Willis Goth Regier - Böcker

Sought, the Sphinx seems everywhere, whether the guardian of the pyramids on Egypt's Giza plateau or the beautiful man-eater with a deadly riddle, to be approached with awful caution. The Sphinx, that icon painted, sculpted, engraved, and exalted in poetry, fiction, and music, so impressed the philosopher Hegel that he pronounced the creature "the symbol of the symbolic itself." With a wealth of illustrations, Book of the Sphinx confirms Hegel's lofty judgment, finding the Sphinx everywhere: in tragedies, paintings, opera, murder mysteries, brothels, bars, and advertisements. Pursuing the Sphinx through kaleidoscopic sightings and encyclopedic observations, Willis Goth Regier plumbs the symbol's mysteries, conducting the reader down ever more perplexing and intriguing paths. Wonderfully readable, his highly idiosyncratic tour of the ages and the arts leads at last to a conception of the Sphinx that embraces nothing less than all that is unknowable—proving once again that confronting a Sphinx is one of the most dangerous and exhilarating adventures of the imagination.

Erasmus advised readers to learn quotations by heart and copy them everywhere: write them in the front and back of books; inscribe them on rings and cups; paint them on doors and walls, "even on the glass of a window." Emerson noted that "in Europe, every church is a kind of book or bible, so covered is it with inscriptions and pictures." In Arabic script as tall as a man, the Koran is quoted on the walls and domes of mosques. We quote to admire, provoke, commemorate, dispute, play, and inspire. Quotations signal class, club, clique, and alma mater. They animate wit, relay prophecies, guide meditation, and accessorize fashion. In Quotology Willis Goth Regier draws on world literature and contemporary events to show how vital quotations are, how they are collected and organized, and how deceptive they can be. He probes all these aspects, identifying fifty-nine types of quotations, including misquotations and anonymous sayings. Following the logic of quotology, Quotology concludes with famous last words.

Where would we be without flattery? Hobbes deemed it an honorable duty and Meredith called it the "finest of the arts." Alexander the Great applied it as imperial policy; Caesar and Cleopatra were masters of it; and Napoleon devoured it like candy. But flattery also has influential enemies. Cicero called flattery "the handmaid of vice" and Tacitus compared it to poison.   In a work as erudite as it is entertaining, Willis Goth Regier looks into flattery as an element as flammable (and as taken for granted) as oxygen. Giving flattery light, attention, and care, Regier treats readers to hundreds of historical examples drawn from the highest social circles in politics, romance, and religion, from the courts of Byzantium and China to Paris, Rome, and Washington, DC. Because flattery must please, it is playful and creative, and Regier's book makes the most of it, moving with light steps, now and then pausing to take in the view. Ambitious flatterers even seek to flatter God, a practice Regier treats with trepidation. This is a book for those who would understand the history, tactics, and pleasures of flattery, not least the thrill of danger. "O, flatter me, for love delights in praises."—Shakespeare "The whole World and the Bus'ness of it, is Manag'd by Flattery and Paradox; the one sets up False Gods, and the other maintains them."—Sir Roger L'Estrange  "Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present."—Samuel Johnson "In this disorganized society, in which the passions of the people are the sole real force, authority belongs to the party that understands how to flatter."—Hippolyte Taine

The five complete and unabridged works collected here are parts of a long and passionate testimony about American Indian culture as related by Indians themselves. Deep emotions and life-shaking crises converge in these pages concerning identity, family, community, caste, gender, nature, the future, the past, solitude, duty, trust, betrayal, leadership, war, and apocalypse. Each work is also regarded as a classic of Native literature and has much to teach. The Life of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847) by George Copway, a Canadian Ojibwe writer and lecturer, describes his unique and difficult cultural journey from the tiny village of his youth to the legislatures of the world, speaking for the rights and sovereignty of Indians. The Soul of the Indian (1911) by Charles Eastman, a physician and mixed-blood Sioux, depicts "the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man." American Indian Stories (1921) by Zitkala-Ša, one of the most famous Sioux writers and activists of the modern era, includes legends and tales from oral tradition, childhood stories, and allegorical fiction. Coyote Stories (1933) by Mourning Dove, an Okanagan writer, retells the popular trickster tales of Coyote, the most resilient character in all of American literature. Black Elk Speaks (1932) as told through John G. Neihardt, is the spacious religious vision and candid life story of a Lakota holy man. Neihardt and Black Elk collaborated to produce a unique and inspirational work.