Author: Bruce Hartman Publisher: ISBN: 9780988918122 Category : Characters and characteristics in literature Languages : en Pages : 250
Book Description
In his twilight years, Nick Martin recounts, though a series of vignettes, the summer of 1967 when he and blind poet Jorge Luis Borges solved crimes and discussed literature and philosophy.
Author: Bruce Hartman Publisher: Philosophical Detective ISBN: 9780999756447 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
New York City, 1971. Two years after their collaboration chronicled in The Philosophical Detective, Nick Martin again falls under the spell of the blind poet and fabulist who calls himself Jorge Luis Borges. Together they must solve a baffling series of murders, find the fabled Ring of Solomon, and rescue the raven that inspired Edgar Allan Poe. Once again Nick plays the parts of Watson, Sancho Panza, Dante and Stephen Daedalus as he finds his way through Borges's conundrums and labyrinths in a quest for himself and the love of his life. Like its predecessor, The Philosophical Detective Returns is a lighthearted but deeply serious journey into the visionary world of a genius."... highly recommended for classic detective story enthusiasts who look for complexity and intellectual challenges in their characters and stories." - Midwest Book Review
Author: Jacob Graham Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1119280788 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 231
Book Description
Investigating the trail of philosophical leads in HBO’s chilling True Detective series, an elite team of philosophers examine far-reaching riddles including human pessimism, Rust’s anti-natalism, the problem of evil, and the ‘flat circle’. The first book dedicated to exploring the far-reaching philosophical questions behind the darkly complex and Emmy-nominated HBO True Detective series Explores in a fun but insightful way the rich philosophical and existential experiences that arise from this gripping show Gives new perspectives on the characters in the series, its storylines, and its themes by investigating core questions such as: Why Life Rather Than Death? Cosmic Horror and Hopeful Pessimism, the Illusion of Self, Noir, Tragedy, Philosopher-Detectives, and much, much more Draws together an elite team of philosophers to shine new light on why this genre-expanding show has inspired such a fervently questioning fan-base
Author: D. E. Wittkower Publisher: Open Court ISBN: 081269743X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
Mr. Monk and Philosophy is a carefully and neatly organized collection of eighteen chapters divided into exactly six groups of precisely three chapters each. Drawing on a wide range of philosophers—from Aristotle and Diogenes, to Siddhartha Gautama and St. Thomas Aquinas, to David Hume and Karl Popper—the authors ask how Adrian Monk solves his cases, why he is the way he is, how he thinks, and what we can learn from him. Some of the authors suggest Monk is a kind of tragic hero, whose flaws help us live out and expunge the fear and anxiety we all experience; that he is more than just his personality or memories, but something more individual and indefinable; and that his most distinctive traits are not the traits that make him a detective, but those that make him a friend. His most notable trait is the dedication he shows to his late wife, Trudy. Other authors explore how Monk encounters the world, arguing that his genius comes not from logic or reasoning, but from his ability to see his surroundings in a pre-conceptualized way; that there isn’t as much distance between his rational beliefs about crimes and evidence and his irrational phobic beliefs as there might seem; and that his phobias have themselves made him approach himself and the world as something to be overcome. Just how does Mr. Monk come to his conclusions? Does he use inductive, deductive, or abductive reasoning? Is he dependent on a false notion of the law of noncontradiction? Is it possible that his reasoning might have more to do with constructing harmonious stories than it does with evidence, causes, or insights? Some contributors ponder Monk's name and what it means given his views on religion. Some authors argue that Mr. Monk's approach to the world is fundamentally similar to that of medieval monastic orders; that his rituals and deductive ‘dancing’ show how he exhibits a kind of shamanism; and that he acts in accordance with the Bodhisattva ideal, bringing others to enlightenment through circumstances and by accident, even though he has no such intention or goal. In one chapter, the author asks how the character Monk is related to other similar characters, arguing that Monk and House are closely related characters, each based on the conflict between reason and emotion which exemplifies the motif of the “troubled genius;” that Monk and House both pursue ethical practices and goals even as they fail at the everyday face-to-face ethics of normal social interactions; and that great detectives all, through their flaws, help us to understand and forgive ourselves for our flaws. And finally, there are several chapters in which the authors consider Monk from the psychologist’s perspective, discussing how Monk’s relationship with Trudy, while having unhealthy codependent elements, demonstrates some important aspects of successful romantic partnerships; how laughter plays a difficult role in mental illness, and the difficult position that the show and therapists are placed in when having to treat seriously disorders that are both tragic and comic; and how, from a psychoanalytic perspective, Monk’s inability to mourn shows us why we both reject and are drawn towards death. In the words of author D. E. Wittkower, "In order to be sure that the reader is able to enjoy the book, every chapter will have an even number of words. You’ll thank me later."
Author: Lydia Goehr Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197572448 Category : Arts Languages : en Pages : 721
Book Description
A profoundly original philosophical detective story tracing the surprising history of an anecdote ranging across centuries of traditions, disciplines, and ideas Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread is a work of passages taken, written, painted, and sung. It offers a genealogy of liberty through a micrology of wit. It follows the long history of a short anecdote. Commissioned to depict the biblical passage through the Red Sea, a painter covered over a surface with red paint, explaining thereafter that the Israelites had already crossed over and that the Egyptians were drowned. Clearly, not all you see is all you get. Who was the painter and who the first teller of the tale? Designed as a philosophical detective story, Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread follows the extraordinary number of thinkers and artists who have used the Red Sea anecdote to make so much more than a merely anecdotal point. Leading the large cast are the philosophers, Arthur Danto and Søren Kierkegaard, the poet and playwright, Henri Murger, the opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and the painter and print-maker, William Hogarth. Strange companions perhaps, until their use of the anecdote is shown as working its extraordinary passage through so many cosmopolitan cities of art and capital. What about the anecdote brings Danto's philosophy of art into conversation with Kierkegaard's stages on life's way, with Murger and Puccini's la vie de bohème, and with Hogarth's modern moral pictures? Lydia Goehr explores these narratives of emancipation in philosophy, theology, politics, and the arts. What has the passage of the Israelites to do with the Egyptians who, by many gypsy names, came to be branded as bohemians when arriving in France from the German lands of Bohemia? What have Moses and monotheism to do with the history of monism and the monochrome? And what sort of thread connects a sea to a square when each is so purposefully named red?
Author: Hakan Nesser Publisher: Anchor Canada ISBN: 0385673035 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 339
Book Description
The author of Borkmann’s Point spins a story that leaves even the most veteran crime novel readers chilled. A new case for Chief Inspector Van Veeteren – the complicated history of a nearly perfect murder. On a sunny August day a man is released from prison. On a rainy April day children at play find his corpse. The fact that the dead man is Leopold Verhaven only becomes clear after some time because the mutilated corpse is without its head, legs and feet. Who would be interested in killing this man, a double murderer who spent 24 years in prison? Determined to let no case go unsolved, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren reopens the case. What he discovers is that Verhaven was a star sprinter before he went to prison for allegedly killing two of his lovers. However, he never confessed to the murders and spent a lifetime proclaiming his innocence. Was he killed because someone thought he had not been punished enough? Or was someone afraid of Verhaven’s revenge? A terrible suspicion stalks Van Veeteren: had Verhaven been telling the truth? Was he really innocent?
Author: Margaret Doody Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022613184X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
In ancient Athens, the great philosopher applies logic to a lethal crime—in the “eminently enjoyable” first novel in a historical mystery series (Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse Mysteries). Young Stephanos is desperate to save his family’s honor by proving in the Athenian court that his exiled cousin is not guilty of shooting an arrow into a prominent patrician. For help, he turns to his old teacher—the cunning and clever thinker known as Aristotle. It will all lead up to a tense public trial in which Stephanos must draw on the rhetorical skills he’s learned from his eccentric, brilliant mentor, in this novel filled with suspense, humor, and historical detail—the first in a series of “witty, elegant whodunits” (Times Literary Supplement). “[An] unusually authentic Ancient-Greece murder tale.”—Kirkus Reviews “Doody brings the Athens of 322 BC to life with skill and verve…wonderfully plotted.”—Publishers Weekly
Author: Edgar Allen Poe Publisher: ISBN: 9780692553145 Category : Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
DETECTIVE STORIES FROM THE AUTHOR WHO INVENTED THE GENRE -- EDGAR ALLAN POE. "It is because I liked Edgar Allan Poe's stories so much that I began to make suspense films." ALFRED HITCHCOCK "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?" ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE "Mr. Poe has that indescribable something that men have agreed to call genius." JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL "Poe constantly and inevitably produced magic..." GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Author: Alexander McCall Smith Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 1408711249 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
The first book in Alexander McCall Smith's new Detective Varg series . . . The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduced us to Scandi noir. Now, welcome to Alexander McCall Smith's world of Scandi blanc, where mysteries abound and there is still so much for a Swedish detective to learn. Ulf Varg works in Malmö's Department of Sensitive Crimes. Like all Scandinavian detectives, he has his issues. In this case, these include his unresolved feelings for his colleague Anna, his impatience over the seeming incompetence of his irritating colleague Blomquist and his concerns for the health of his hearing-impaired dog Martin, the only dog in Sweden (and possibly all Scandinavia) who can lip-read. Soon, Ulf and his colleagues find themselves investigating an attack on a market trader, the disappearance of a handsome man who may not exist and a group of students whose relationships leave a great deal to be desired . . . 'Wonderfully soothing and relaxing' Telegraph
Author: Bruce Hartman
Author: Bruce Hartman
Author: Jacob Graham
Author: D. E. Wittkower
Author: Jim Holt
Author: Lydia Goehr
Author: Hakan Nesser
Author: Margaret Doody
Author: Edgar Allen Poe
Author: Alexander McCall Smith