Cultural Writing. Film history and criticism. "Jalal Toufic is an amazing writer. He documents the moves of consciousness in a way that leads the reader ever deeper, from impasse to illusion to new impasse--turning the trap of 'what can't be named' into a true paradise"--Richard Foreman. "Relentlessly uncompromising.Toufic's radical and visionary poetics gird the reader to forge ahead into uncharted territory"--Village Voice. "Jalal Toufic is one of the best writers in America today...and his first 2 books, DISTRACTED and (VAMPIRES), are some of the best writing of the past 20 years"--John Zorn, Film Works IV. Jalal Toufic is a teacher, film theorist, video artist, and author of several books. His films have been shown worldwide.
--This text refers to an alternate
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Author
While the expanded and revised edition of my second book, (Vampires), is at one level an uneasy essay on the undead in film (the subtitle of the book), I consider it to be actually much more than that. Drawing on various altered states of consciousness I underwent, films and novels on the undead, psychiatric case studies and mystical reports, the book deals with many of the certainly dubious but also dubiously certain characteristics of the undeath state, for example: over-turns that undo the dead's turn to answer an interpellation; doubles; frequent unworldly freezings still, ones that reveal the occasional worldly immobilization of the living as merely motion-less-ness, i.e., a variety of movement; the implicit indefinite fall of/in the cadaver; the turning of the metaphorical into the literal; and an unreality that sometimes behaves in a filmic manner (e.g., the lapses in hypnosis, schizophrenia, and undeath permit editing in reality), inducing the undead to wonder: "Am I in a film?" While my first book, Distracted, was written for the living, (Vampires) was written about and for those who are "mortals to death" (the title of a special issue I edited for the journal Discourse). It thus belongs--somewhat edgily given my reservations regarding the validity of guidebooks for the dead--on the same shelf as the Bardo Thödol and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He is the author of Distracted (1991; 2nd ed., 2003), (Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (1993; 2nd ed., 2003), Over-Sensitivity (1996; 2nd ed., 2009), Forthcoming (2000), Undying Love, or Love Dies (2002), Two or Three Things I'm Dying to Tell You (2005), 'Âshûrâ': This Blood Spilled in My Veins (2005), Undeserving Lebanon (2007), The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (2009) and Graziella: The Corrected Edition (2009). Several of his books are available for download at his website: jalaltoufic.com.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Original and hauntingly beautiful,
By A Customer
This review is from: Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (Paperback)
Whoever wrote the other review of Jalal Toufic's masterpiece included here must not be familiar with either Freud's essay an "The Uncanny" or the elegant tradition of association Toufic writes within. Should everyone write like Camille Paglia? There is room in the world for richer, denser, more lyrical writing; especially on the topic of the undead which lends itself readily to this kind of investigation. Read this book. It is a rare opportunity to access the thoughts of "the amnesiac" Jalal Toufic.(Then go see Vampyr.)
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an uneasy review of the unknown,
By Hector Hazard (london) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (Paperback)
This book has been recommended to me but I cant find it available anywhere. Can anyone help? Please contact me on hector.hazard@virgin.net
2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
incomprehensible,
By Lyndon W. Joslin (Houston, TX , CSA (NO, it's not smoggier than LA!)) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Vampires: An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film (Paperback)
This is the most incomprehensible book I've read in years, possibly ever. The author isn't self-conscious enough to be pretentious; he seems totally unaware that his style is often impenetrable, obscuring and obfuscating what seem to be an assortment of interesting ideas. Faulkner at his most opaque reads like "See Jane run" compared to this mess. Avoid.
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