they "need" money in order to "survive."I wonder if now, in nearly 2010, this novel is not more important than in 1922.More than ever, _The Beautiful and Damned_ is a national portrait.(I can see how "spending" money could be the "sex" in the novel.)

Advice: Read this novel while in New York, if possible.The first time I read _The Beautiful and Damned_, I was living near 123rd (me, a Westerner!).I looked up every address in the novel (except for the gray house near Cos Cob, Conn.) and got to know New York through this novel.In fact, I could almost pick out their final apartment in Harlem near 127th.
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Product Description
A woman married to an invalid seeks refuge from her sexless and dreary existence in the arms of the passionate game-keeper, but can she break out against the restrictions of society and succumb to her desire for him? From the author of SONS AND LOVERS, THE RAINBOW and WOMEN IN LOVE.Amazon.com Review
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 LadyChatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for theonce-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--theadulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-class marriedwoman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned by herwheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex, andseeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel is memorable forbetter reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterful and lyricalwriter, whose story takes us bodily into the world of its characters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (93)

Did he have sex or explosive diarrhea?
I usually save two stars for books that I feel have isses with the plot or weak characters, etc. I don't feel that this book had any issues except I found most of it completely boring. It made me want to beat my forhead against things and rock back and forth like Rain Man in an attempt to pay attention to the story. Guess too fancy and historical for my ADHD brain.

I picked this book in honor of Banned Book Week so I felt guilty to not finish it, like if I stop somewhere some evil people will start squishing little mewlling kittens and mail me their little furry bodies in a box with a letter saying, "IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT...YOU COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS BUT NOOOOOO."

I didn't give up on LCL, it kind of read like waves in the ocean. It started off dull, and then it got interesting for a while, then down and back goes the wave of interest. I can understand the reasoning for banning it, all those challenging thoughts on pretty much everything including the certainty and necessity of the Iron Age...but there is a gianormous amount of whininess that is barely tolerable.

It's very comical to read the description of the sex scenes. First there was the lover that got mad at her for that he had to wait and hold still after he came so she could get off, like it was all her fault. Then her grounds keeper lover's sexual attraction to her was said as "his bowels stirred for her" and his cumming described as an "evacuating crisis"...which kind of sounds like the guy had explosive diarrhea, not sex. Yeah, that's sexy, lol.

Famous because it was banned
I picked this book up in honor of banned book week.It seems to me that this book gained more notoriety off the fact that it was banned than because it was a great piece of literature.I had to keep reminding myself that it was set in the 1920s, as the writing style was more reminiscent of a Victorian era novel.Furthermore, Lawrence portrayed his characters as if they were in the Victorian era.The characters were not well developed, thus making it hard to have sympathy for anyone in the story.The end was disappointing as it simply fizzled away.

Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. Published by MobileReference (mobi)

Dealing with themes of love, passion, respect, honor, and the need for understanding, Lady Chatterley's Lover is a complex, character-driven novel which celebrates the driving passions that can make life worth living.

Lady Chatterly
Lady Chatterly's Lover was not the perverted, illiterate story I was lead to believe it was. It was a story of classes and self realization.It was thoughtfully written, though it did drag in many parts.Yes, there are many sexual liasons in the story, but I think the author's intent was to make them part of the natural flow of the story instead of a suggestion.In saying that, it was quite evident the love scenes were written by a man.Mostly very mechanical in description and very cut and dry.A female author would have elongated the love scenes and added a bit more detail.Although the focus of the book has always been the sex scenhes, there is more substance to it than that
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Not shocking anymore, but dang good

A 'Novel' Guest Review By Leigh Wood

After one too many viewing's of the 1992 BBC production of Lady Chatterley, I finally broke down and read the book. I thought the 1928 unedited version of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence would be a tough book to find. Expensive, rare, old leather, smelly, buried in an antiquarian store-that type of book. Indeed I was very pleased to find the 1928 Unexpurgated Oriali Edition in paperback at my local Borders. $4.95!

I wrapped Mists of Avalon as quickly as possible and avoided watching the film before I plunged into Lover. I read other writers' criticisms on D.H. Lawrence and his works before purchasing the book, and I knew the book and movie didn't have the same ending. Of course, I also knew the book's controversial reputation and supposedly salacious use of naughty words and torrid sex talk. My edition opened with forwards and introductions detailing the book's tough road to publication and the aftermath of censorship. Although this story is fairly well known in literary circles, this introduction is informative, with details and facts on the books printing, pirated editions, and trial information. Even if one was a toe towards prudish, you can't not be interested in reading Lady Chatterley's Lover after these words of praise.

Although the 1992 adaptation by Ken Russell is quite faithful, Lawrence's work is naturally bigger and more detailed than what can be translated to the screen. I noticed many cases where the film had taken word for word from the book, and also where scenes had been combined or moved and relocated for the film. Still, much was remaining to surprise me. After her Baronet husband's paralysis during World War I, young Constance Chatterley begins to question her mundane existence as Lady of Wragby Hall and nursemaid to her crippled husband. They are educated and literate, but as she listens to her husband and his friends chit chat about war, sex, society, and money, Connie becomes more and more disenchanted with her upper class standing. After a very dissatisfying affair with playwright Michaelis, Connie begins a saucy love affair with her husband's gamekeeper Olivier Mellors. Despite the fear of being caught and societal pressures upon them, Connie and Mellors continue to meet. When the scandal comes out, they take measures to secure a life together, despite the class divisions against them.

The great part of Lady Chatterley's Lover is the love discovered between the titular characters, so I was intrigued by the intitial Michaelis relationship. We learn much about Connie intellectually and sexually through this affair, internal thoughts and disappointing feelings that can't be show onscreen. I've read other fans commentaries online about Joely Richardson's performance as Lady Chatterley in the BBC version. Women sometimes find her portrayal conceded and flaky. Connie has nothing to loose, where Mellors has everything to loose. In the novel, this is certainly not the case. Connie is already nothing, an emotionless drone whose stature gives her nothing.

Likewise the Mellors in print has everything to gain. His backstory is greatly detailed by Lawrence, yet he maintains his strong silent and mysterious air. Once on officer during the war and a well educated pupil then tutor, Mellors could have the upper class at his fingertips, yet he chooses to be left alone. This book is not just about sex. Our couple is disenchanted with war, industry, money, and the people around them who think that those things give meaning to life. Some of Mellors' dialogue is written in dialect and for an American like me, it took a double take at first. However, Mellors can also speak perfect English, and does so when he chooses, not when people expect it of him. In fact, his speech is often broken when he thinks it will upset people, such as Connie's image conscious sister Hilda.

Lawrence spends a great many of the early chapters discussing artists and their self important selves, yet it is a great and subtle revelation when Connie discovers books in Mellor's house. Its often claimed not to be Lawrence's best work, but Lady Chatterley's Lover intricately weaves the love story between Connie and Mellors with multiple commentaries from Lawrence. Without being too obvious with his author views, Lawrence questions the English post war Jazz society and classes as well as the later artistic society Lawrence often found himself outcast from. This catch-22 is again mirrored in the novel. Where Connie and Mellors affair crosses class divides and angers their entire community, her husband Clifford's unusual relationship with his nurse Mrs. Bolton is entirely acceptable. I love Charles Dickens for his veiled or outright social commentaries, and I dare say Lawrence is on par here in asking those same society questions. Who decides these social barriers and imobilities? Why are some invisible to these restraints via power, position, and money? What is the right reason to circumvent these divides and do something about oneself?

Lady Chatterley's Lover has kept me thinking about itself long after I've finished the book. I'd like to read it again and find answers to these questions. Although it is a thorough British book in time and place, Lover also presents very modern thoughts and conjecture. After Lawrence's difficulty with self publishing and piracy, the book was banned until a 1960 obscenity trial. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't find the book all that shocking. Was it because I was familiar with the film version, or is it because the book perhaps caused our current liberal ideas and desensitizing? Four letter words and sex talk have always existed, but Lawrence's honest treatment of the subjects opened a Pandora's box on erotica, pornography, nudity, and bad words in art, literature, and film. I can't say the same for other works, but Lover is actually a very tasteful book, rather innocent in a way. The rebirth of the main characters through their love for one another. Lawrence was tempted to call the story `Tenderness' and the title would have fit.

Although the work speaks for itself when it comes to sex, society, and even religion, my edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover came with `A Propos on Lady Chatterley's Lover' by D. H. Lawrence himself. After finishing the book on a positive note, I was disappointed in this thirty page essay. One should always let his work speak for itself, and there's no need for this redundant and overlong speech from Lawrence. From World War I to Christianity, Lawrence's essays should be cut in half or is perhaps better for a college classroom discussion.

If you're looking for porn or sexual gratification, you won't find it in Lady Chatterley's Lover. Most certainly the book is not for everyone, and if frank sexual talk and situations is not your cup of tea, do skip this read. I'lm a fairly straight laced individual, and I only second guessed the book once. In Chapter 16 or 19, I thought the anal sex euphuisms were getting a bit redundant. I giggled a few times over the language, but was moved by other beautiful descriptions from Lawrence. At first I looked for Lover in Borders' small erotica section, but Lawrence's works are found in the general fiction section and in the classics section at my local library.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is by no means for children or prudes, but it is a fine novel that has transcended time and place. We may be too loose or vulgar in our society today-celebrities with wardrobe malfunctions and half naked women in music videos. Lover and the books in its wake may have caused this openness, but the book also reminds me of the good things about he past. Women wore gloves, men tips their hats to all, and writers wrote great books.
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