The World in a Phrase
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
Starting with the ancient Chinese and ending with contemporary Europeans and Americans, The World in a Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through spirited and amusing biographies of some of its greatest practitioners, including Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; great French aphorists like Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort; philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein; as well as prophets and sages like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus. In our modern age, The World in a Phrase explores how aphorisms still retain the power to instigate and inspire, enlighten and enrage, entertain and edify.
James Geary is the author of The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses. He lives in London with his wife and three children.
"James Geary's celebration of the smallest-and sometimes wisest-of literary forms. Geary defines the characteristics of aphorisms and discusses their history and their role in his life, and shares the work of renowned aphorists from Buddha to Dr. Seuss."-Associated Press
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's not a stretch to say Geary is obsessed with aphorisms. Ever since discovering the literary form in the "Quotable Quotes" section of Reader's Digest when he was a child, he has been compiling them. Given his level of passion, it's fitting that he has penned what is probably the definitive work on aphorisms, a love letter cum memoir disguised as a reference book. It also explains why he occasionally gets so carried away that he describes Nietzsche as "the Evil Knievel of nineteenth-century philosophy" and Frenchman Joseph Joubert as "the great apostle of the aphorism." But Geary, deputy editor of the European edition of Time magazine, is also a veteran newsman, and for the most part he tones down the hype. He provides a useful definition an aphorism is brief, definitive, personal, philosophical and must have a twist along with lively thumbnail sketches of some of the masters of the form, among them Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mark Twain, "who deliberately set out to overturn Franklin's friendly, avuncular sayings with his own darker, more ornery aphorisms." Geary's enthusiasm may overwhelm as much as it enlightens, but fellow fanatics will be delighted.
