Chorus of Stones [Paperback]

Susan Griffin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1994

A look at the nature of war and gender, illustrating the interplay between private suffering and public tragedy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

War, Griffin contends, is an evil rooted in lies, and arises from personal lies and family secrets as well as polarized gender roles that warp the private self. That message dominates this lengthy lyric meditation, a fragmentary collage in which the feminist Griffin ( Woman and Nature ) jumps disjointedly from the fire-bombing of Dresden to her discovery that her grandfather was an alcoholic. Mixing history, myth and memoir, this kaleidoscopic work contains passages of striking power along with dazzling character sketches: Kaiser Wilhelm II riding a white horse through the streets of Tangier; Gandhi heeding his inner voices; Nazi Heinrich Himmler, as a boy, repeating classmates' confidences to his schoolmaster father; Werner von Braun designing rockets in Alabama; General MacArthur trying to impress his mother with his heroism. Ultimately, though, one feels that Griffin's comment about Hemingway's experience of war--"the fragments never came together"--applies to this book as well. Author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

In A Chorus of Stones , Griffin departs from her usual radical feminist analysis of issues as presented in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her ( LJ 2/1/79) and Pornography and Silence ( LJ 5/15/81) as well as numerous works of fiction. Here, Griffin provides a psychology of war and violence, examining in particular how the denial and secrecy surrounding these events affects personal lives. As examples, she explores the lives of the families of workers on the Los Alamos project and at Oak Ridge, the background and psyche of Heinrich Himmler, the life of a British soldier in the Boer War and World War I, and Gandhi's resistance to violence and oppression. These are interwoven with autobiographical narrative that illustrate the effects of family denial and secrecy. Griffin's deep stream-of-consciousness style will not appeal to a wide variety of readers, but this is an important book for academic and large public libraries.
- Kathryn Moore Crowe, Univ. of North Carolina-Greensboro Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: The Women's Press (December 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0704343878
• ISBN-13: 978-0704343870
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,247,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Griffin has written over twenty books, including non-fiction, poetry and plays. Her work addresses many social and political issues, social justice, the oppression of women, ecology, war and peace, economic inequities and democracy. Often she approaches her subjects at a slant, using and following the music of language, metaphor, stories and incidents from her own life to reveal the underside of larger histories and realms. Her book, A Chorus of Stones, the Private Life of War, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a NY Times Notable book in the year it was published. Woman and Nature, considered a classic of environmental writing, is credited for inspiring the eco-feminist movement. The Book of the Courtesans introduced a hidden chapter in women's history. Along with her co-editor, Karin Carrington, who is a psychotherapist, she has just completed editing an anthology called Transforming Terror, Remembering the Soul of the World, with a preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and contributions from thinkers, psychologists, spiritual and political leaders and poets from diverse cultures and religions, including Mahmoud Darwish, Riane Eisler, Fritjof Capra, Huston Smith, Ariel Dorfman, Dan Ellsberg, and Fatema Mernissi. She is at work now on a novel about climate change and a non-fiction book, The Book of Housewifery, about the hidden meanings and values in domesticity. She and her work have been given many awards, among them a Guggenheim Foundation Award and an Emmy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mind-Expanding Reinvention of War and History, April 24, 2000

By 

"rrr338" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (Paperback)

So much of history is centered on warfare. And then, so much of warfare is historically rooted in a traditional perspective of leaders, politics, and other "big" events. Is there a deeper and more complex truth to all this?

Now, here comes Susan Griffin, and her ideas flow freely out of the conventional boxes of interpretation. In "Chorus of Stones," she examines "small" events, and especially the internal dynamics of family relationships, and then links them to the "big" events -- like the invention of the hydrogen bomb or the decision to fire-bomb Dresden. In the process, she shows the reader how such wide-sweeping historical catastrophes like wars are inextricably connected with small, often trivialized realities whose real significance can go unnoticed, or even be repressed. If you ever thought about the old adage that "we won't understand war until we understand why couples argue with each other," then this book will fascinate you. It's a real shame that it hasn't received more attention, for it challenges so many of our notions about the separation of "personal" and "public" lives. Fascinating through and through!

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars follow her connections..., June 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (Paperback)

In this book, Griffin explores the connections between subtle violences and small denials, and horrible huge violences such as war, especially the second world war with the holocaust and the use of the atomic bomb as a weapon. One could say that this material has been covered before, but my description really does not do her work justice. The book is a highly imaginative meditation on the connections between events at different times and at different parts of the world, and between internal and external events. She traces the lives of a few historical figures including Gandhi, Himmler, and a British general, woven into the rest of the book. Also, there are some poetical descriptions of biological processes, mostly at the cellular level, and as a cell biologist, I must say that she has her facts straight, which gives me more confidence in the other parts of the book which I know less about (historical events). I feel Griffin does what an artist should do - put into words (or some form that we can understand) thoughts and feelings that are just beneath our own threshhold of consciousness.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Weaving A Personal Tapestry of War, April 14, 1998

By 

Gloria E. Salavarria ([e-mail]) (Middlebury, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (Paperback)

This is an amazing book to read after reading Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August." Both books deal with the psychology of war but Susan Griffin addresses modern war on the level of the individual; telling stories of both the victims and the perpetrators of war's atrocities. Susan attempts something new in her style that is very effective on one hand but difficult for the reader on the other. She asks "Who are we?" and then answers that there are so many strands to a story and one must trace every strand. She literally takes this idea as her form and weaves the threads of several stories together on the same page. I found each "thread" fascinating but ultimately I ended up reading each separately so that I would not lose my grasp on the story. I found Chapters 1 through 5 to be fascinating. The last chapter entitled, "Notes Toward A Sketch for A Work in Progress" is just that--an abrupt departure from the main body of the book. It's what's left over in her journal that she didn't quite fit into the book but still wanted to include anyway. It's interesting but not as engaging as the first 5 chapters. The book is gloomy and yes, Susan Griffin has a depressing outlook on life, but even doomsayers can be valuable soothsayers in our society.