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The City of Words
The City of Words: Understanding Civilisation Through Story | Alberto Manguel
4 posts | 5 read | 4 to read
'And yet stories, even the best and truest, can't save us from our own folly. Stories can't protect us from suffering and error, from natural and artificial catastrophes, from our own suicidal greed. The only thing they can do is ... offer consolation for suffering and words to name our experience. Stories can tell us who we are ... and suggest ways of imagining a future that, without calling for comfortable happy endings, may offer us ways of remaining alive, together, on this much-abused earth.' Based on Canada's 2007 CBC Massey Lectures (to be broadcast in Australia by ABC Radio National in April 2008), Alberto Manguel's The City of Wordstakes a fresh look at the rise of violent intolerance in our societies. We strive to build societies with sets of values all citizens can agree on. But something has gone wrong: race riots in France, political murder in the Netherlands, bombings in Britain and Bali - are these symptoms of a multicultural experiment gone awry? Why is it so difficult for us to live together when the alternatives are demonstrably horrifying? With his trademark wit and erudition, Alberto Manguel suggests a fresh approach: we should look at what visionaries, poets, novelists, essayists and filmmakers have to say about building societies. Perhaps the stories we tell hold secret keys to the human heart. From Cassandra to Jack London, the Epic of Gilgameshto the computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Don Quixoteto Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, Manguel draws fascinating and revelatory parallels between the personal and political realities of our present-day world and those of myth, legend and story.
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Palimpsest
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This is an excellent set of lectures about intolerance in society written in 2007 which unfortunately is all too relevant today. He uses films and stories like The Epic of Gilgamesh to draw parallels between what‘s happening today and stories of the past. I read this awhile ago and have forgotten a lot of what I wanted to talk about, but especially loved ‘The Screen of Hal‘. Manguel is a always a Must Read from me. Five stars.

Bookwomble Got me at "Epic of Gilgamesh" ?? 4y
Palimpsest @Bookwomble The Tablets of Gilgamesh lecture was one of my favorites in the collection. If you get a chance to read it I‘d love to hear what you think. 😊 4y
Bookwomble @Palimpsest It may be a short while before I buy it. Bookshops just reopened in my neck of the woods and I've spent my allowance already 💸😄 I'm reading Borges essays at the moment, so perhaps after I've finished that. Thanks for popping the Manguel on my radar 🙂 4y
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Palimpsest @Bookwomble understandable. I had this book on my shelf and just recently got to it. Alberto Manguel knew Borges as a teen or young man and read to him. I haven‘t read that book yet, but would like to but I have liked everything else I‘ve read by him. (edited) 4y
Palimpsest @Bookwomble if you‘re interested in the audio instead you can find the lectures on the link I pasted. The one about Gilgamesh is the second lecture! 😊 4y
Bookwomble @Palimpsest That's fantastic! Thank you for the link 😊 I like listening to podcasts while I'm cooking, so I'll definite give these a listen. 4y
vivastory I had NO idea that this book existed! Ordering asap! 4y
Palimpsest @vivastory I‘ve read seven of his books and love them all. Why I haven‘t read everything he‘s written yet I don‘t know because I always love them. 😊 4y
vivastory I've only read 3 from cover to cover, but each one of them left a significant impact on me. I also ordered Reader's Diary when I ordered this just now. 4y
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Eugeniavb
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Fantastic essay about our identity as part of our society and the influence of the stories that we tell and that are told to us, throughout history. Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Alice in wonderland, Jekyll and Hyde..they are all there.

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Eugeniavb
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Fictions are our memory, libraries are the places where we store those memories, and reading is the craft through which we can recreate it -reciting it, glossing it and translating it to our own experience- which allows us to build on top of what previous generations considered worthy of preserving