Product Description
He's called "the monster of the Bastille" and has murdered 27 elderly women, and Chief Inspector Morvan is in charge of the investigation. In Argentina, meanwhile, an untitled manuscript is discovered amongst the papers of a missing poet. This novel seeks to unravel the two cases. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

For neither alcoholics nor the sleep deprived
Reading Saer's The Investigation provides both pleasure and pain. Endless sub-clauses prove excruciating for those who are memory challenged, ensuring that many sentences will need to be re-read and then, at times, read yet again. Proust is less convoluted in the construction of his text. However, whilst Saer's sentences are wonderfully punctuated and incredibly constructed, many a time, the meaning lost, one simply chooses not to re-read sentences simply because, at the end of the day, they add little to the progression of the narrative and, one suspects, have little merit in themselves. Nevertheless, one also stumbles on passages of exceptional beauty and superb insight. It very much appears that Saer has set out to toy with the reader and, as a formidable writer, is most capable of doing so. I admit to being a fan of neither Borges nor Cortazar (whilst appreciating the odd work of both) - it may be that Saer's work has a different audience in mind to one consisting of readers like me. Having laboured through Nobody Nothing Never, I was reluctant to embark upon The Investigation - I have, overall, been pleasantly surprised and will be keeping my eyes open for other works.

NB the first review of The Investigation posted on this site is a review of another work entirely.

The Investigation
The Investigation is a poetic condensation of the court record of the trial, held in a German court in 1964-1965, of twenty-one persons who participated in the destruction of four million people at the concentration camp of Auschwitz in the years 1941-1945

Peter Weiss, whose Marat/Sade was hailed throughout the world as a major theatrical innovation, has chosen this way to bring these events to the stage. The dialogue of The Investigation was not invented. Rather, the actual testimony of the accused and their accusors has been distilled to bring out what is essential to the author's vision.

Central to that vision is a documentation of the outstanding negative achievement of our civilization: the use of the concentrated power of a modern technology by a sophisticated leadership to draw a highly civilized people into participation, active or passive, in the irrational destruction of a segment of its own population which had been designated worthless.

From the testimony of the survivors comes a literal and sickening account of the procedures at Auschwitz, the gas chambers, the mass cremations, the starvations, the brutality, the medical experimentation - all parts of a routine whose goal was impersonal efficiency in exterminating large numbers of people.

But the accused, who since the war have led conventional and useful lives, cannot be made to understand that obeying orders at Auschwitz twenty years ago constituted a crime. "The witnesses felt guilt," Peter Weiss has said of the trial; "the accused felt none."

The Investigation raises inescapable questions about the citizen's relation to the society in which hew lives. To what extent is he accountable for his own actions? Does conformity with a prevailing social of political code of behavior absolve him of individual responsibility? If his government, purporting to act for the good of the whole society, enforces a code that conflicts with his own convictions, should he resist - and when - and how?
--- from book's back cover

... Read more

Product Description
Expertly designed to address the specific needs of engineering students, Engineering Communication teaches them how to write and communicate effectively and professionally. It provides an understanding of how rhetorical and linguistic concepts can help solve everyday problems in writing and speaking in the workplace. In addition to the standard skill of grammatical writing, the book teaches students how to write with precision and objectivity as well as how to assess and adjust for specific audiences. Theory and practice are bridged through a series of principles (rather than steadfast rules) intended to help students examine, question, and refine their communication skills.

Features

* Smart organization. Content is separated into a series of easy-to-follow principles (19 in total) which together
help students improve their overall writing and communication skills in a step-by-step fashion.
* Practical. Students are taught transferable skills rather than simply being given templates to copy, giving them
a workable and versatile knowledge of grammatical, effective writing.
* Real-world strategies. Real documents prepared by professional engineers; for example, a full-text project
report on the failure of a crane at an aluminium plant is thoroughly analyzed. This model, as well as samples of
work from engineering students, is provided to help students gain an understanding of how to apply successful
communication strategies in the workplace.
* Helpful learning tools. The appendix includes guides to grammar basics such as sentence structure, clauses,
and conjunctions, giving students a solid grounding in the basics of writing before they progress through more
complex examples.
* Written for engineers. The text is written by experts in engineering communication to address the specific
communication requirements of engineering students and professionals.
* Grammar guide. An accessible grammar guide has been included at the end of the book for quick reference. ... Read more

Product Description
Cast: 9M, 3W, Extras. "Total theatre" is the expression critics have used to describe this unique theatrical event which is designed for production on a nearly bare stage by a large and flexible cast. The Marquis de Sade, when an inmate at the Asylum of Charenton, staged plays that were performed by fellow inmates. With this point of departure, Peter Weiss has created one of the most powerful and exciting plays on the century! --- from back cover ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Provocative and Mind Stimulating Material
Maybe you have seen the film "Quills" and it has sparked an interest in you about the Marquis de Sade. Or maybe you are a history buff and are interested in the time of the French revolution, or perhaps you just love a really good thought-provoking play. If any of those things holds your interest you are in for a really marvelous read in "Marat/Sade" aka "The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under The Direction of Marquis de Sade"(by Peter Weiss). Various editions may be found under either title. The edition I am reviewing is the English version(original is German)translated by Geoffrey Skelton.

So Marat/Sade is a play within a play with definite messages concerning "Revolution" and the effects on both the masses and the leaders. The time setting is a fictional one(it places de Sade at the scene), but uses the basis of historical events and characters to tell the story. The play inside this play is written and produced by Sade and performed by the inmates of Charenton where he spent so many years imprisoned for his writing, considered socially unacceptable and outrageous. The year it is being performed is 1808 but the events surrounding the story are happening on July 13, 1793, the day Charlotte Corday stabbed Jean-Paul Marat.

It is the day of the assassination. Marat, Sade, Corday,and political activists of the time argue back and forth about the reasoning and atrocities surrounding the Revolution and the state of Terror. The points going back and forth(sometimes in marvelous song) has the inmates(the rest of the cast), being easily swayed and worked up into a state of frenzy, all the while building to the stabbing. What is morally right and wrong? Heads are rolling - literally - who are the sane ones here - are the inmates running the asylum - so to speak? Even Columier(progressive director of the institution and supporter of freedom in arts)has trouble with the play when he feels it goes to far against the establishment.

This book, first published in 1965 grasps not only the horrific events of the 18th century, it is also certainly a statement on the international events of the 1960's. It will still provoke thought and may translate to some of the atrocities going on in the world today. Author Peter Weiss, seems to have really gotten into the heads of Sade, Marat and the others giving intellectual and provocative dialogue to the players. The scenes are well set for the stage, and excellent descriptions are given for each character making it very easy to visualize the entire play.

I don't speak German(the 2 semesters I took in college nearly 40 years ago is long forgotten), but I have to say I don't feel like anything was lost in the translation of this play.

I would highly recommend this play to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, politics, infamous characters, and even if you are part of an acting group looking for an interesting and provocative play, you should have a look at this one.

This is a keeper and one to be read repeated times...enjoy the read...Laurie ... Read more

Product Description
Play, originally in German with music, set in historical time & context of Marquis de Sade with 1960s Cold War quest to determine borderlines of sanity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

i'm in this show
Marat/Sade is an excellent script.for all of you out there who love the book and the story come To Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, november 20th through the 24th for a fabulous performance of the show. call the box office at 1-440-826-2240. ask for tony and if he's there tell him u saw this.

the most beautiful play ever
I have to say that this is an absolutly beautiful piece of literature.The language rolls off the tounge like a symphony with a harmonizing dissonance.The story itself is so simple yet complicated all at the sametime.The emotion that one feels after reading this is numbing.You sitthere not knowing what to say and think.

Publish MARAT/SADE again.
MARAT/SADE

"This play-within-a-play is about pushing at the limits", said Dramaturg William Lewis Evans.

I first saw the play performed by students of the Bishop's College School Studio Theatre inLennoxville, Quebec. The text was phenomenally stimulating. The play wasmemorable, intense, and for the audience at least, indeed a little scary.Marat/Sade, after all, is the practical quintessence of what Antonin Artaudcalled the Theatre of Cruelty - theatre of the visceral and disturbing -theatre that "wakes us up, mind and heart". The highlight of thatCanadian gala, for me, was when I witnessed an audience member and retiredmember of the French Foreign Legion (an outstanding citoyen-expatrie whoshould remain nameless) stand up - in the middle of this High School play -and leave the theatre in protest.

The play was, and remains, exceedinglypowerful.

Years later I saw the play performed by Yale studentsin New Haven, Connecticut. If I remember correctly, LorenStein directed. At one point during the performance, it became clear to theaudience that one of the patients - an actor - had, during the course ofthe performance, in fact urinated on an audience member. As a reporter forRadio in New Haven, I interrogated that audience member at theend of the night, and caught a soundbite.

She said:

"It waswonderful. I don't know what else to say. This is Theatre, I guess.Realtheatre."

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this playshould end up out of print, along with a dozen or so others like it, and bereplaced on your roster with the latest celebrity-authored self-help books.

Maybe Oprah Winfrey will teach me how to fry tofu. It seems to be all wehave a taste for anymore.

Franklin Pryce Raff

The book is great
This book is written both as a script of the play and a narrative of the action of the players(inmates). It's fantastic. I loaned the book to someone years ago and never got it back. If anyone knows where I can get acopy, please email me!

I only saw the actual play
The play was puton by actors from my school and it was terrific. I cannot wait to read the book. I give the play and book(in advance)5 stars and my gratitude that this play and book exist. ... Read more

Product Description
Photography has become an increasingly pervasive medium of choice in contemporary art practice and is even employed at times by artists who do not necessarily consider themselves to be photographers. How did this come to be? The Last Picture Show will address the emergence of this phenomenon of artists using photography by tracing the development of conceptual trends in postwar photographic practice from its first glimmerings in the 60s in the work of artists such as Bernd & Hilla Becher, Ed Ruscha and Bruce Nauman, to its rise to art-world prominence in the work of the artists of the late 70s and early 80s including Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman.Intended as a major genealogy of the rise of a still-powerful and evolving photographic practice by artists, the checklist will include a wide array of works examining a range of issues: performativity and photographic practice; portraiture and cultural identity; the formal and social architectonics of the built environment; societal and individual interventions in the landscape; photography's relationship to sculpture and painting; the visual mediation of meaning in popular culture; and the poetic and conceptual investigation of visual non-sequiturs, disjunctions and humorous absurdities. Bringing together a newly commissioned body of scholarship with reprints of important historical texts, The Last Picture Show seeks to define the legacy that has produced a rich body of photographic practice in the art world today.Pictures by Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Giovani Anselmo, John Baldessari, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Sarah Charlesworth, Bruce Conner, Jan Dibbets, Valie Export, Peter Fischli &David Weiss, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Douglas Huebler, Yves Klein, Imi Knoebel, Sylvia Kolbowski, Barbara Kruger, David Lamelas, Sherrie Levine, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta Clark, Ana Mendietta, Mario Merz, Nasreen Mohamedi, Bruce Nauman, Hélio Oiticica, Dennis Oppenheim, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Sigmar Polke, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Robert Smithson, Ger van Elk, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, James Welling and Hannah WilkeEdited by Douglas Fogle.~Essays by Douglas Fogle, Kate Bush, Richard Flood, Geoffrey Batchen, Stefan Gronnert and Pamela Lee. ~Foreword by Kathy Halbreich.Hardcover, 8 x 10.5 in./304 pgs / 160 color 40 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20188 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lack of identification to aid research
Peter Weiss' _The Investigation_ is a stark docu-drama.About ninety percent of the text actually came straight from texts from the 1964 Frankfurt war crimes trial, however, nearly all identifying details have been removed.It's very rare that names are used.Characters are simply noted as "Judge" , "counsel for the defense", "witness", etc.This has an odd effect on the reader, making one feel disconnected.It's difficult to form an identification with any character, so one is forced to focus on words and activities.Some believe this was intended to force readers to step back from the horrors of the Holocaust and try to investigate the real reasons behind Auschwitz.The effect is often disturbing and I've found that many people have to put the book down to step away from it after reading for too long.It's also disturbing to read about the words and auctions of the nazis being tried.Each one repeatedly insists that he was never involved in the killings he's accused of.At one point, I had to put the book down and said, "Apparently no one killed anyone at Auschwitz."I found it highly ironic and sick that each of these officers insisted he was never involved in killing, yet so many died at Auschwitz.

The text is difficult to get through at times, but it's definately a very different piece about the Holocaust worth looking into. ... Read more