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About this book
Aphorism, epigram, adage--the essence of each form is a saying short and pithy. Brief, condensed, and easy to recite, these represent a culture's wise advice. What an aesthetics of the miniature! As French philosopher Gaston Bachelard observes, "The miniscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world." Some such sayings are pure description, yet they hint at something more; others appear to be an elder's admonition to a child; some resound with probing observations of human nature and God; others are light, whimsical wordplays. The Renaissance humanist Erasmus, who collected over four thousand adages, believed a proverb to be like a hurled javelin, striking the hearer's mind with a short point, implanting barbs for meditation. Nietzsche proposed that "the relief-like, incomplete representation of a thought, or a whole philosophy is sometimes more effective than its exhaustive amplification." So Bazyn's gnomic verse functions almost like Zen koans to push readers into new ways of perceiving.These four volumes, like a patchwork quilt, are interwoven with 196 color photographs (abstract to concrete), shot from myriad angles in assorted styles. When pondered seriously, they help unravel manifold meanings within each saying.
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Table of contents
- Title Page
- Diminutive Voices
- Macabre Humor
- Mad-dashery
- Magical Correspondences
- Marilyn Monroe
- The Masquerade
- Melancholia
- Mismatched Assets
- Misplaced Anxieties
- Moby Dick
- Necessary Removal
- Never To Have Been Born
- No Place to Hide
- Noble Aloofness
- Not Quite Orthodox
- Nothingness: Sunyata
- Numbers 33: The Allurement of Idols
- An Olive Branch
- Olfactory Distinctions
- On the Lecture Circuit
- On the Periphery
- One Step Ahead
- Overly Rigid
- Paradigm Shifts
- Part II: To Be Continued
- Petitionary Depression
- The Philistine’s Response to Modernity
- Pilate’s Wife
- The Pitfalls of Memory
- Pliability
- Plot Fatigue
- Poetic Repartee
- Poisons
- Polite Inhibitions
- Posturing
- Premature Burial
- The Pretender
- Pretensions
- Procrastination
- A Profile in Cowardice?
- Profuse Bleeding
- Radioactive Vomit
- Rating Pioneers
- A Renaissance Menu
- Resemblances
- A Riddle
- Risk-Taking
- Royal Metaphors
- Listing of Photographs