sexta-feira, 26 de outubro de 2012

The Seven Deadly Sins in Literature by Emily Temple.


The Seven Deadly Sins in Literature

by Emily Temple.
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Today marks the release of Jami Attenberg’s The Middlesteins, a portrait of a woman obsessed with food and the efforts (or non-efforts) of her family to get her eating under control. We can say pretty confidently that the book made us never want to overeat again, and we got to thinking about the other books that make us want to give up our vices. After all, any sin you can dream up has probably been written about, usually by someone French. After the jump, find examples of the seven deadly sins in literature (whether actually deadly or just unfortunate). Indulge in a little naughtiness-by-proxy, and then let us know which sinful characters we missed in the comments.

Gluttony

Jami Attenberg’s excellent new novel makes us never want to pig out again. In it, Edie, the matriarch of a Midwestern Jewish family, is obsessed with food, and is eating herself to death as her family swirls around her in various states of distress. Only in America.
Release Date: October 23, 2012


For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.

When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle-- a whippet thin perfectionist-- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?

With pitch-perfect prose, huge compassion, and sly humor, Jami Attenberg has given us an epic story of marriage, family, and obsession. The Middlesteins explores the hopes and heartbreaks of new and old love, the yearnings of Midwestern America, and our devastating, fascinating preoccupation with food.

In Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic, Baron Harkonnen is so fat that he requires anti-gravity generators to be sewn into his clothing in order to keep him upright. Not a good end in and of itself, if you ask us.

Release Date: August 2, 2005 | Series: Dune Chronicles, Book 1
 
Here is the novel that will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who would become the mysterious man known as Muad'Dib. He would avenge the traitorous plot against his noble family--and would bring to fruition humankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.
A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what it undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.

Oh, Augustus Gloop. When eating is your only hobby (and anyway, it’s better than being a “hooligan”), of course you’re going to end up with “fat bulging from every fold, with two greedy eyes peering out of [your] doughball of a face.” Though actually, getting sucked down into the chocolate river turns out to be a not too bad diet technique.

Book Description (retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Chocolate-Factory-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143106333/flavorpill0e-20)
Release Date: August 30, 2011 

Twice turned into a feature film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a delectable classic about a child's dreams and the eccentric chocolate-maker who makes them come true. When Willy Wonka's hallowed chocolate factory holds a worldwide contest awarding tours to the lucky, five children emerge as winners, including a glutton, a gum- chewing nitwit, a spoiled brat, and a TV addict. Only Charlie Bucket, the story's earnest hero, stands to win the exotic riches of Wonka's empire-if he avoids the pitfalls of his fellow contestants and stays true to his heart. Ingenious and entertaining, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a true modern classic.

Lust

The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont are among the lustiest villains in literature — deviants who use sex as a weapon in their clotted, twisted schemes. Like many of these kinds of stories, it ends with true love snatched away, a mortal wound, and a face full of smallpox.

Publication Date: June 15, 2008 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil--gifted, wealthy, and bored--form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game. And they play this game with such wit and style that it is impossible not to admire them, until they discover mysterious rules that they cannot understand. In the ensuing battle there can be no winners, and the innocent suffer with the guilty. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able to judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about a world we still inhabit.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Ah, yes, the most tragic teenage love story in history. About four days after they meet, these two 14 year olds kill themselves rather than face the prospect of living without the other. Yes kiddies, we know it feels that way now, but wait until you see the new boy in your math class.

Publication Date: September 2004


"Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,"
With these first lines, Shakespeare’s timeless play of young love and untimely death begins; as in life, it is sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, always poignantly beautiful. While our emotions are moved by the imagery and rhythms of Shakespeare’s verse, our minds are delighted by the sharpness of his insights into life, death, and the human condition.
Written in the mid-1590s, the play is regarded as one of the Bard’s earliest masterpieces. To make Romeo and Juliet more accessible for the modern reader, our Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary of the more difficult words, as well as convenient sidebar notes to enlighten the reader on aspects that may be confusing or overlooked. In doing this, it is our intention that the reader may more fully enjoy the beauty of the verse, the wisdom of the insights, and the impact of the drama.

It’s slightly indelicate to call Humbert Humbert’s feelings for Lolita “lust,” but then, his feelings themselves are somewhat indelicate. In any event, Hum’s burning desire for sweet Lo ends in multiple deaths — indeed, if the fictional “Foreword” can be believed, the deaths of just about everybody in the story.

Release Date: March 13, 1989

Awe and exhiliration--along with heartbreak and mordant wit--abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love--love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation.

Wrath

The very first word of Homer’s epic is mēnin : wrath. Or, translated, “Sing goddess, of the wrath of Peleus’ son, Achilles, that destructive wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes…” That’s what happens when you kill his friends. Better go run behind Athena’s skirts.

Release Date: November 1, 1998


Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters presents us with his universally acclaimed modern verse translation of the world's greatest war story. Rage-Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls? Thus begins the stirring story of the Trojan War and the rage of Achilles that has gripped listeners and readers for 2,700 years. This timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to its wrenching, tragic conclusion. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb Introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it co-exists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace. Combining the skills of a poet and scholar, Robert Fagles brings the energy of contemporary language to this enduring heroic epic. He maintains the drive and metric music of Homer's poetry, and evokes the impact and nuance of the Iliad's mesmerizing repeated phrases in what Peter Levi calls "an astonishing performance."

Trust us — the wrath of a mercilessly teased teenage girl is unlike any wrath you’ve ever experienced before. Especially if she’s telekinetic. Burn, mean girls, burn.

Publication Date: September 1, 2000

Since the publication of "Carrie" in 1974, neither misfit Carrie White nor her catastrophic high school prom has been forgotten. That's because the story of Carrie, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge introduced a fresh and distinctive new voice in American fiction -- Stephen King.
Although "Carrie" first captured America's attention with its shocking climax, it remains as vibrant today as when it was first published because of Stephen King's ability to tap the collective unconscious of our commercial society. He brilliantly underscores the inherent fears and driving forces that fester in adolescence and later manifest themselves in various forms. Whether it's public high school's proclivity for suppressing individualism and creativity, the bigotry of cliques, or male apprehension of women's emerging sexuality and equality, "Carrie" lays bare our ritualistic, cruel, and base tendencies. Ultimately, we discern that it's not Carrie White but the ineffectual people surrounding her that we truly dread -- which is why "Carrie" endures as one of Stephen King's most riveting and disturbing novels.

He who fights monsters…

 

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up-Opening with the classic line, "Call me Ishmael," the narrator's New England accent adds a touch of authenticity to this sometimes melodramatic presentation. The St. Charles Players do a credible job on the major roles, but some of the group responses, such as "Aye, aye Captain," sound more comic than serious. This adaptation retains a good measure of Melville's dialogue and key passages which afford listeners a vivid connection with the lengthy novel. Background music and appropriate sound effects enhance the telling of the story about Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of the malevolent white whale. The cassettes are clearly marked, and running times are noted on each side of the tapes. Announcements at the beginning of each side and a subtle chime signal at the end make it easy to follow the story, but a stereo player must be used to hear some dialogue. The lightweight cardboard package is inadequate for circulation. Done in a radio theatre format, the recording does a nice job of introducing the deeper themes of the book and covering the major events. For school libraries that support an American literature curriculum, this recording offers a different interpretation of an enduring classic.
Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library. Rocky Hill, CT 
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

From Library Journal

In a sense, this work is the piece de resistance of the textual revolution in American scholarship of the past generation. The first half is the final MLA "Approved Text" of the classic novel, prepared under the auspices of the Center for Editions of American Authors. The second half consists of an Historical Note detailing background, genetic composition, publication, and ensuing critical reception; a discussion of its textual history; and some relevant marginalia. The work is not only thorough and rigorous, but, considering the scholarly grittiness of the endeavor, surprisingly lucid and graceful in its exposition. Highly recommended for special collections. Earl Rovit, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

In this production of Herman Melville's tale of a tragic whale hunt, narrator Anthony Heald not only creates vivid characterizations--Captain Ahab's gruff mania, Starbuck's doubtful sensitivity, the prophet Elijah's visionary shakiness--he also dramatizes the many moods of the Pequod crew and the mercurial ocean itself. Heald's voice has the range of a piano, and he uses it like a virtuoso. In one minute his reading can move from slow and languid, reflecting a dreamy day at sea, to alert and brisk, evoking the suspense of a whale sighting. Heald's voice bristles dryly with humor or sinks with dread--a range necessary to tell this complex story of a man's obsession with conquering an enigmatic white whale. --AudioFile --This text refers to the MP3 CD edition.

From the Publisher

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Introduction by Larzer Ziff --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

"Responsive to the shaping forces of his age as only men of passionate imagination are, even Melville can hardly have been fully aware of how symbolical an american hero he had fashioned in Ahab....He is the embodiment of his author's most profound response to the problem of the free individual will in extremis."
--F.O. Matthiessen
This edition reproduces the illustrations and page design created by Rockwell Kent for Random House in 1930. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Geraldine McCaughrean is one of the most distinguished living children's authors. She has won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Novel Award (twice), and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Carl F. Hovde's Introduction to Moby-Dick
It is clear that Melville is not Ahab, nor is he Ishmael, though here the relationship is more complicated. "Call me Ishmael," chapter I begins: The borrowed name lets us know that he will tell us only what he wants to, and that he is a man apart from his fellows. The biblical Ishmael is the illegitimate son of Abraham by Rebecca's servant Hagar, and even though the Lord is good to Ishmael later in Genesis, his half-brother, Isaac, inherits the Lord's covenant through their father (Genesis 16, 17, 21, and 25).
Melville's narrator promptly describes dark thoughts approaching self-destruction: He pauses before coffin warehouses and follows every funeral he meets. But in the novel things don't remain so grim for long. Just as the Lord in Genesis is good to Ishmael despite his illegitimacy, so Melville's Ishmael floats to rescue with his best friend's burial box. The image of death has become the means to life, a change typical of Melville's density of view and sense of ambiguity. And the narrator's depressions spoken of at the beginning are modulated by the very language in which they are described: He is serious in describing his "spleen" and the "drizzly November" in his soul, but he presents them in a way that masks the pain even as it bodies it forth. The joking tone in which that account is developed is one we hear very often from the narrator even when he speaks of serious things.
The Ishmael we hear at the beginning is in some ways the book's most illusive character because, just as the biblical name suggests an outsider, a wanderer of sorts, he wanders in and out of the novel's narrative voice as it moves along. In the early chapters he is fully present as a character as he leads us toward the Pequod, but once on board he soon melds into the crew as his storytelling duties are taken over by the much more knowledgeable narrator whose arrival is not announced, but whose presence is clear as early as chapter XXIX when we overhear an exchange between Ahab and Stubb, the second mate.
They are on the quarterdeck, where Ishmael, as a common seaman, has no right to be unless working, and even if he were he could not overhear Stubb's private thoughts as he descends into the cabin. There is much in the book that Ishmael the crew member could not see or overhear: conversations between the ship's officers, Ahab's behavior at dinner with his officers, to say nothing of Ahab's private thoughts in a dramatic monologue complete with stage directions. In "Sunset" (chap. XXXVII), the scene is "The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out." As in the preceding chapter, "The Quarter Deck" (chap. XXXVI), we have suddenly changed literary genres-we are for a short time in a play, not a novel.
As the action requires of him, Ishmael now and then returns as a man with a particular role on the ship, someone who could not have the wider knowledge we are often given. In chapter LXXII he is at one end of a rope with Queequeg at the other; in chapter XCIV he is squeezing coagulated oil back into liquid; in chapter XCVI he almost capsizes the ship; in the Epilogue he is floating with Queequeg's coffin so that the ship Rachel can bring him back to tell the story.
These are inconsistencies, but how bothersome are they? Most readers have not been much troubled. Both narrators have the same voice and personality-one simply becomes the other, and it is best to think of them as the Ishmael who acts and the Ishmael who narrates, two functions of the same identity. Often enough we may not even notice the change from one to the other because we are caught up in the action and the strange brilliance of the style.
The book's general narrator occupies a position between Ishmael, on the one hand, and Melville, on the other. We don't confuse Melville with the other two-that shared personality is the author's construction to serve his ends. But it is true that Moby-Dick is an opinionated work, and it is not surprising that the narrator sometimes expresses views that we assume to be Melville's. This is true, for example, in "The Ship" (chap. XVI), where Melville seems to wonder what it will take to turn an old American sea captain into a noble figure worthy of the greatest classical tragedies. The paragraph is a virtual recipe for what Melville will do in creating Ahab later in the book, so much so that he might have written it after he had largely finished with Ahab, and placed it early in the book as a sign of what is to come.
There are also passages in which the narrator expresses directly to the reader opinions that are appropriate to the text and are views that Melville clearly held. After explaining how property rights are established after a dead whale is temporarily abandoned, he asks, "What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish! And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?" We should be annoyed if we thought that the story line were there only to set us up for the generalization, but Melville's gifts as a storyteller prevent this: The comment rises from the action. While the passage is not about Ahab, it implies what is wrong with him-in his arrogance and isolation he denies the inevitable interdependence of personal identity and community, one of the novel's great themes.
In a novel where ambition reaches out to some of the largest matters-man's position in the natural world, the nature of charismatic rule in its moral dimensions, the very nature of reality itself-there are notable exclusions in Moby-Dick, though not through oversight. Important aspects of daily life are less represented than one would usually expect in a novel: Food, sleep, hygiene, pastimes are hardly present, nor matters of health-important on such a vessel-except for Queequeg's illness.
These exclusions come about because the literary genre closest to Moby-Dick is not the traditional prose narrative, but the epic-a form in which the texture of common life is often treated lightly to allow concentration on the protagonist and heroic action. After the nights and steaks in New Bedford's Spouter Inn and the meals of Mrs. Hussey's Nantucket chowder, there is little detail of this kind once the Pequod leaves the dock, with four-fifths of the novel still to come.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From AudioFile

This adaptation of Melville's monumental classic retains many of its famous lines and scenes, giving the listener a sense of the endless search for the white whale while not actually going through it detail by detail. The actors bring in a variety of accents and voices that tell much about the characters: from Ishmael's salty New England accent to a fellow whaler's German accent to Queequeg's powerful tone. Sounds of the sea weave in and out of the story without overwhelming it, and the scenes in which the crew is out chasing whales are imbued with a sense of urgency and suspense. The St. Charles Players make MOBY-DICK palatable for a general audience. A.F. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

http://www.amazon.com/Moby-Dick-Or-The-Whale/dp/product-description/161382310X/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

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Posted by francisco vaz brasil at 22:39

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