Touch

By Gabriel Josipovici

Book Overview

In this brilliant new book, a preeminent literary thinker muses over the central question of how we can feel at home in the world, given that the world is independent of and indifferent to our wishes. Drawing on books and films, cultural history and his own experiences, Gabriel Josipovici argues that it is possible to feel comfortable in the world and in our relationships with others only if we value touch over sight, if we respect distance but also work to overcome it.

Josipovici moves from a Charlie Chaplin movie to passages from Proust, from the world of sport to the world of addiction, from medieval pilgrimages to the cult of relics, from a wedding photograph of his grandparents to some of Chardin's most enigmatic paintings. Through these seemingly disparate topics he provides engaging and wise commentary on connection and communication in life. Contrasting the senses of sight and touch, Josipovici notes that although sight seems to give us the totality of what we behold, it is only when we walk or feel our way across the distances that things become more than images and begin to constitute the world in which we as touchers and not mere observers are included. If we depend on sight--which seems to offer a frictionless domination over reality--we may avoid the pains and uncertainties of living, but we also lose our involvement with life.

Lucid, imaginative, and daring, Josipovici's book will inspire and, yes, deeply touch us all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030018106X
• ISBN13: 9780300181067
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Touch and Go

I ran across the author in a recent article in the TLS which I liked a lot. "Touch" is not new; it was published in 1996, but the title caught my eye, and I wanted to read something more substantial by this author. Evidently, the author has been around, but I have just recently discovered him. He has the range of George Steiner, one of my favorites for years. This author has Steiner's erudition but his background is less easily identified. In this book he refers to having had a childhood in Egypt, I believe, but from there it is less clear what he has been up to, although the book's jackets says he is a full professor in England. Be that as it may, my point is that unlike Steiner, Josipovici has a less obviously identifiable focus. Steiner, a Viennese Jew, is Holocaust haunted, while Josipovici seems more focused on pre-Modern literary concerns. The author's thesis is that it is through touch that we fully imagine the world, not as one might think, through sight, especially in light of our modern obsession with viewing and watching. He plays off of expressions such as "I'm touched" and one's being "out of touch," and so on, to make his points. The Yale text is nicely illustrated with paintings. The author concentrates on authors such as Dante, Dostoevski, and Chaucer, but ranges widely from Charlie Chaplin to Rembrandt. Oddly enough, I didn't find the piece especially compelling, but it may be that the author simply left me behind.