Download or read book Parallelism of character and concept in American Psycho and Cosmopolis written by Timm Gehrmann and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-02-19 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Wuppertal, course: Issues in American Society - Literary Negotiations, language: English, abstract: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Cosmpolis by Don De Lillo both are stories that depict the decadence of their time, hinting at social, moral and political issues that are of importance in their respective times. In both books New York as the world centre of capitalism serves as a stage for two main characters who are shapen by the enormous amounts of money they have at their disposal. The characters and their interaction with society are the central points in both books. While Don De Lillo’s Cosmopolis deals at a time no clearly defined, which is probably supposed to be the post modern world of the early 2000s, Bret Easton Ellis’ book is set in the booming New York of the 80s where people who work on Wall Street are treated like pop stars and many of them well known as heroes of capitalism (e.g. Warren Buffet and Donald Trump). The book by Bret Easton Ellis takes us into this decadent cocain addicted world, that basically revolves the hunger for parties and sex. The book by Don De Lillo presents a totally different atmosphere. The atmosphere is rather shapen by fear of those that have come too short in the capitalist world and the security needs of those who work on wall street who have by now become anonymous figures, that may only be identified by their stretch limousines. The world of Cosmopolis has become darker and more dangerous; wild parties are no longer celebrated, just as get togethers of business people don’t seem to happen in public, mainly for security reasons. The pace of the world has also changed as computers and video transmit news from all over the world into cars that have become indistinguishable from offices. Yet both books have a lot in common in terms of the topics they deal with and the kinds of characters they portrait. While Cosmopolis only draws a kind of gloomy atmosphere, American Psycho is also one of the funniest books I have ever read and has been turned into a fantastic movie, with which I have compared some of the scenes.
Download or read book American Psycho and Social Criticism Illusion or Reality written by Lena Groß and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: The filming of Bret Easton Ellis’ bestseller novel American Psycho caused a major scandal after its publication in 2000 (Lee Brien). It covers the story of the serial killer Patrick Bateman, who enjoys a good reputation everywhere in Manhattan. Bateman is a young, athletic, handsome, successful, and stereotypical 1980s yuppie, who you are able to see in magazines, journals, advertising for Calvin Klein or Hugo Boss, and on Wall Street. On the other hand, he murders, rapes, tortures, mutilates, and cannibalizes his victims, but his cruel acts remain undetected. At first sight, Patrick’s behavior seems very irritating because he neither provides the audience with any reasons for his murders, nor with any psychological insight into his character to justify his actions. Taking a closer look, his behavior and violence are an expression of the materialistic, superficial nature of the American society to which Bateman wants to belong “and into which his sickness and inhumanity do actually ‘fit’” (Horsley 222). Although a lot of Bateman’s brutal actions are shown, at the end of the movie the audience comes to question if all these murders really happened because some inconsistencies in his story become apparent e.g. Bateman outlines the murder of a man, who at this point was not even in town. Therefore, the question is raised as to whether the murders are real or just a product of Bateman’s imagination, and if they are real, is the society so over the top that not even the crime matters and he is able to escape unpunished? In this paper, this question and especially what the murders are about to express either way will be analyzed in view of social criticism. Therefore, first of all, American society in the 1980s will be outlined to help the reader better understand the contemporary historical background to which the movie refers. Subsequently, the amoral materialism in American consumer society pictured in American Psycho will be described to clarify the social circumstances Bateman lives in. Accordingly, Bateman’s cruel actions will be analyzed and its truth content will be discussed to later on conclude that this kind of society is not able to fulfill his life and by the help of violence Bateman wants to escape the conformity of America’s superficial society.
Download or read book Cosmopolis written by Stephen Toulmin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-11 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all. . . . His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books
Download or read book Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care written by Gunilla Dahlberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-01-24 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges received wisdom and the tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical issues of measurement and management.
Download or read book The Listener written by Robert McCammon and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author “masterfully combines historical thriller and supernatural horror . . . [for] fans of occult thrillers like those by Dean Koontz” (Booklist, starred review). Economic collapse. Crushing unemployment and breadlines crowding city streets as crime spirals out of control. The Great Depression has enough misery for all, and some to spare. But for angel-faced grifter John Partlow, the American South in 1934 is a land of opportunity. The small-time confidence man stumbles into the big leagues when he partners up with beautiful hustler Ginger LaFrance. Seduced into her high stakes plot to kidnap the young children of a New Orleans shipping magnate, John realizes he’s in over his head when Ginger’s fierce desire to see her scheme succeed could mean a gruesome end for their innocent victims. Unless young Nilla can wield her secret gift in time. Though she’s never heard the term, nine-year-old Nilla is a Listener—someone who can telepathically pick up on the thoughts of others like themselves. Nilla has started to communicate with another Listener—a young black man struggling to find his way as a porter at the Union Station. Their lives couldn’t be more different, and though they have never met, their shared bond is so strong that Curtis is ready to risk it all to answer her cry for help. But will it be enough to save two children from the merciless hands of hardened criminals? “Race relations are one subject of this seductive slice of supernatural noir set in 1934 New Orleans . . . McCammon conjures believable characters whose sympathetic plight pulls the reader headlong into the novel’s volatile mix of crime and fantasy. Its tense finale, paced at breakneck speed, will have readers turning pages until its surprise-packed end.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Varieties of Literary Interpretations of Jazz in American Writings of the 1950s and 1960s written by Christine Recker and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2008-10 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2006 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Dusseldorf "Heinrich Heine", 113 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In a retrospective, black musical forms experienced a fast stylistic development and an increasing popularity amongst a wide audience of artists and youngsters inclined to American subculture all through the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. One of the most influential and significant among these musical forms was jazz music. Writers began to apply it to their own work in manifold ways. From a retrospective, the effect of this convergence of jazz and literature, which is now commonly referred to as 'jazz literature', was mostly structural or thematic (and sometimes even both), and would soon cover a great variety of different literary genres. The present thesis aims to identify the various ways in which writers applied their experiences with jazz music to their writings. It covers different literary genres and authors, such as John Clellon Holmes, Amiri Baraka, Jack Kerouac, and James Baldwin.
Download or read book The Taming of Chance written by Ian Hacking and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-08-31 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines detailed scientific historical research with characteristic philosophic breadth and verve.
Download or read book The Darlings written by Cristina Alger and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-12-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Bonfire of the Vanities for our times, by an author who “knows her way around 21st-century wealth and power” (The Wall Street Journal). Since he married Merrill Darling, daughter of billionaire financier Carter Darling, attorney Paul Ross has grown accustomed to all the luxuries of Park Avenue. But a tragic event is about to catapult the Darling family into the middle of a massive financial investigation and a red-hot scandal. Suddenly, Paul must decide where his loyalties really lie. Debut novelist Cristina Alger is a former analyst at Goldman Sachs, an attorney, and the daughter of a Wall Street financier. Drawing on her unique insider's perspective, Alger gives us an irresistible glimpse into the highest echelons of New York society—and a fast-paced thriller of epic proportions that powerfully echoes Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children and reads like a fictional Too Big to Fail.
Download or read book White Noise written by Don DeLillo and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-06-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant satire of mass culture and the numbing effects of technology, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, a teacher of Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America. Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud, unleashed by an industrial accident, floats over there lives, an "airborne toxic event" that is a more urgent and visible version of the white noise engulfing the Gladneys—the radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, and TV murmurings that constitute the music of American magic and dread.
Download or read book Spinoza s Modernity written by Willi Goetschel and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spinoza’s Modernity is a major, original work of intellectual history that reassesses the philosophical project of Baruch Spinoza, uncovers his influence on later thinkers, and demonstrates how that crucial influence on Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, and Heinrich Heine shaped the development of modern critical thought. Excommunicated by his Jewish community, Spinoza was a controversial figure in his lifetime and for centuries afterward. Willi Goetschel shows how Spinoza’s philosophy was a direct challenge to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of modern European thought. He locates the driving force of this challenge in Spinoza’s Jewishness, which is deeply inscribed in his philosophy and defines the radical nature of his modernity.
Download or read book Spaces of Identity written by David Morley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are living through a time when old identities - nation, culture and gender are melting down. Spaces of Identity examines the ways in which collective cultural identities are being reshaped under conditions of a post-modern geography and a communications environment of cable and satellite broadcasting. To address current problems of identity, the authors look at contemporary politics between Europe and its most significant others: America; Islam and the Orient. They show that it's against these places that Europe's own identity has been and is now being defined. A stimulating account of the complex and contradictory nature of contemporary cultural identities.
Download or read book In The Miso Soup written by Ryu Murakami and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rollercoaster ride from the cult master of the psycho-thriller 'A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs' Kirkus 'Deft and fascinating ... A grisly tour of the darkness and confusion of the human mind' New York Times It's just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's nightlife. But Frank's behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous desires. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends with Frank into an inferno of evil, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.
Download or read book The Shape of Things to Come written by H. G. Wells and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2016-09-14 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1933, "The Shape of Things to Come" is science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells. Within it, world events between 1933 and 2106 are speculated with a single superstate representing the solution to all humanity's problems. A classic example of Wellsian prophesy, this volume is highly recommended for fans of his work and of the science fiction genre. Herbert George Wells (1866 - 1946) was a prolific English writer who wrote in a variety of genres, including the novel, politics, history, and social commentary. Today, he is perhaps best remembered for his contributions to the science fiction genre thanks to such novels as "The Time Machine" (1895), "The Invisible Man" (1897), and "The War of the Worlds" (1898). Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
Download or read book History of Concepts written by Iain Hampsher-Monk and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hoewel enorm invloedrijk in Duitstalig Europa, heeft de conceptuele geschiedschrijving (Begriffsgeschichte) tot nu toe weinig aandacht in het Engels gekregen. Dit genre van intellectuele geschiedschrijving verschilt van zowel de Franse geschiedschrijving van mentalités als de Engelstalige geschiedschrijving van verhandelingen door het concept. Aan de hand van practische voorbeelden in de geschiedschrijving wordt deze vorm toegelicht door Bram Kempers, Eddy de Jongh en Rolf Reichardt.
Download or read book Cosmopolis written by Don DeLillo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eric Packer, a young billionaire asset manager, journeys across New York in his limousine despite a threat against his life, and the occurances of various events that are stalling traffic throughout the city.
Download or read book Politics and the Other Scene written by Étienne Balibar and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As one of Louis Althusser's most brilliant students in the 1960s, Etienne Balibar contributed to the theoretical collective masterpiece of Reading Capital. Since then he has established himself among the most subtle philosophical and political thinkers in France. In Politics and the Other Scene Balibar deepens and extends the work he first developed with Immanuel Wallerstein in Race, Nation, Class. Exploring the theme of universalism and difference, he addresses such topical questions as European racism, the notion of the border, whether a European citizenship is possible or desirable, violence and politics, and identity and emancipation.
Download or read book A History of Modern Psychology in Context written by Wade Pickren and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-02-19 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A History of Modern Psychology in Context, the authors resist the traditional storylines of great achievements by eminent people, or schools of thought that rise and fall in the wake of scientific progress. Instead, psychology is portrayed as a network of scientific and professional practices embedded in specific contexts. The narrative is informed by three key concepts—indigenization, reflexivity, and social constructionism—and by the fascinating interplay between disciplinary Psychology and everyday psychology.
