Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman [Paperback]

Mr. George Steiner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 11, 1998

How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been manipulated to circumvent the truth at high levels or charged with vulgarity and imprecision by mass-consumer culture? How can fractured language adapt to the demands of more exact speech required by mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions addressed in this elegantly written book, first published in 1967 to international acclaim.

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; Yale University Press pbk. ed edition (December 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300074719
• ISBN-13: 978-0300074710
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,036,163 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 After Europe, September 26, 2008

By 

David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (Paperback)

Steiner treats readers to a stimulating introduction of various favorite authors, chiefly, but not exclusively Jewish, 20th century, European, and all erudite but doomed. Steiner is interested in the movement of history against creativity. The Holocaust haunts and he cannot get over it. Why should he? He also offers a brief and moving autobiographical essay, in which he accounts for his extraordinary education both in Europe and then later in America. He has much in common with intellectuals such as Adorno, Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and other German and Austrian authors who did much to elucidate the prelude and aftermath of the catastrophe of the 20th century. Steiner's own family is from Vienna, but he was educated on the run from the Nazis, first in Paris, then in New York at the French international school. From there to the University of Chicago and to Oxford. He is grave, witty, passionate, and exciting. Like Edmund Wilson and Susan Sontag, Steiner is an explainer, an interpreter, a critic, not a creative force, but his erudition is so expansive and his passions so great that his work makes the impression finally of those creative geniuses like Eliot and Joyce who did so much to shape our century.

29 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Did you understand the previous review?, February 27, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (Paperback)

Referring to the preceeding review: pedantry of such a bold-faced variety, (notwithstanding the author's ignorance of current orthographical conventions) leaves one astounded and disgusted. Unless it was a joke, in which case: ha ha. The book is so much more than the reviews contained on this page would have us believe. Buy it and enjoy.

6 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lingustically defined and varnished brilliance, February 17, 2001

By 

Mordchi Levy (Jerusalem, Israel Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman (Paperback)

As which a dazzling composition whose mere origins and idioms stand enthralled and benighted as one, Steiner's capability of depicting an intellectually stimulationg and provoking masterpiece redefining literature and humanity through the speculum of contradiction and flamboyant texture of obstreperous ignorence is rejuvenating, thrilling and refreshing if not disgusting and dettering both in faith and knowledge.