Her

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Book Overview

"To all those who have for several years sought to discredit the new American literature, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has just dealt a most powerful blow," wrote French critic Pierre Lepape in 1961 when Her was published in France as La Quatrieme Personne du Singulier. Calling it "a masterpiece of the young American novel," Lepape declared it was "the confirmation of a great American writer who, in the hall of American literary glories, takes the place left vacant by the death of Hemingway." Lepape went on to speak of the "incredible verbal virtuosity" by which the reader is led through this "laby-reve," and it is this image of the "labyrinth-dream" which relates Her to the anti-novels of the young French school of Robbe-Grillet and Butor.

Being thus very far from the kind of novels produced by Ferlinghetti's immediate contemporaries (whether Beat or academic) this book has met with little but bafflement among American critics. With well over 50,000 now in print Her nevertheless continues to make its own way.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811200426
• ISBN13: 9780811200424
• Release Date: January 1960
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A dream walking

A beautiful surrealist novel, this is the sort of thing that's so easy to do badly, and so difficult to do well. It doesn't have a plot so much as an underlying archetypal theme, that of Man pursuing the ideal & unattainable Feminine in all of Her ever-changing aspects; but it does have an ongoing narrative drive, one which unfolds in fluid prose, rich in imagery & emotional intensity. Ferlinghetti perfectly recreates the essence of a dream, which has its own logic & its own needs, and makes its own sort of deep sense. The reader has only to surrender to its flow & be carried along, with one image or scene yielding to another in a continuous surge of immediate experience & psychological surprise. Highly recommended!

just can't put my finger on it

When I looked at the cover of this book, I couldn't even begin to fathom what was inside of it. The story itself is so surreal that it wouldn't even be considered a story by some. The plot (if there is one) is so vauge that I couldn't identify it. And that's what makes ot good! I must read more Ferlenghetti. I have tried my hand at writing such a book, but with no sucess. The text is fresh, not at all dull. Don't try reading this while you're in your right mind, though, and not during the day, either. The scenes that the author creates are sort of harrowing, they linger in your mind, and they stick. Read it in small sections. It took me weeks, but it was worth it. It is difficult to get used to Ferlenghetti's writing style, but once you're into it, it doesn't let go. It's all sort of like a dream, some parts a nightmare. The ending was hard to understand from my perspective, but it seems to sum everything up. I highly reccomend this book.

random pourings

totally agree with the first reviewer, many more people should be reading this book, expressing as it does a complete subjection to the writer's art and babbling about blowing up to fill a room. like breton perhaps ferlinghetti forgets about popular literary constraints and merely expresses himself in perfect sequences. remember philip quarles in Huxley's point counter point, he says that a good story could come out of one person's seemingly unmemorable journey from the bus stop next to his house and his front room. Ferlinghetti, like so many kids, spends these pages searching for the essence of the female,essentially. yes, read this book when drunk or tired, or both. or neither.