"A sumptuously documented book, one that makes innovative use of the principle of montage to generate informative historical readings of Japan's myriad mass cultural phenomena in the early twentieth century. Both in terms of its scholarship and its methodology, this is a truly admirable work."—Rey Chow, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Brown University "As Miriam Silverberg has brilliantly shown here, the modern times of 1920s and ‘30s Japan were rendered in a cacophony of cultural mixing: a period of consumerist desires and Hollywood fantasy-making but also the rise of nationalist empire-building. Excavating its kaleidoscope of everyday culture Silverberg astutely offers a theory of montage for how Japanese subjects 'code-switched' in juggling the mixed cultural/political elements of these times. Utilizing a montage of media, texts, sites, and scholarship, Silverberg leads the reader into the terrain of the 'erotic grotesque nonsense' in a work that is as scintillating as it is theoretically important."—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination "Unlike other scholars who merely view ero-guro-nansensu in its literal meanings, Silverberg brilliantly documents it as a complex cultural aesthetic expressed in a spectrum of fascinating mass culture forms and preoccupations. With great erudition and humor, she traces the sensory and conceptual modes that are animated with potency and sophistication through this cultural metaphor. This book is destined to be a classic in Japan scholarship."—Laura Miller, author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics

Andrei Sinyavsky wrote Strolls with Pushkin while confined to Dubrovlag, a Soviet labor camp, smuggling the pages out a few at a time to his wife. His irreverent portrait of Pushkin outraged émigrés and Soviet scholars alike, yet his "disrespect" was meant only to rescue Pushkin from the stifling cult of personality that had risen up around him. Anglophone readers who question the longstanding adoration for Pushkin felt by generations of Russians will enjoy tagging along on Sinyavsky's strolls with the great poet, discussing his life, fiction, and famously untranslatable poems. This new edition of Strolls with Pushkin also includes a later essay Sinyavsky wrote on the artist, "Journey to the River Black."

In the series "Objects of Desire, " the leg is celebrated with exquisite, erotic photos accompanied and complemented by poignant, provocative quotes. This sumptuous picture book features some of the leading international photographers of the 20th century. 120 photos.

Much of the previous scholarship on Russia's literary discourses of sexuality and eroticism in the Silver Age was built on applying European theoretical models (from psychoanalysis to feminist theory) to Russia's modernization. This book argues that, at the turn into the twentieth century, Russian popular culture for the first time found itself in direct confrontation with the traditional high cultures of the upper classes and intelligentsia, producing modernized representations of sexuality. This Russian tradition of conflicted representations, heretofore misassessed by literary history, emerges as what Foucault would call a full-blown “bio-history” of Russian culture: a history of indigenous representations of sexuality and the eroticized body capable of innovation on its own terms, not just those derivative from Europe.

This Owner's Manual provides you with detailed ways to Consciously Evolve Your Consciousness while addressing other important related issues: The Brain and How to Use It, The Law of Giving and Receiving, How to Meditate, How to Chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, Wishing People a Happy Life, The Probability of Being Born, Spiritual Philosophy, Neuroscience and Neurogenesis (how to grow new stem cells), Evolution of the Subconscious Mind. By the time you read this Owner's Manual, you will be on your way to evolving your own consciousness. Included with this Owner's Manual is the novel Romancing the Absurd, a story of redemption for two of the characters who dabble in consciously evolving their consciousness. When financial investigator Tony T. Trueblé is hired to interview key players in a major lawsuit against a venture capitalist group, his world is turned upside down as he is dragged through a seedy underworld of corruption, dishonesty, and murder. He must not only get the job done but do so without giving into his insatiable cravings for vodka, weed, and causal, meaningless sex. Sensational, satirical, and sometimes absurd, Romancing the Absurd is a literary murder mystery full of intrigue, suspense, philosophy, and absurdist cutthroat behavior. Nine people die under bizarre circumstances. A handful of people get screwed (in more ways than one). The story takes humorous and philosophical twists and turns, leaving you laughing at the murderous tactics some folks are willing to use to get ahead in this world. Throughout the story, there runs an undercurrent of reflection, hope, and redemption for Tony, who strives to right his wrongs, and Jim der Bacon, accused of murder yet able to focus on consciously evolving his own consciousness. For Tony, redemption comes through writing and his new awareness that one can consciously evolve their consciousness. Romancing the Absurd is the final result of Tony's studies, hard work, and shocking struggles with himself, others, and the universe at large. Based on real-life venture capitalists, businessmen, and lawyers, the story is structured using reinvented reality.

This autobiography in stories, When Eve Was Naked, takes us through a most remarkable life, from the innocence of prewar Prague through the horrors of the Nazi occupation and World War II. In the title story, narrated by Skvorecky's alter-ego Danny Smiricky, seven-year-old Danny falls in love for the first time; at sixteen he hides in a railway station and watches as his Jewish teacher is herded onto a train and taken away; and in 1968, as Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Skvorecky flees Czechoslovakia, taking Danny with him. In the collection's final stories, Danny begins his tenure as Professor Smiricky at a Canadian university and attempts to come to terms with the politically innocent and self-centered youth that flock to his courses.