Roger Shattuck

The true story of the nineteenth century's so-called "Wild Boy of Aveyron"--an abandoned French child who lived for years alone in the wilderness before being brought under the care of an innovative young physician. "Before dawn on January 8, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France..." So begins Roger Shattuck's book about the Wild Boy of Aveyron--a child tragically abandoned by his caretakers and captured years later while scavenging food from a local garden. The Wild Boy could not speak, refused all clothing, and repeatedly tried to escape from captivity. Sent to the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris and declared a hopeless case, he was left to run wild until, one day, a medical student arrived on the scene. Jean Itard, young and from the provinces, began spending time with the boy and imagining ways to help him. He hired a woman named Gu rin to care for him and gradually introduced him to social interaction, engaging his senses and imagination with games, toys, and other forms of training. For a while Victor (as Itard named him) made progress, but by 1805 their sessions together had reached an impasse. Victor died in obscurity, still cared for by Madame Gu rin, in 1828. The Forbidden Experiment tells the story of a troubled young man and the extraordinary doctor who tried, however imperfectly, to help him. It is also, in Shattuck's thoughtful, accessible, and compassionate prose, a book that explores essential questions about the human condition. What separates us from animals? What is language, and how do we acquire it? Can children who have been neglected or abused learn to trust the world? First published in 1980--and inspired by Fran ois Truffaut's film The Wild Child--The Forbidden Experiment is now back in print for the first time in more than a decade.

In this compact volume readers just beginning Proust's master work and those who are already enriched by it will become aware of a significance not unkown but only forgotten"--the basic structure of Proust's enormous novel. The overall meaning of Proust's book lies in his three ways of looking at the world--cinematographic, montage, and stereoscopic--and their varying effects on the emotions and the intellect. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In this compact volume readers just beginning Proust's master work and those who are already enriched by it will become aware of a significance not unkown but only forgotten"--the basic structure of Proust's enormous novel. The overall meaning of Proust's book lies in his three ways of looking at the world--cinematographic, montage, and stereoscopic--and their varying effects on the emotions and the intellect. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

An exploration of desire by the French master Pierre Michon “A haunting, imagistic book, somehow both lush and spare.”—Martin Riker, Wall Street Journal This spare, unforgettable novel is Pierre Michon’s luminous exploration of the mysteries of desire. A young teacher takes his first job in a sleepy French town. Lost in a succession of rainy days and sleepless nights, he falls under the spell of a town resident, a woman of seductive beauty and singular charm. Yvonne. Yvonne. “Everything about her screamed desire . . . setting something in motion while settling a fingertip to the counter, turning her head slightly, gold earrings brushing her cheek while she watched you or watched nothing at all; this desire was open, like a wound; and she knew it, wore it with valor, with passion.” Michon probes the destructive powers of passion and the consuming need for love in this heartbreaking novel.

For any reader who has been humbled by the language, the density, or the sheer weight of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Roger Shattuck is a godsend. Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable guidebook to Proust's epic masterpiece, and a contemplation of memory and consciousness throughout great literature. Here, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors, praises some translations, and presents Proust as a novelist whose philosophical gifts were matched only by his irrepressible comic sense. Proust's Way, the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, will serve as the next generation's guide to one of the world's finest writers of fiction.

With incisive analysis, he elucidates the nature of intellectual craftsmanship, defends art's undeniable moral component, and, faced with an academic world shattered by theory, laments how extra-literary politics have grown increasingly dominant, now attempting to eliminate the very category of literature. Whether commenting on Foucault, Pulp Fiction, Georgia O'Keeffe, V. S. Naipaul, or the survival of a core tradition in the humanities, Shattuck presents a stirring synthesis of the principles and values by which we can live together as a nation finally at peace with its diversity. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a TLS Notable Book of 1999.

An examination of the meaning of moral responsibility in literature and our everday lives suggests that we live in a violated world that dismisses taboos