On Dialogue: An Essay in Free Thought [Paperback]

Robert Grudin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 18, 1997

Edward Abbey once said that to read Robert Grudin is to experience "the rare and amazing spectacle of man thinking, of mind at work." Part do-it-yourself guide to freer thinking and part playful philosophical inquiry into liberty and creativity, On Dialogue holds forth the model of the mind that "rejects the tyranny of a single system or dogma, refuses to censor Ôdangerous' ideas, and guards as something precious its own access to joy and laughter."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Grudin's third book-length philosophical essay, On Dialogue, tackles no lesser subject than how the free mind thinks--in art, science, ethics, and politics. But the title is misleading: Grudin thinks that "being dialogic" is a characteristic of creative free thought even in many cases where no "dialogue," in the literal sense, is going on. For example, he defines the writing of a journal as a typically dialogic process, on the grounds that part of the pleasure and intellectual value of the exercise is to "externalize" ones own thoughts and then have them reflect back on more recent thoughts.

One obvious criticism is that Grudin, while ranging over a wide variety of subjects, including Plato, diversity in education, and political reform in the old Eastern bloc, doesn't explain what "undialogic" thought, if it exists, would be like. Some readers may find that the book tries too hard to be about everything, and would likely prefer his earlier book, Time and the Art of Living. --Richard Farr

From Publishers Weekly

In a wonderfully stimulating inquiry, Grudin investigates dialogue at all levels-between friends and lovers, in the classroom, the give-and-take of political discourse, in the artist's feedback loop with his or her evolving creative product. Defining dialogue broadly as an evolutionary process in which the parties are changed as they proceed, the author, who teaches literature and humanities at the University of Oregon, looks as well at the mind's dialogue with itself, journal-keeping and patterns of dialogue and self-inquiry in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Martin Buber's I and Thou, Henry James's Daisy Miller, Rabelais and Montaigne. He also scrutinizes the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and Giuseppe Arcimboldo, court painter to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who deconstructed imperial power in composite portraits depicting faces made of fruits and vegetables. Proposing that humanity is in constant dialogue with its tools, artifacts, inventions, texts and symbols, Grudin considers the suppression of the free flow of information under communist tyrannies and maps Western scientists' probe of nature's workings. The open-ended structure of this adventurous essay compels a dialogue with the reader, forcing us to let go of fixed perspectives.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (July 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039586495X
• ISBN-13: 978-0395864951
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,503,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After reading this, NOT to respond is a crime, April 22, 2000

By 

Mark Valentine (Port Angeles, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Dialogue: An Essay in Free Thought (Paperback)

Mr. Grudin has written a powerful, terse book that should be required reading for all who fashions themselves as lovers of reading, lovers of ideas, or lovers of conversation. I found myself devouring this book--I read it it two days, underlining, writing in the margins, wanting to dialogue with the words.

The scope of the book is vast. All freedoms and liberties, Mr. Grudin avers, exist within and because of dialogue. Dialogue means, simply, any exchange of meaning. From this starting point, any exchange of meaning is relevant and important.

What I found fascinating was Chapter 3, "The Liberty of Ideas." In it, he revives the word "copia" (abundance, plenty) as used by Cicero and Quintilian, and emphasizes how necessary multifarious perspectives are to healthy free-thinking. Linear, mono-thinking boxes and confines the thinker. But variations on a theme--and he uses Erasmus' "The Praise of Folly" as an example--can open up or free our thinking; he writes "copia can be not only a way of expressing things but also a way of discovering and seeing things."

For me, there were great discoveries in each chapter, and I highly endorse this book for this reason. It gives persective and balance in a world filled with extremes.

I plan to re-visit it frequently, as well as give out copies where I can to any that will be open to its wisdom and sanity. Let the dialogues continue.

(Now, I'm reading "The Praise of Folly." Who knows where all this will lead?)