Mircea Mihaies's Books

The Metaphysics of Detective Marlowe

Style, Vision, Hard-Boiled Repartee, Thugs, and Death-Dealing Damsels in Raymond Chandler’s Novels

By: Mircea Mihaies

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The Metaphysics of Detective Marlowe

Style, Vision, Hard-Boiled Repartee, Thugs, and Death-Dealing Damsels in Raymond Chandler’s Novels

By: Mircea Mihaies

The Metaphysics of Detective Marlowe: Style, Vision, Hard-Boiled Repartee, Thugs, and Death-Dealing Damsels in Raymond Chandler’s Novels is a comparative study of ‘the life and times” of an American idol, Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe. It is a bitter-sweet critical exploration, meant to redefine the exceptional cultural profile, as well as the moral and social obsessions of one of America’s eminent fictional heroes. The study paints a colorful picture of the irresistible blend of romantic blind faith and social, moral and political toughness which characterized the United States in the 1930s-40s, with the memorable throng of drug dealers, hit men, vamps, corrupt politicians, and eccentric millionaires that colonize Raymond Chandler’s work. As the only defender of truth and honor in the Californian “Waste Land,” Philip Marlowe emerges as a symbolic figure, celebrated for the unique place he holds in the American hard-boiled mythology. The volume comprises an Introduction, Marlowe Before Marlowe, and four large chapters, each focusing on the innovations and enduring strategies behind Chandler’s persuasive vision: The Doughy Mass of Depravity, A Phantasm Called Style, The Villainy Septet and Marlowe After Marlowe. As presented in this book, Philip Marlowe is a sentimentalist of the worst type: one embarrassed to show his true feelings. He is tough, but not tough enough and, consequently, a charming loser, always defeated in his confrontations with psychopath monsters and the legions of death-dealing damsels. The Californian detective’s gentleness and callousness are endearing: the gentleness is always callous, and the callousness is barely gentle. He seems to be the survivor of an extinct species, living for and by a code of honor. He believes in the purity of desires, expressed in a nascent idiom, a kind of secret/public language that heralds the resurrection of the new hard-boiled diction. His genuine candor is perfectly expressed in the directness of his talk, a brilliant example of rhetorical tightrope walking. Philip Marlowe embodies the contradictions of the problematic modernism—half bedlam, half expressionism—of his time and ours alike. The tradition he inaugurated is consistently illustrated today by James Ellroy, Allan Guthrie, Walter Mosley, Megan Abbott or Charlie Hudson.

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Page Count

231

Publisher

Lexington Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0739186582

ISBN 13

9780739186589

Bengal Nights

A Novel

By: Mircea Eliade

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Bengal Nights

A Novel

By: Mircea Eliade

This erotic passion plays itself out in Alain's thoughts long after its bitter conclusion. In hindsight he sets down the story, quoting from the diaries of his disordered days, and trying to make sense of the sad affair.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226204189

ISBN 13

9780226204185

Journal II, 1957-1969

By: Mircea Eliade

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Journal II, 1957-1969

By: Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade's journal of the years 1957-1969, originally published in English under the title No Souvenirs, is the testimony of a "wandering scholar" caught between three worlds: his native Romania, the France he fled to, and his last homeland, the United States. The journal is filled with his work, dreams, memories of his youth, stories of his travels, the reflections of each day.

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Page Count

366

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226204138

ISBN 13

9780226204130

Mircea Eliade: Autobiography

Exile's Odyssey, 1937–1960

By: Mircea Eliade

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Mircea Eliade: Autobiography

Exile's Odyssey, 1937–1960

By: Mircea Eliade

Here finally are Eliade's memoirs of the first thirty years of his life in Mac Linscott Rickett's crisp and lucid English translation. They present a fascinating account of the early development of a Renaissance talent, expressed in everything from daily and periodical journalism, realistic and fantastic fiction, and general nonfiction works to distinguished contributions to the history of religions. Autobiography follows an apparently amazingly candid report of this remarkable man's progression from a mischievous street urchin and literary prodigy, through his various love affairs, a decisive and traumatic Indian sojourn, and active, brilliant participation in pre-World War II Romanian cultural life."—Seymour Cain, Religious Studies Review

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Page Count

255

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022615954X

ISBN 13

9780226159546

Mystic Stories

The Sacred and the Profane

By: Mircea Eliade

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Mystic Stories

The Sacred and the Profane

By: Mircea Eliade

Noone can tell a vampire story like a Romanian, and few Romanians can bring the breadth of learning world renowned mythologist Eliade (1907-86). His fiction is little known, partly because it is all in Romanian. The novelette and three short stories here share a concern with the supernatural and settings in preindustrial Romania. The translation includes a guide to pronouncing the names. No index or bibliography. Acidic paper; poor quality printing, binding, and proofreading. Distributed in the US by Columbia U. Press. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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302

Published Date

ISBN 10

0880332271

ISBN 13

9780880332279

The Portugal Journal

By: Mircea Eliade

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The Portugal Journal

By: Mircea Eliade

The diary of Mircea Eliade, the seminal thinker on religion, during the period he served as a diplomat in Portugal.

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Page Count

298

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438429606

ISBN 13

9781438429601

Autobiography, Volume 1

1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West

By: Mircea Eliade

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Autobiography, Volume 1

1907-1937, Journey East, Journey West

By: Mircea Eliade

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Page Count

347

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226204073

ISBN 13

9780226204079

Journal IV

1979–1985

By: Mircea Eliade

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Journal IV

1979–1985

By: Mircea Eliade

Journal IV is the first publication, in a translation from the Romanian manuscript, of the journal that Mircea Eliade kept during the last seven years of his life. In this period, Eliade is ensconced as a famous scholar—his works are being translated into many languages and books about him arrive regularly in the mail. His encounters with scholars of like repute are recorded in the journal; after a party in Paris, Eliade shares a taxi with Claude Lévi-Strauss and inadvertently makes off with his raincoat. Running like a fault line through the peak of his success, however, is Eliade's painful awareness of his physical decline—failing vision, arthritic hands, and continual fatigue. Again and again he repeats how little time he has to finish the projects he is working on—his autobiography, the third and fourth volumes of his History of Religious Ideas, and the duties associated with his editorship of the Encyclopedia of Religion. He poignantly recounts the sharpest blow: the disorganization and eventual destruction by fire of his personal library. Within the scope of Journal IV Eliade and his world go to ruin. What does not decline is the vivid and persistent voice of Eliade the writer, an unbreaking voice that—with death only months away—plans a reply to critics, plots out an article, and ruminates on characters to people another novella.

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Page Count

176

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022615968X

ISBN 13

9780226159683

The Old Man and the Bureaucrats

By: Mircea Eliade

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The Old Man and the Bureaucrats

By: Mircea Eliade

Proposes the means by which the therapist can help validate stepfamilies as viable units, creating integration of old loyalties and new ties. Reprint of the 1979 ed. published by Univ. of Notre Dame Press. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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Page Count

128

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226204103

ISBN 13

9780226204109

Cosmos and History

The Mith of the Eternal Return

By: Mircea Eliade,Cristian Butnariu

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Cosmos and History

The Mith of the Eternal Return

By: Mircea Eliade,Cristian Butnariu

Had we not feared to appear overambitious, we should have given this book a subtitle: Introduction to a Philosophy of History. For such, after all, is the purport of the present essay; but with the distinction that, instead of proceeding to a speculative analysis of the historical phenomenon, it examines the fundamental concepts of archaic societies which, although they are conscious of a certain form of "history," make every effort to disregard it. In studying these traditional societies, one characteristic has especially struck us: it is their revolt against concrete, historical time, their nostalgia for a periodical return to the mythical time of the beginning of things, to the "Great Time." The meaning and function of what we have called "archetypes and repetition" disclosed themselves to us only after we had perceived these societies' will to refuse concrete time, their hostility toward every attempt at autonomous "history," that is, at history not regulated by archetypes. These dismissals, this opposition, are not merely the effect of the conservative tendencies of primitive societies, as this book proves. In our opinion, it is justifiable to read in this depreciation of history (that is, of events without trans-historical models), and in this rejection of profane, continuous time, a certain metaphysical "valorisation" of human existence. But this valorisation is emphatically not that which certain post-Hegelian philosophical currents notably Marxism, historicism, and existentialism have sought to give to it since the discovery of "historical man," of the man who is insofar as he makes himself, within history.

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Createspace Independent Pub

Published Date

ISBN 10

1475224516

ISBN 13

9781475224511

The Myth of the Eternal Return

Or, Cosmos and History

By: Mircea Eliade

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The Myth of the Eternal Return

Or, Cosmos and History

By: Mircea Eliade

This essay on humanity's experience of history and its interpretation begins with a study of the traditional or mythological view and concludes with a comparative estimate of modern historiological approaches.

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Page Count

195

Publisher

Bollingen

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691017778

ISBN 13

9780691017778

Book's by Mircea Mihaies

The Metaphysics of Detective Marlowe

The Metaphysics of Detective Marlowe

Bengal Nights

Bengal Nights

Journal II, 1957-1969

Journal II, 1957-1969

Mircea Eliade: Autobiography

Mircea Eliade: Autobiography

Mystic Stories

Mystic Stories

The Portugal Journal

The Portugal Journal

Autobiography, Volume 1

Autobiography, Volume 1

Journal IV

Journal IV

The Old Man and the Bureaucrats

The Old Man and the Bureaucrats

Cosmos and History

Cosmos and History

The Myth of the Eternal Return

The Myth of the Eternal Return

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