Customer Reviews

Luminous Debris: Reflecting on Vestige in Provence and Languedoc

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Gustav Sobin's book is a fascinating archaeological and anthropological exploration of the tantalizing remnants of human history in Southern France... This book reads like poetry, and yet it is guaranteed to fill its readers with the wonders of human life, history, and the passing of time... The author's deep understanding of past events lends authority and credibility to the magnificence of his vision and the clear style of his writing... I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.

The backflap compares Sobin's style to Barthes and more than one reviewer calls his prose poetical, so that may be warning enough. It's too bad, because the book's digressions and excursions through the more mundane fields of history are really quite engrossing. Sobin really does have a way of making you see through the otherwise overlooked object into the past, then making it reflect the present as well. By the end, while his stylistic tics had become maddening, I felt oddly informed about the various tides of history to have washed over the Provencal region, and the jetsam they left in receding.