Word: readers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...curious reader can also find survivors in several modern editions of New Testament Apocrypha (from the Greek apokruphos, "hidden")--scraps of other Gospels, letters, apocalypses, acts of the apostles and other figures related to Jesus. Some of them offer occasionally striking, even comic, moments. There are numerous stories about the young Jesus, for instance--a sometimes amusing, sometimes dangerous superchild playmate. And there may be actual moments of history in the mostly fictional tales of the acts of John the Beloved, Peter, Paul and others...
...have only the shakiest grounds for assessing their reliability. The disappointing fact seems to be that most of the surviving New Testament Apocrypha arose in legitimate attempts to comprehend realities about which the canonical Gospels are mute, and any dogged attempt to read them is apt to leave the reader with one prime reaction--those 2nd and 3rd century Christian editors who decided on the final contents of the New Testament were, above all else, superb literary critics...
...While one can question the substance of West, one cannot help but be impressed by the volume of his work. Twenty books by West since 1982 are listed in the front of the Reader. His future projects are no less ambitious: West plans a collaboration on African-American and Greek literature with Elemi Mavromatidou along with a long term project on Checkov and Coltrane and more ventuers into literary criticism. His next published works will be Heart of American Darkness, and I Ain't Noways Tired, a "bold venture in intellectual biography modeled on black musical forms...
...writings combine the philosophically grandiose with postmodern frou frou, they are singularly lacking in the intellectual power that would sustain either." Horowitz moves from a questionable attack on West's intellect to a ludicrous charge of racism and anti-Semitism. He strikes at the very root of the Reader by ridiculing West's representation of self-discovery, saying "it is as though Georgie Porgie, reincarnated as a Harvard don, stuck in his thumb and pulled out this plumb: I am a Chekovian Christian." Granted, the term "Chekovian Christian" does seem a bit much, and it is used ad naseum...
...Fortunately, West still holds a greater influence over both Harvard and society in general than the likes of Horowitz. The Reader is far from a perfect book: his style is easy to criticize, and some of his ideas do come across as muddled and abstract. However, it is on the whole a very positive book, detailing a personal struggle with the many facets of modern existence and questioning how life should be lived in the face of these obstacles. Perhaps if David Horowitz were to undergo the same critical self-examination of his own life and ideas, he would find...