Search results for ""Author Lawrence L. Langer""

Showcases the distinctive work of one of the most innovative artists of our time. Samuel Bak's most recent series of paintings, "New Perceptions of Old Appearances", is a tribute to the power of the metaphorical imagination. Using the pear as a substitute image for the familiar apple of Eden, Bak explores the struggle of modern civilization to wrest from our fragile universe a viable mode of communal existence. Bak's pears are stoic in their solidity, but vulnerable to decay. In some guises they shine with the beauty of succulent fruit, but in others they fall victim to the violence of history and the decay of time. In this book - filled with color illustrations - Lawrence L. Langer shows the versatility and uniqueness of Bak's art. His pears play many roles, challenging the viewer to interpret their enigmatic presences without having to search for a single dogmatic meaning. While some, laden with promise, proclaim the inherent dignity of artistic form, others remind us, as they are consumed by fire or sacrificed on strange altars, of what Bak has called the ""ineffaceable tragedy and sadness"" that has been part of our lot as human creatures during the past hundred years. His images are both ripe with life and haunted by death. Samuel Bak had his first exhibition at the age of nine in the Vilna Ghetto. After emigrating to Israel, he studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums in the United States, Israel, and Europe. Books about his work include ""Landscapes of Jewish Experience: Paintings by Samuel Bak"" and ""The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak"". Lawrence L. Langer is Alumnae Chair Professor of English Emeritus at Simmons College. His publications include ""The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination"", ""Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory"", ""Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology"", and ""Preempting the Holocaust"".

Read more less

The memoir of Charlotte Delbo, a French writer sent to Auschwitz for her resistance activities against the Nazi occupation of France and the Vichy government“Delbo’s exquisite and unflinching account of life and death under Nazi atrocity grows fiercer and richer with time.”—Sara R. Horowitz, York University Charlotte Delbo’s moving memoir of life and death in Auschwitz and the postwar trauma of survivors, Auschwitz and After, is now a classic of Holocaust literature. Offering the rare perspective of a non-Jew, Delbo records moments of horror and of desperate efforts at mutual support, of the everyday deprivation and abuse experienced by everyone in the camps, and especially by children. Auschwitz and After conveys how a survivor must “carry the word” and continue to live after surviving one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century. This second edition includes an updated and expanded introduction by Holocaust scholar Lawrence L. Langer. “No memoir of those times is more sensitive and less sentimental.”—Geoffrey Hartman “I find Rosette C. Lamont’s remarkable translation of Charlotte Delbo’s work perceptive, delicate, and poignant, in short: exceptional.”—Elie Wiesel “Delbo’s exquisite and unflinching account of life and death under Nazi atrocity grows fiercer and richer with time. The superb new introduction by Lawrence L. Langer illuminates the subtlety and complexity of Delbo’s meditation on memory, time, culpability, and survival, in the context of what Langer calls the ‘afterdeath’ of the Holocaust. Delbo’s powerful trilogy belongs on every bookshelf.”—Sara R. Horowitz, York University Winner of the 1995 American Literary Translators Association Award

Read more less