On clowns: The dictator and the artist : essays - Softcover
Survivor of the Nazi camps and Ceausescu's Romania, winner of the National Book Award, recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Norman Manea, an extraordinary man of letters, "gives us a taste of something beyond the scope of even our twentieth-century imagination. . . . Manea is too profound a witness to place his gift for observation in the service of another sensualist account. . . . What matters for him is the phenomenon of an entire nation's life under this simultaneously grotesque and terrifying rule." -- The New Republic
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Language Notes:
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Romanian
From Kirkus Reviews:
Original Language: Romanian
Romanian-‚migr‚ novelist Manea here offers a rambling clutch of essays that effectively reproduce the sense of chaos and insecure self-definition that was (and still must be) the lot of the writer-citizen in the slipperiest, perhaps most psychotic of all the pre-1989 European hell-states, Ceausescu's Romania. Collective fate was to live under the ``insidious, dilated presence of the monster called the Power,'' inducing a mass psychological disturbance that resulted from ``the hours sacrificed to standing in lines, to ritual political meetings and to rallies, on top of the hours at work and the hours of helpless exposure to the inferno of public transportation...and when you were finally home in your birdcage, you found yourself mute, staring into an emptiness that could be defined as infinite despair.'' Manea presents a censor's ``reader's report'' on one of his about-to-be-published novels-- and, movingly, his own reaction upon rereading the book later: ``The writer who thought himself so aesthetically `engaged' discovered any number of pages, fragments, chapters that had been corrupted by the very artifices he had used (often with a sense of triumph) as a defense against the censor's office.'' An essay comparing Ceausescu to a White Clown, and the artist to the classic clown Auguste; a piece on Mircea Eliade's malignant Iron Guard-apologist past, and anecdotes of literary hardship--all are intermittently impressive, but Manea is a weak essayist, drifting and often self-serving, and this dilutes the truths he knows. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherGrove Weidenfeld
- Publication date1992
- ISBN 10 0802114156
- ISBN 13 9780802114150
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages178
- Rating
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
On Clowns : The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 39968189-6
Buy Used
US$ 9.90
Convert currency
Stock Image
On Clowns : The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Very Good. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Seller Inventory # 47520112-6
Buy Used
US$ 9.90
Convert currency
Seller Image
On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld, NYC
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good-. First Printing. Essays on the survival of creativity in a tyranny. 178 pp. Dust jacket is edgeworn with creases along the top back, one small tear at back lower corner. Seller Inventory # 0010926
Buy Used
US$ 10.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
On clowns: The dictator and the artist : essays
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Very Good. End homelessness in Philadelphia! Your purchase creates jobs! Paperback Used - Very Good Ships fast! 19921st. Seller Inventory # HP06-000053
Buy Used
US$ 6.15
Convert currency
Seller Image
On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description hardcover. Condition: Very Good in Dustjacket. 1st edition. New York. 1992. May 1992. Grove Weidenfeld. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0802114156. 179 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Krystyna Skalski. keywords: Politics Essays Eastern Europe . FROM THE PUBLISHER - The overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu revealed to the world a regime whose grim despotism was so powerful and pervasive that it almost defies comprehension. For Norman Manea, who left Romania in 1986, the terror the regime imposed on its citizens was matched, on another level, by the irrevocable choices it forced upon its artists. In On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist, Manea explores the realm of pain, anger and fear that confronts the creative mind in a tyranny. Patiently, carefully, and precisely, with a sense of humor and humanity made all the more powerful for the seething anger that lies just beneath, he catalogs the techniques with which a malevolent power binds the artist to itself: the subtle torture of censorship, the politics of substitution, the opiates of nationalism and ideology. With equal passion, Manea catalogs what the artist must rely on to survive under such circumstances: the masterful disguise of the buffoon, an aesthetic inseparable from ethics, a hatred of mediocrity, and, whenever the opportunity arises, a healthy raspberry to the dictator. Like Kundera, Milosz, and Kis, Manea is Central European not only because of where he was born but because of his spiritual outlook and his cultural horizons. In the formulation of Danilo Kis that Manea cites, 'Consciousness of belonging to Central Europe is itself in the end a kind of dissidence!' In On Clowns, as in his fiction, Manea shows how artistic creativity and intellectual freedom go far beyond dissidence: they are a morality, anathema to the 'captive mind' of the Communist dictatorship, that enable artists to survive and resist oppression. inventory #16551. Seller Inventory # z16551
Buy Used
US$ 8.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
On Clowns The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld, New York
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Usual library markings; sticker removed from spine; 2 1/2 x 1" sticker on rear board and last page; pocket on rear pastedown; sticker remnants on last page; "Discard" stamped on front pastedown; faint foxing to top page edges. ; Ex-Library; 5 3/4 x 8 1/2"; 178 pages. Seller Inventory # 113198
Buy Used
US$ 10.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Black clothbound with dustjacket. Entire book is v clean, square at the edges and tightly bound. Exterior shows faint edge wear from shelf storage; clear sheen to graphic of clown w knife behind his back. Interior is fresh n new-feeling with clear text and a crisp binding. Seller Inventory # 004651
Buy Used
US$ 16.50
Convert currency
Stock Image
On Clowns Loth
Published by
Grove Press February 2018
(2018)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Trade Paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Trade Paperback. Condition: Used - Very Good. Very nice clean, tight copy free of any marks. wrapped in complimentary Brodart dust jacket protector. Seller Inventory # 292186
Buy Used
US$ 15.00
Convert currency
Stock Image
On clowns: The dictator and the artist : essays
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld, New York
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 8vo pp. xii 3 178. book. Seller Inventory # 109462
Buy Used
US$ 15.00
Convert currency
Seller Image
On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist
Published by
Grove Weidenfeld, New York
(1992)
ISBN 10: 0802114156
ISBN 13: 9780802114150
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First edition. Fine in fine dustwrapper. Seller Inventory # 102078
Buy Used
US$ 25.00
Convert currency