- Paperback: 258 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; illustrated edition edition (12 Jan 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0520222458
- ISBN-13: 978-0520222458
- Product Dimensions: 2 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,224,247 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Luminous Debris
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"With the sensual, lyrical, accretive methods of a gifted essayist, Sobin puts forward a radical agenda: to enter the conversation between past and present, to place ourselves within 'the dialectic between two orders of time.' After reading this book one feels more humble to be modern, but more proud to be human." --"Hungry Mind Review, Winter 2000 issue
Product Description
Interpreting vestige with the eloquence of a poet and the knowledge of a field archaeologist, Gustaf Sobin explores his elected terrain: the landscapes of Provence and Languedoc. Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons. As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political. An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata. In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.
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First Sentence
The beach cobbles lie there in little unruly heaps. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The beach cobbles lie there in little unruly heaps. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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2 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
A brilliant book: History that reads like poetry...
9 Feb 2004
Format:Hardcover
Gustav Sobin's book is a fascinating archaeological and anthropological exploration of the tantalizing remnants of human history in Southern France... This book reads like poetry, and yet it is guaranteed to fill its readers with the wonders of human life, history, and the passing of time... The author's deep understanding of past events lends authority and credibility to the magnificence of his vision and the clear style of his writing... I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it highly.
6 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Insight, Overdone
12 Feb 2002
Format:Paperback
The backflap compares Sobin's style to Barthes and more than one reviewer calls his prose poetical, so that may be warning enough. It's too bad, because the book's digressions and excursions through the more mundane fields of history are really quite engrossing. Sobin really does have a way of making you see through the otherwise overlooked object into the past, then making it reflect the present as well. By the end, while his stylistic tics had become maddening, I felt oddly informed about the various tides of history to have washed over the Provencal region, and the jetsam they left in receding.
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