Karmic Traces [Paperback]

Eliot Weinberger (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Directions Paperbook | Publication Date: November 2000

Karmic Traces contains essays as entertaining as fiction and as vivid as poetry, making unexpected stops in odd corners of the globe. For the past twenty years, Eliot Weinberger has been taking the essay far beyond the borders of literary criticism or personal journalism and into the realm of poetry and narrative. Full of stories, yet written in a condensed, imagistic language, his essays are works of the imagination where all the facts are verifiable. As entertaining as fiction and as vivid as poems, making unexpected stops in odd corners of the globe or forgotten moments in human history, erudite, politically engaged, and acerbically witty, there is nothing quite like his work in contemporary writing. In Karmic Traces, Weinberger's third collection from New Directions, twenty-four essays take the reader along on the author's personal travels from the Atacama Desert to Iceland to Hong Kong on the verge of the handover to China, as well as on imagined voyages in a 17th-century Danish ship bound for India and among strange religious cults or even stranger small animals. One never knows what will appear next: Viking dreams, Aztec rituals, Hindu memory, laughing fish, or prophetic dogs. And, in "The Falls," the long tour-de-force that closes the book, Weinberger recapitulates 3,000 years of history in a cascade of telling facts to uncover the deep roots of contemporary racism and violence.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A beautiful little volume of essays. -- The Westerly, Jane Johnson, 21 February 2005

A vortex for the entire universe. -- The Boston Review, John Palatella, December 2000

It is a pleasure just to wander about in Weinberger's style. -- Marilis Hornidge, Waldoboro Courier-Gazette, 20 March 2001

This far-ranging collection is both thoughtful and...always entertaining. -- The Complete Review, Winter 2001

Weinberger is a rare treat: Montaigne, who invented the essai would love him. -- Commonweal, Marguerite Feitlowitz, 15 June 2001

[A]n intellectual travelogue of surpassing wit and brilliance, ranging from Iceland to India, and pet rabbits to naked mole rats. -- Talk, December 2000

About the Author

As a translator and editor, Eliot Weinberger has published some two dozen books, among them The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz and Selected Non-Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges. The books of his own writing include Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei and two previous collections from New Directions, Works on Paper and Outside Stories. In 1992, he was named the first recipient of the PEN/Kolovakos Award for the promotion of Hispanic literature in the United States. His essays regularly appear in translation throughout Europe and Latin America.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811214567
• ISBN-13: 978-0811214568
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #846,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kafka, Vikings, & MTV: The Merging Point of Criticism & Art, January 22, 2001

By 

Lucas Klein (Beijing) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karmic Traces (Paperback)

Aestheticians have, I think, long wrestled with the question of whether art's value lies in its spontaneity or its control. The spontaneous, like a volcano, will cover more intellectual ground, whereas the controlled, a sort of rose in the irion filings, gives us the precision of high aesthetic achievement. Here in Weinberger's book of essays, as much art as about art (or politics, culture, history, Iceland, and more), we experience the breadth & expanse of imaginative knowledge plus the exact control of fine writing & a clear mind; with Weinberger the volcano IS the rose in the iron filings. Nothing like essays anyone has ever written for school, nor like much of nonfiction available anywhere, these essays are moving in all senses of the word: they move from topic to topic, moving us as well. Weinberger, whose sense of language has come from years of translating Spanish and, recently, Chinese, is one of today's few intellectuals not affiliated with any university. He is thus as rare as an intellectual in medieval Europe unconnected to the Church; Karmic Traces, colossal & microscopic at once, is likewise as unique a find.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating collection of essays, May 21, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Karmic Traces (Paperback)

Karmic Traces is a fascinating collection of essays featuring twenty-four of Eliot Weinbergers writings taking the reader along his personal travels ranging from the Atacama Desert to Iceland to Hong Kong. Here are also to be found imagined voyages among strange religious cultures and even stranger animals. The capping work is "The Falls", wherein Weinberger recapitulates 3,000 years of history to uncover the deep roots of contemporary racism and violence. Karmic Traces is a highly recommended body of writing that is as vivid as poetry, as entertaining as fiction, and as informative as any travelogue of mind and body.

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Extraordinary, July 10, 2011

By 

J. Matthews (Revere, MA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Karmic Traces (Paperback)

I have been deeply immersed in books and reading for more than twenty-five years, and Weinberger's 'Karmic Traces' is without doubt my favorite book. Why this is so is a little hard to capture in a review. Weinberger's work is almost uncapturable. It is hard to define where he fits as a writer. He is a literary essayist and critic; poet, translator, travel writer and historian. Weinberger is also a writer of great social conscience.

Weinberger writes simple prose essays of extraordinary beauty, on the most surprising and inventive of topics. He does not pick his topics simply because they are interesting, however. Weinberger's topics are driven by a great, human depth of meaning.

In "Karmic Traces," we learn of a popular theodicy of medieval Denmark so perfect in its divine consolation that the reader is tempted to adopt it for herself. And we learn of Omar Caceres, an astonishing poet so obscure that only Weinberger has heard of him! We learn of the ancient and self-duplicating practice of slavery -- which renews itself in each generation with new captors and new victims -- yet remains the same in all particulars, except where it takes on new rationalizations peculiar to the dominant culture.

My life has been enriched by reading Eliot Weinberger. Weinberger should be required reading for anyone interested in history, literature, anthropology, ethics and current events.

J Jennifer Matthews
author of "Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are."