Stanlio
In the summer of 1643, a young man from Piedmont finds himself shipwrecked in the southern seas on a deserted ship.
Before him lies an island he cannot reach.
Around him, an apparently welcoming environment.
Alone, on an unknown sea, Roberto de la Grive sees for the first time in his life skies, waters, birds, plants, fish, and corals that he cannot name.
He writes love letters, through which his story is hinted at: a slow and traumatic initiation into the seventeenth-century world of new science, state reason, and a cosmos in which the Earth is no longer at the center of the universe. (ibs.it)
- The entire book depicts psychological situations, philosophical theories, and worldviews in dialectical contrast, and Eco concludes that his narrative does not have a worthy ending to be told. (wikipedia) more
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Stanlio
- ... is divided into ten segments that represent the ten Sephirot. The novel is rich in esoteric references to the Kabbalah, alchemy, and conspiracy theory, so much so that literary critic and novelist Anthony Burgess suggested that an index would be useful.
- ... the narrating "I" is initially a student and then a young professional in publishing in Milan. Through a series of events, he finds in the myth of the Knights Templar his true cultural and professional raison d'être. However, from this myth branch out a series of threads that correspond to the more hidden or the more rejected parts of so-called Western civilization. Through the discovery of these threads, we meet the other characters in the novel, some good, others less so, but all interested in something. (wikipedia) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Umberto Eco — Il Nome Della Rosa | DeRank™: 0,00

- Umberto Eco, with a considerable number of essays behind him, had the idea of writing a novel in '78 when a publisher told him he wanted to curate the publication of a series of short crime novels.
- Eco claimed that if he ever wrote a crime novel, it would be a book of 500 pages featuring medieval monks as protagonists.
- What seemed like a joke took shape in the author's mind when he envisioned a poisoned monk in a library while reading.
- The novel was adapted into a film of the same name directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1986, featuring Sean Connery and Christian Slater. more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Umberto Eco — Sulla letteratura | DeRank™: 0,00

The 2002 book contains 18 essays, most of the texts were written between 1990 and 2002; with the exception of "Le sporcizie della forma," originally written in 1954, and "Il mito americano di tre generazioni antiamericane" from 1980:
1. On some functions of literature
2. Reading Paradise
3. On the style of the Manifesto
4. The mists of Valois
5. Wilde. Paradox and aphorism
6. A portrait of the artist as a bachelor
7. Between La Mancha and Babel
8. Borges and my anguish of influence
9. On Camporesi: blood body, life
10. On the symbol
11. On style
12. Les sémaphores sous la pluie
13. Le sporcizie della forma
14. Intertextual irony and levels of reading
15. Poetics and us
16. The American myth of three anti-American generations
17. The strength of the false
18. How I write more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Umberto Eco — La bustina di minerva | DeRank™: 0,00

"La bustina di Minerva" is a column that began on the last page of "Espresso" in March 1985 and continued weekly until March 1998, when it became bi-weekly. The "Bustine" have been selected and collected in this book.
The topics range from reflections on the contemporary world, Italian society, the press, the fate of books in the Internet era, to some cautious predictions about the third millennium and a series of "divertimenti" or short stories.
The collection gives meaning to the column, which, as the title suggests, aimed to gather those occasional and often extravagant notes that are sometimes scribbled on the inside of those matchbook covers known as Minerva. more
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Stanlio
Born as six lectures of the "Charles Eliot Norton Lectures" at Harvard University, it deals with the rhetoric of narrative processes with examples drawn from Italo Calvino, Achille Campanile, Carolina Invernizio, Gustave Flaubert, Ian Fleming, Roger Schank's theories on artificial intelligence, Gérard de Nerval, the act of reading according to Wolfgang Iser, Mickey Spillane, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas and the Parisian topography, Alessandro Manzoni, as well as some Hollywood films, the concepts of possible worlds and open works, the false and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the general problem of the credibility of narrative texts and the ways and expectations with which novels are read as if they were traversing a forest ("The forest is a metaphor for the narrative text; not only for fairy tale texts but for every narrative text").
cit. wikipedia more
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Stanlio
... India immediately after independence (1947), the tragedy of Partition and the refugees, the absurd massacres of Muslims and Hindus at the border between India and Pakistan, the day of Gandhi's assassination... more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Don DeLillo — Body art | DeRank™: 0,00

"Time seems to pass.
The world happens, moments unfold, and you stop to watch a spider attached to its web.
There is a sharp light, a sense of things outlined with precision, strips of liquid brilliance on the bay.
On a clear and bright day after a storm, when the smallest of fallen leaves is pierced with awareness, you know with greater certainty who you are."
- Body Art - more
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Stanlio

Don DeLillo — Underworld | DeRank™: 0,00

- A novel that explodes the history, myths, and daily life of post-war America and reconstructs its remains. In a dizzying alternation of eras and figures... where protagonists and extras share the same space, where fictional characters coexist with Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful head of the FBI... you find yourself transported from coast to coast, from one social class to another, from one ethnicity to another, in a collective destiny dominated by images and waste. Nuclear waste, generic trash, sentimental, erotic, and artistic fetishes. A fresco of America yesterday, today, and tomorrow, reminiscent of Altman's films... ranging from the baseball championship to Truman Capote's party, from the Texas Highway Killer to the Rolling Stones tour, employing an original and captivating narrative montage and the most diverse languages of the multiracial nation. (einaudi.it) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Don DeLillo — Libra | DeRank™: 0,00

"The apocalyptic imagination of DeLillo confronts the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in a breathtaking tale." - Newsday -
Many of the characters and events described are also present in the film "JFK - Unsolved Case" directed by Oliver Stone in 1991, main actors and characters:
Kevin Costner: Jim Garrison
Sissy Spacek: Liz Garrison
Tommy Lee Jones: Clay Shaw / Clay Bertrand
Gary Oldman: Lee Harvey Oswald
Joe Pesci: David Ferrie
Jack Lemmon: Jack Martin
Donald Sutherland: Mister X
Brian Doyle-Murray: Jack Ruby
Kevin Bacon: Willie O'Keefe
Walter Matthau: Senator Long
John Candy: Dean Andrews
Beata Pozniak: Marina Oswald
Vincent D'Onofrio: Bill Newman
Lolita Davidovich: Beverly Oliver
Tomas Milian: Leopoldo
Jim Garrison: Earl Warren more
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Stanlio

Don DeLillo — Rumore bianco | DeRank™: 0,00

"White Noise is a sweet and wonderful dream of anguish." (Martin Amis)
- The first part is a chronicle of the absurdities of family life and a satire on the academic world.
- In the second part, a spill of chemical materials from a train car creates a toxic cloud, making evacuation necessary in the area where Jack lives.
- Worried about having been exposed to the toxin, Jack is forced to confront the possibility of dying.
- The novel becomes a reflection on the fear of death in modern society and the obsession with medical care, with Jack trying to purchase on the black market a drug believed to alleviate the fear of death. more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Don DeLillo — I nomi | DeRank™: 0,00

The late Seventies: it's the period of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the energy crisis, and terrorist kidnappings.
James Axton, an American who conducts risk analysis for an insurance company, is tasked with reporting on the geopolitical situation in the Middle East.
From his office in Athens, he visits his wife and son who live on a small island in the Aegean.
Here, Axton learns of a ritual murder, perhaps the last link in a mysterious chain of crimes.
And he begins to investigate, following the traces of a mysterious cult that fascinates him.
From Greece, the story unfolds through an exhilarating journey to the East.
A thriller that evokes the magical potential of language. (einaudi.it) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Don DeLillo — Americana | DeRank™: 0,00

- The narrator of the novel is David Bell, a former television executive and later an avant-garde director. The story begins with an investigation into the existential malaise of the modern corporate man. Then the novel transforms, starting to question the power of cinema to distort reality. Bell creates an autobiographical road movie. The story addresses the roots of American social pathologies...
- The first half of the novel can be interpreted as a critique of the corporate world, while the rest focuses on the fears and dilemmas of contemporary American life. (wikipedia) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Daniele Del Giudice — Mania | DeRank™: 0,00

Six worlds and six stories of today's imagination...
- A piece of music lost in the ether is the motive for an anonymous murder.
- Violating death becomes possible through persuasion with the seduction of discourse.
- The ruthless and precise account of a hand-to-hand struggle that transcends fiction to become a direct experimentation of Evil.
- A rogue Neapolitan night ends in a deadly nightmare that takes us back to the eighteenth century.
- An ancient fortress, resembling a magical object, summons bodies into battle and a real victim of the era into pure virtuality.
- The passage of a comet turns the act of observing into bitterness. more
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Stanlio
It can happen one day that you have to fly alone, and get lost just as one can get lost in life. It will then be necessary to understand the magnitude of the mistake, to balance between instinct and maneuvers, dizziness and equilibrium... (einaudi.it) more
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Stanlio
A pilot crashes in the Sahara desert and meets a child who asks him, "Can you draw me a sheep?" The pilot draws him a box, telling him that inside is the sheep he wanted. Little by little, they become friends, and the child claims to be the prince of a faraway asteroid...
" grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them..."
::: The Little Prince ::: more
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Stanlio
A ruthless and bloodthirsty emerging organization seeks to conquer the sky from the outskirts.
Three cursed young heroes with a naïve and terrible dream.
A determined police officer, a chorus of criminals, gamblers, criminologists, journalists, judges, singers, mafiosi, along with corrupt pieces of power and black terrorists.
And the most exclusive brothel in the city.
An epic novel of extraordinary power, the hidden heart of Italy's history laid bare. (einaudi.it) more
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Stanlio
A Marseille intellectual who has moved from the Resistance to a life of crime, a dreamy and lazy pimp, and a Sardinian shepherd who has escaped a heavy sentence organize the theft of a load of precious goods.
Three men worlds apart brought together by fate in Genoa for the "heist" of a lifetime.
Two women, a shy prostitute from the port and an enchanting Istrian... (einaudi.it) more
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Stanlio
Stanlio

Edmondo De Amicis — Cuore | DeRank™: 0,00

More than a century has passed since Cuore was first published in 1886, making De Amicis the most widely read author in Italy. And yet, even today, this book strikes us with its literary merits: for the writing, for the wisdom of a complete screenplay, for the ability to conclude an episode with a single masterful sentence. The same pedagogical intent and civic commitment that permeate it demonstrate a moral tension capable of rendering it both exciting and moving, even for contemporary readers. (einaudi.it)
The monthly tales:
October: Il piccolo patriota padovano
November: La piccola vedetta lombarda
December: Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino
January: Il tamburino sardo
February: L'infermiere di Tata
March: Sangue romagnolo
April: Valor civile
May: Dagli Appennini alle Ande
June: Naufragio more
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Stanlio
Sandrone Dazieri, former leoncavallino and ex-private investigator, has been hired to handle security at a party. Apparently, a simple and miserable job as usual, easy money with no effort. Too bad that in the middle of the reception, the host's daughter runs away and is found, shortly after, brutally killed. more
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