Reviews for At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins, and Bodies in the Middle Ages

The average rating for At Play in the Tavern: Signs, Coins, and Bodies in the Middle Ages based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-05 00:00:00 Nadia Ramirez Moreno A perversely delightful little collection of essays - it is a shame that it is so expensive. Klossowski is always a difficult figure to pin down and speak of, for (as these essays evince) even when he is writing of others, he is writing about himself, and when he is writing about himself, he is writing about another. A parody, by necessity. The first and last essays of the collection, both on Nietzsche, are essential additions to anyone looking to struggle through the madness of Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. The two essays on Gide and his demoniacal obsessions (here perverted in themselves through the darkened mirror of Christianity) are intriguing, especially given that they relate little, if at all, to his literary works, and focus rather on his life and epistolary relations. The preface to Barbey D'Aurevilly's novel, which looked to be of the least interest, turns out to be a fascinating reflection on the relations between science and faith, atheism and religious morality. The short review of Bataille's L'Abbé C is rather forgettable. Klossowski's continual argument that Bataille remains an inverted Christian has always seemed a bit facile to me, though his ruminations concerning language and the flesh (which run throughout the next couple essays as well) are intriguing. Klossowski's chapter on Brice Parain is perhaps the most fascinating of the book, weaving the thread between language, death, existence, communism, and silence in the knowledge of the unknown, faith in the hopeless hope, all while twisting and diverting the Catholic tones of Parain's thought. Finally, while Klossowski's reading of Blanchot's Le Très-Haut is a bit misguided (granted Klossowski's inveterate, idiosyncratic readings of everything, and his confession to the literality of the reading he gives here), while still exposing intriguing potentials within the text in question. This ever remains Klossowski's perverse power, his solicitous strength. One must learn to read him (accomplishable only through reading him, of course), in order to benefit from the singularity of his readings.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-26 00:00:00 David Campbell Cronin is to be commended for providing an unmaudlin look at an artist's life which by all accounts is anything but. Beckett's various pains in the world - whether psychosomatic or real - are well-accounted for, and one cannot help but think that the shy and bitter recluse of Beckett was indeed reaching for a world in which he imagined some form of happiness for himself, but could not articulate it. Cronin (blessed with an excellent vocabulary which he uses to great effect to support the book but not cudgel the reader with, and whose favorite word seems to be "advert") takes the reader through the entire life and times, baffling and depressing as they may be, of Beckett, and one is challenged to keep pace and follow his various locales (Ireland, France, Germany, and the United States) and the various characters who enter into Beckett's milieux. Of particular interest to this reader is Beckett's entrée into the circle of Joyce acolytes. While at times dry and abstract in a Schillervision sort of way (leaving the reader puzzling at the meaning of it all), the book is a hearty treatise on Beckett's life and works and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the inscrutable expatriate author of books, plays, and other dramatic works often featuring abstractions such as people buried up to their necks or talking mouths. A worthwhile read, now over, go on nohow to your next book.