Esse livro tem prosa e forca da contemporaneidade critica literaria com desvendamentos histórico preciso de sociedade e da cultura, e tambem marca da geração pós guerra.

Superb. And my kind of read. Berman explores his idea(s) by reference to (and sometimes subtle reinterpretations of) history and great literature; and the book opens doors to further reading. He gets a bit elegiac at the end but concludes on a balanced and hopeful note. Highly recommend. ( )

What can I say but that this is what historical exploration/criticism should be: engagingly written, and fully recognizing the strengths, weaknesses, pitfalls, (humanity?) etc., of actors, situations -isms, and so forth, including the ones you hold dear. Really loved this book. ( )

A splendid romp from Faust to the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Excellent at two levels: we get familiarized with a whole stream of great literature, plus an over-arching perspective that certainly deepened my understanding even where I was familiar with the literature already. Modernity as kind of auto-catabolic process, where constant novelty powers itself through the destruction of yesterday's novelty; and modernism, maybe it's a process of finding meaning in the process of finding meaning. Industry and art reacting to each other, building off each other.

Quite wild how this book was completed January 1981, the inauguration of Reagan. That makes it a kind of swan song. It'd be interesting to hold this up against Fukuyama's End of History. Berman has history going on into the indefinite future, the world constantly remaking itself. Ten years later, Fukuyama sees the thing stopped. The icy grip of neo-liberalism! Probably it was only sleeping. But by now, it feels like it has been dismembered and scattered: Osiris or Sati. We had to make our own meaning back in the days of Dostoevsky and Sartre. Now we must wander as pilgrims and search for the bits and pieces, stare at them and wonder. Probably our findings are from many different puzzles. Still, a patchwork quilt can keep us warm in the long winter.

Yeah this is a glorious book. Ah, Puerto Rican Sun, an outdoor sculpture at 156th & Fox Sts. in the Bronx, is still there! Richard Serra's T.W.U. is long gone - was only up for a year or so. Yeah, Berman could see that reality would put constraints on our grand dreams of flying cars and what-not. Seems like that's where we are now, the constant revolution we're in the midst of. Every new forecast looks bleaker. We try harder, we shout louder, we shall overcome! There's a book we could use, overcoming injustice vs. overcoming the planetary eco-sphere. ( )

I'm really not sure what to say about this other than that is intensely thought-provoking, almost too much so to be read all at once. Even if one disagrees violently with the author's positions (as I imagine some must), the wide-ranging ramble through the arts is fascinating. I could have wished for a broader palette in some respects, but still found it a worthwhile read.

I am not personally any closer to being easy with the state of modernity after reading this, but at least I have a lot of company. ( )