500 aphorisms. Our best-seller. In Boston Review, Brenda O’Shaughnessy wrote, “Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That’s because Vectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace.”
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"...Pithy without being precious, profound without being preachy..." Paul Muldoon, Princeton University -- Times Literary Supplement, December 7, 2001
It is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining." -- Gulf Coast, 2002
Once you crack the cover, you will find beauty and truth and even a smattering of goodness." -- Project Muse, October 2003 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
It is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining." -- Gulf Coast, 2002
Once you crack the cover, you will find beauty and truth and even a smattering of goodness." -- Project Muse, October 2003 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
James Richardson was born in 1950, and was educated at Princeton. He is the author of six books of poetry and two critical studies. He is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and winner of an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at Princeton University.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By D. Liebert
Format:Hardcover
Richardson is a top poet - a lean, mean wordsmith of precision and probity. He is also the leading writer of the modern American aphorism. The two sides of the man fructify each other. There are delights on every page. A marvelous gift for literate friends with a good sense of humor.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Eliot
Format:Hardcover
James Richardson's Vectors could fall in with other self-help catch all, solve all books, except for its subliminally enchanting manner. Constructing a collection of 500 `proverbs' is an audacious statement in its own right, but it is gratified when done with overall excellence and coherence. Richardson sidles up with all other authors in proclaiming `I wrote this and you should read it!', and he is correct; this text ought to be read for his dealings in truths. I wanted so much to not enjoy this book because of its pretentious content, but I could not keep myself from marveling at his insights and witticisms on the bromide human condition.
Many of his aphorisms hinted at familiarity, as though they had been read before. But even if Richardson's original material is common proverbs, he consistently rotates them to reveal a different aspect. For example: `276. No garden without weeds? No weeds without gardens.' Richardson takes the obvious and inverts it so that it becomes a different (new?) commentary in order to say something else entirely. His work is not a collection of randomly assorted phrases; there is a semi-coherent arc. Though his first and last fifty or so statements feel introductive and conclusive respectively, he does not tell a story in the traditional sense. However, his repetitive topics and words keep his 500 statements linked so that the reader is no wholly lost. Whenever he introduces a new subject, or topic, he deals with it in several consecutive aphorisms to reveal multiple facets. Richardson speaks directly about the human condition and human nature in considering subjects like roads, criminals, desire, passion, beginngings and endings, god, freedom, weakness and strength, sin, and experience through generalizations and narrative paragraphs akin to parables. Both engage the reader: the generalizations are perceived as self-applicable, and the parables conjure morals.
A majority of his content is written in the style of metaphors; this works well because it is generally by metaphors that we understand everything (like, the synaptic end of a neuron looks like a trumpet bell). I fell into the habit of analyzing every phrase for a deeper meaning, but it fell apart with some of them. Sometimes, his stating the obvious was, in a sense, too obvious in that because of its commonality. I could not perceive any secondary meaning (`164. The hard of hearing cannot tell their voices are loud. ...436. You can't smell what the guests smell.'). These are cliché and therefore weak, containing less perceived meaning. With a few, I completely disagreed (`451. Patience is decisive indecision.). Other times, his metaphors were confusing (`311. A man with one idea has none. ...316. The road forgets what's underneath the road. ... 453. The mercy of a stone is in asking no mercy.'). I could not gather meaning from all of them, but those instances were few and far between so they did not permanently interrupt my reading.
There were moments, however, in his multifaceted examination, that he seemed more content only with asking questions or concluding opposites. Contradicting one's self within the same body of work might be appropriate in some occasions, but here it was misplaced. Specifically, I found his discussion on `god' frustrating. I did not mind his mythological or mystical allusions and metaphors, nor his questions or conclusions. But it was their combination that made it impossible to determine his stance on `god' - his existence, his character, his nature, his reason. He legitimizes polytheism and monotheism and paganism and atheism in one swoop such that in this, his narrative arc is not an arc at all. There is no consistency except in his mutability on this subject. I do however appreciate his heavily religious language. He considers many `sins' - like envy, bitterness, anger - and thus gives a biblical feel to his truth collection. Coming from a religious background, these statements in particular protruded and remained with me. This could be why his indecision about `god' rankles because it contrasts as well with his spiritual overtones.
His tone, as a whole, is contemplative and quiet, suitable to provocative aphorisms. However, the voice suddenly shifts about halfway through it. He becomes bitter, cynical, vindictive for one page and then flips back to love and flowers. This is the lone foul-tasting moment. The only way I can make sense of this is that, in his generalized human nature discussion, he is trying to make this collection of almost disconnected words a type of mini-biography. But this leaves me dissatisfied as well.
Yet, I think Richardson succeeds in establishing self-revealing truths that connect with and through and by the others. Near the end, number 461 best summarizes this collection: `Truths are likenesses of other truths. So those who concentrate on finding them discover there are fewer really distinct truths than they'd expected. Some conclude that there is only one. The truth is: many truths find you, though only a few can be found.' Most of his aphorisms rang within me as I scratched my intellectual head wondering why I had never thought to say exactly that when I knew it to be equally true. Apparently, those plain truths had not yet been plain to me; they existed but had not found me, nor I them. Instead, they gathered around Richardson's mental architecture for him to reveal and his readers to absorb.
Many of his aphorisms hinted at familiarity, as though they had been read before. But even if Richardson's original material is common proverbs, he consistently rotates them to reveal a different aspect. For example: `276. No garden without weeds? No weeds without gardens.' Richardson takes the obvious and inverts it so that it becomes a different (new?) commentary in order to say something else entirely. His work is not a collection of randomly assorted phrases; there is a semi-coherent arc. Though his first and last fifty or so statements feel introductive and conclusive respectively, he does not tell a story in the traditional sense. However, his repetitive topics and words keep his 500 statements linked so that the reader is no wholly lost. Whenever he introduces a new subject, or topic, he deals with it in several consecutive aphorisms to reveal multiple facets. Richardson speaks directly about the human condition and human nature in considering subjects like roads, criminals, desire, passion, beginngings and endings, god, freedom, weakness and strength, sin, and experience through generalizations and narrative paragraphs akin to parables. Both engage the reader: the generalizations are perceived as self-applicable, and the parables conjure morals.
A majority of his content is written in the style of metaphors; this works well because it is generally by metaphors that we understand everything (like, the synaptic end of a neuron looks like a trumpet bell). I fell into the habit of analyzing every phrase for a deeper meaning, but it fell apart with some of them. Sometimes, his stating the obvious was, in a sense, too obvious in that because of its commonality. I could not perceive any secondary meaning (`164. The hard of hearing cannot tell their voices are loud. ...436. You can't smell what the guests smell.'). These are cliché and therefore weak, containing less perceived meaning. With a few, I completely disagreed (`451. Patience is decisive indecision.). Other times, his metaphors were confusing (`311. A man with one idea has none. ...316. The road forgets what's underneath the road. ... 453. The mercy of a stone is in asking no mercy.'). I could not gather meaning from all of them, but those instances were few and far between so they did not permanently interrupt my reading.
There were moments, however, in his multifaceted examination, that he seemed more content only with asking questions or concluding opposites. Contradicting one's self within the same body of work might be appropriate in some occasions, but here it was misplaced. Specifically, I found his discussion on `god' frustrating. I did not mind his mythological or mystical allusions and metaphors, nor his questions or conclusions. But it was their combination that made it impossible to determine his stance on `god' - his existence, his character, his nature, his reason. He legitimizes polytheism and monotheism and paganism and atheism in one swoop such that in this, his narrative arc is not an arc at all. There is no consistency except in his mutability on this subject. I do however appreciate his heavily religious language. He considers many `sins' - like envy, bitterness, anger - and thus gives a biblical feel to his truth collection. Coming from a religious background, these statements in particular protruded and remained with me. This could be why his indecision about `god' rankles because it contrasts as well with his spiritual overtones.
His tone, as a whole, is contemplative and quiet, suitable to provocative aphorisms. However, the voice suddenly shifts about halfway through it. He becomes bitter, cynical, vindictive for one page and then flips back to love and flowers. This is the lone foul-tasting moment. The only way I can make sense of this is that, in his generalized human nature discussion, he is trying to make this collection of almost disconnected words a type of mini-biography. But this leaves me dissatisfied as well.
Yet, I think Richardson succeeds in establishing self-revealing truths that connect with and through and by the others. Near the end, number 461 best summarizes this collection: `Truths are likenesses of other truths. So those who concentrate on finding them discover there are fewer really distinct truths than they'd expected. Some conclude that there is only one. The truth is: many truths find you, though only a few can be found.' Most of his aphorisms rang within me as I scratched my intellectual head wondering why I had never thought to say exactly that when I knew it to be equally true. Apparently, those plain truths had not yet been plain to me; they existed but had not found me, nor I them. Instead, they gathered around Richardson's mental architecture for him to reveal and his readers to absorb.
By C. Strand
Format:Hardcover
I'd have to disagree with the reviewer who panned this book. It seems to have touched a nerve in him, which is interesting in itself, because this is a book that could potentially hit many, many nerves--a kind of acupuncture for the soul. I borrowed my brother-in-law's copy and ended up writing so many of the aphormisms in my journal that I finally gave up and decided to buy the book. My favorites so far both have to do with travel: #194: "No matter how fast you travel, life walks." "#316: "The road forgets what's underneath the road."
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