The Trouble With Being Born

Rating:
Summary: great!
Review: Cioran has a great style, indebted to Nietzsche, in which he raves cynically, a la Schopenhauer, about life. Definitely worth reading.
Also recommended: Toilet: The Novel by Michael Szymczyk (A Tribute to the Literary Works of Franz Kafka)



Rating:
Summary: The Only Antidote for Hope
Review: E.M. Cioran has been called either "the last philosopher of Europe" or an Anti-Philosopher. He has, nonetheless, created one of the greatest titles for a book yet conceived! I love to see the looks on people's faces when they pull this tome from my shelf. What Nietzsche would have written had he never died of syphilis - or how Kierkegaard would have grown out of his pseudo-St.Augustine moods. "I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws." These are one-liners any true vaudevillian would have enjoyed. The world is either tragic or vaudeville - you decide. That Cioran succumbed (if that is the word) to the side-effects of alzheimer's is surely one of this incredible man's final ironies. To watch as his intellect was whittled away completely before he died is surely too ignoble a death for someone so resolute in his irresolutions!

Rating:
Summary: The Only Antidote for Hope
Review: E.M. Cioran has been called either "the last philosopher of Europe" or an Anti-Philosopher. He has, nonetheless, created one of the greatest titles for a book yet conceived! I love to see the looks on people's faces when they pull this tome from my shelf. What Nietzsche would have written had he never died of syphilis - or how Kierkegaard would have grown out of his pseudo-St.Augustine moods. "I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws." These are one-liners any true vaudevillian would have enjoyed. The world is either tragic or vaudeville - you decide. That Cioran succumbed (if that is the word) to the side-effects of alzheimer's is surely one of this incredible man's final ironies. To watch as his intellect was whittled away completely before he died is surely too ignoble a death for someone so resolute in his irresolutions!

Rating:
Summary: The greatest writer of all time
Review: His name is pronounced cho-ran. With an accent on the last syllable. He happens to be my spiritual doppelganger. And he might be yours as well. What's especially endearing about Cioran is the fact that he hates God as much as he hates everybody else. He's a gnostic. He's convinced that the universe was created by an evil lifeforce. And he's right. Everything makes perfect sense as soon as you realize that God is evil.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Cioran's book
Review: Often the darkest works can be the most life-affirming. Not for the faint of heart, but for those who find themselves often reflecting on the basic issues of human nature, Cioran will become an indispensable author.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Cioran's book
Review: Often the darkest works can be the most life-affirming. Not for the faint of heart, but for those who find themselves often reflecting on the basic issues of human nature, Cioran will become an indispensable author.

Rating:
Summary: The Trouble with Writing
Review: This is a sort of an anti-christ version of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Terrific. The only complete book of aphormisms that I'm aware of Cioran ever writing. He's the master of this condensed, philosophical, particularly French form (Cioran is from Rumania but lived in Paris and wrote in French). A combination of Nietzsche--without the adolescent angst--and Chamfort.