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The Trouble with Being Born 1st Edition

by E. M. Cioran (Author), Richard Howard (Translator), Eugene Thacker (Foreword)
4.4 out of 5 stars 24 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1611457407
ISBN-10: 1611457408
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (February 1, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1611457408
  • ISBN-13: 978-1611457407
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 5.6 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliantly written, insightful, wickedly funny
By Mike VINE VOICE on May 3, 2009
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
First things first - Cioran writes absolutely beautiful prose. I don't think any philosophical writer since Montaigne has really written this well (apart from the novelists who treat philosophical themes like Dostoevsky and Sartre). I really cannot adequately convey the beauty of some of the existential musings of Cioran properly. He's a great stylist.

A cautionary note - Cioran is extremely well-educated in Western Philosophy, Christianity and Buddhism. Because of that, this is not really a book for someone who doesn't have strong grounding in philosophy (or at the least Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Hegel) and some familiarity with religion. Additionally, the philosophy types should know that this book is not really philosophy in the Western Sense. It's written more like Eastern Philosophy. It's entirely aphorisms.

That said, if you can bear with it, this is one of the best things I've ever read. The clarity of thought and sheer brilliance of the aphorisms are unmatched apart from Lao Tzu and McLuhan.

Cioran is grimly pessimistic and has an extremely mordant sense of humor. He also explores the human condition and the recalcitrant nature of existence and art. If Nietzsche had a sense of humor and lived amidst French existentialism, he'd have written this book. Cioran is a bit more of an irrationalist (and a Buddhist .... and a Christian) than Nietzsche, though (and a bit less of an anti-egalitarian). Case in point:

"Sometimes I wish I was a cannibal - less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him."

For me, Cioran has always been like reading Final Exit, having sex in a graveyard, or reading Nietzsche.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe absurdity of existance
By A Customer on May 29, 1998
Format: Paperback
I am from colombia so please excuse my poor english. I had the fortune to read this book but on a spanish translation. Cioran in his typical form of writing (loose ideas gathered in short chapters), shows us his thoughts on the problem of existance. He emphasizes on the fact that being born is the greatest wrong that has happened to man, since it is from that conciousness of matter, from which man has generated a fictious value and justification to his own existance. Like Heidegger would say, the motor of human existance are his preocupations in life. Cioran feels that when discovering this truth, life looses all posible meaning and one can only hope to go back to the freedom of nulity. "I would like to be free, totaly free... free like an aborted child." This harsh quote from Cioran can sum up his reflexions. One could easily tell Cioran to commit suicide if he thinks that existance is an arquetype of ignorance, but to this Cioran answers in a cruel but in fact philosophicaly convenient way: "It is not worth taking ones life away... at the end we allways do it to late...". The book also gahthers his thought in all sort of different life aspects. Thoughts about time, space, family, religion etc, make The trouble with being born one of Ciorans best books. "God is, even if he isn't". A really negative inspection of our apparently true concepts, and a open invitation to a new form of existencialism.
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5.0 out of 5 starscogito ergo glum
By Moeses Pittounikos on July 26, 2012
Format: Paperback
Emil Cioran suffered from insomnia for years and this twilight state of mind revealed the monstrous nature of everything and thus laid the emotional and philosophical foundation for his exquisite rambling on the glum; and so would you, if you couldn't sleep.

Insomnia is a way of perturbing the mind and forcing the insomniac to awaken to the world as it is. The rest are sleepers. Corian argued that his insomnia was a perturbation of his faculties and this is why he said thay it is truer to the human condition to write about the black, than it is to clap about optimism, clapping like demented seals at something we can't understand, or getting all wet and hot over science, like a silly schoolgirl. Corian saw behind these thick veils of optimism.

The optimistic world view will never deliver on the promise. The darkening of colour that optimism causes in our lives only adds to our despair. Work for that mortgage and you work on your mausoleum. Intelligent people choose optimism instead of recognising the fragile foundation inside.

Emil Cioran saw the world as a machinery of hell, and the person, limited in time and space, a gasp of pain between birth and death; can never be happy in hell. Our world is a big cruel mistress with a whip; the conditions of her arising make happiness impossible. Life is fragile and insecure, with little purpose but to be born, gasp and die. But what of salvation?

The shattered God still dwells in the ruins; but He is a ghost who is never to be taken seriously again because no one believes in him anymore, like Father Christmas, a skeleton of stones amongst the ruins of the world.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Only Antidote for Hope
By A Customer on August 5, 2000
Format: Paperback
E.M. Cioran has been called either "the last philosopher of Europe" or an Anti-Philosopher. He has, nonetheless, created one of the greatest titles for a book yet conceived! I love to see the looks on people's faces when they pull this tome from my shelf. What Nietzsche would have written had he never died of syphilis - or how Kierkegaard would have grown out of his pseudo-St.Augustine moods. "I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws." These are one-liners any true vaudevillian would have enjoyed. The world is either tragic or vaudeville - you decide. That Cioran succumbed (if that is the word) to the side-effects of alzheimer's is surely one of this incredible man's final ironies. To watch as his intellect was whittled away completely before he died is surely too ignoble a death for someone so resolute in his irresolutions!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsThe Trouble with Reading this Book

At times, this book is brilliantly written. Cioran is a fantastic writer. There are some golden aphorisms sprinkled throughout this book. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Robert Stefanic
5.0 out of 5 starsBedside table book of quotes

As book of quotes from Cioran. If you are a fan of Cioran then reading one or two quotes as you slip off into your troubled dreams just adds a little spice into the dark corners... Read more

Published 11 months ago by john m.
5.0 out of 5 starsVery nice read, really makes one think about life

Very nice read,really makes one think about life.

Published 16 months ago by MonieJ
4.0 out of 5 stars"To commit every crime but that of being a father."

Cioran's work is difficult. His style of nihilism is deeply rooted in a sort of panic surrounding his understanding that he shouldn't be here. Read more

Published 16 months ago by Colin Hinckley
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

This product is excellent and arrived in very good time.

Published 18 months ago by Rossmery Gavilanez
3.0 out of 5 starsbleh

I wanted to like this. However the aphorisms read like self-indulgent poetry which gets old after like 50 pages. Read more

Published on November 24, 2013 by W. Allie
2.0 out of 5 starsStarts off interesting?

After a reasonably interesting start, either I lost the plot, or else there is no plot....I am so frustrated...stopped after some 30 pages....simply could not bear the struggle

Published on September 20, 2013 by Sb Herman
4.0 out of 5 starsInteresting Cold War Era Book

This book is by a Romanian writer who looks his historical period squarely in the eye. A good example of mid-century existentialism.

Published on July 22, 2013 by QuantumFrank
5.0 out of 5 starsThe trouble with being born (book)

New condition, just as it was described! Can't wait to start reading this book. The cover had a small dent when I received it but it was minimal, so I still give it 5 stars.

Published on June 2, 2013 by Danny C
5.0 out of 5 starsClassic Cioran, but a lot of typos in the Kindle edition

Either basic proofreading or a spell checker would catch most of these errors. Otherwise I highly recommend it as a good introduction to Cioran`s work.

Published on March 6, 2013 by CAE

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