No Passion Spent: Essays 1978-1995

By George Steiner

Book Overview

George Steiner is one of the preeminent essayists and literary thinkers of our era. In this remarkable book he concerns himself with language and the relation of language to literature and to religion. Written during a period when the art of reading and the status of a text have been threatened by literary movements that question their validity and by computer technology, Steiner's essays affirm the primacy of reading in the classical sense.

Steiner covers a wide range of subjects, from the Hebrew Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare to Kafka, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, Husserl, and Freud. The theme of Judaism's tragic destiny winds through his thinking, in particular as he muses about whether Jewish scripture and the Talmud are the Jew's true homeland, the parallels between the "last supper" of Socrates and the Last Supper of Jesus, and the necessity for Christians to hold themselves accountable for their invective and impotence during the Holocaust.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300074409
• ISBN13: 9780300074406
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Still Fantastic After All These Years

I reviewed this book for Publisher's Weekly back in '96, and I still give Steiner high marks for the essays collected in this edition. The previous reviewer is obviously no fan of Steiner's work, and I'll warrant that s/he doesn't know much about Steiner's legacy of thought. Steiner has never made any secret of being an elitist, and that's perhaps what is so refreshing about these essays--that they run counter to the current flood of egalitarian ideals that Steiner (and many others) believes lead often to a culture by and for the lowest common denominator. He has a point, and a good one, even if you're unlikely to agree with it (and, yes, he's especially hard on American culture). Yet keep in mind that Steiner's province is art, and that which produces great art doesn't necessarily produce a great society, or even the happiest of people. Still, any thoughtful person who does not become acquainted with George Steiner will be missing out on one of the great intellectual pleasures of the 20th century.

Provocative, eloquent

One need not agree with Steiner to find the essays erudite and provocative. What greater use of a book than to provide stimulus for ruminations on one's own values and those of the culture?