Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem, Christine Rose, Adele Kandel ISBN: 0-15-658585-5 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1986 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Beware of the Complexity
Comment: Not for the casual reader, this devilishly complicated book will have you stumped in the end. So unless you wish to re-read it (in order to finally figure out what it was all about) don't bother with this one. But for those of you searching for that rare book that leaves you wondering and puzzled for days, weeks, years... well, this is it. From the brilliant mind of the best Polish sci-fi writer comes a satire and a comment on those wonderful societies of ours (take your pick: socialism, communism, etc.) and the methods of their tyranny.
The plot is simple: An innocent, foolishly loyal aspiring agent enters his new occupation only to find out that those in power have plans of their own (which he just can't discover). Searching the confines of a "Building", a futuristic military-like establishment hidden underground, he seeks his mission, his purpose and the meaning of his existence. Ultimately, all those disappear before his eyes and turn into code. This skillfully written tale where not one word lacks meaning or purpose (or does it?) attempts to understand methods of population control. Could it be that political systems have, are and will rule their population through skillful semantics-control? (think NEWSPEAK) Lem posits that political rhetoric color not only our judgment but also our ability to perceive the world around us. Concentrating on the cold war tension between the US and CCCP, Lem explores systems which convert all their resources and their entire populations to one task: the destruction of the enemy. To accomplish their goal, they convert the minds of their subject. Much like a child who learns to adhere to the principles of society through the careful teaching of parents, teachers, TV, and others, a member of these societies learns to relinquish to his superiors the ability to judge his surrounding.
The Building's plan is simple: Through a carefully planned mission, our hero learns to loose trust in himself, loose his ambition and the ability to choose how and to whom to be loyal. He learns that he is a tool. He discovers that his only responsibility is to the Building, and that the Building alone can think for him, tell him what, how, and why to think. He learns that he is a part of the Building and that his duty is to serve a predetermined function which he himself can't alter. He learns that he can only make sense of the insane world around him, if he unconditionally adapts the strategies of his surrounding.
In the end, he discovers that a system like the Building has developed into a new life-form (who smiles and leads a life of its own), an organism whom we humans must ultimately serve and whose survival we must guaranty if we ourselves wish to live on. If you can deal with an unorthodox plot (if there is one), and like your books heavy on ideas, this is the book for you. Otherwise, stick with Jordan or Simmons - they're good, too.
Rating: 5
Summary: Discover Lem.
Comment: Lem's writes a great story. But more than that, he is different, I think, because of...well, because of something else. Something occuring below the surface of the narrative. Something hidden...something coded? I don't know. It is some thought-provoking something that gets you to put the book down to consider something new, or perhaps reconsider, anew, something you thought you knew.
Writers ought to attempt entertainment, I think. Of course, not every writer succeeds. But Lem does. Brilliantly, I should say. Moreso, though, Lem's work is made more thorough-going, more profound in effect, perhaps more three-dimensional, because of something powerfully nonverbal....some undiscovered, secret goings-on behind the words and phrases. Something at once present and indiscernable. Something, at times, even terrifying.
I can't explain it. I can't talk about Lem's technique or his uniqueness in plain language. His achievement itself aspires to the nonverbal. Just read "Memoirs", or "The Futurological Congress", or the "Cyberiad", and see for yourself how, the story, or what it becomes, manages to linger long after the book has been closed. Lem has been lingering in my mind for years.
Whatever that curious something is, though, a rarest of things, the thing you feel when you read Lem, but can't quite locate, I'm sure is something Lem the artist has somehow fashioned deliberatley. For this reason, I think, I can't say you should read Lem...but that you must.
Rating: 4
Summary: Enter the labyrinth...
Comment: These memoirs are presented in the foreword as the last remnant of a dead civilization, and its twisted hierarchical organization and jargon justify the archaeologist of the future in thinking that this is the artifact of a bizarre religion. As such, it is a religion that radically cut itself from transcendence: its Temple is a shadowy museum of illusions and deceptions, with no hope whatsoever of receiving the light of order; pseudo-heresies are created by their unknowing priests, revelations are elaborated at will only to be contradicted soon after. This is the world that the book's nameless hero must brave - he experiences several 'signification crisises', going back-and-forth between allegory as a universal rule and a complete negation of sense. The Building in which all the events take place is a sort of fiction-generating machine (like Lem's book itself), perpetually spinning tales, intrigues and conflicts. What makes the book powerful is that Lem equates his reader with the main character, both sharing an elusive mission; the work starts smoothly, until reader and agent are completely immersed in this world of mirrors, crypted informations and thwarted enigmas. The desire to understand remains, but there is nothing to understand as the personal quest (the agent's and the reader's) becomes more and more convoluted and drowned into a complex string of half-truths. A maze of a novel.
 |
Title: The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy by Stanislaw Lem ISBN: 0156340402 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 October, 1985 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem ISBN: 0156027593 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 16 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem ISBN: 0156306301 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1988 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
 |
Title: His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem, Michael Kandel ISBN: 0810117312 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.37 |
 |
Title: Eden (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book) by Stanislaw Lem, Marc E. Heine ISBN: 0156278065 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
