Nightmares of eminent persons, and other stories

by Bertrand Russell

Paper Book, 1954

Status

Available

Call number

823.912

Genres

General Fiction

Fiction

Collection

Don

Publication

New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955 [c1954]

Description

"This collection begins with a series of Nightmares. Some are dreamt by the psychoanalyst, the metaphysician or the mathematician. Others are dreamt by "eminent persons" such as Joseph Stalin, Dwight D. Eisenhower or the Queen of Sheba. These Nightmares, Bertrand Russell said, might be called Signposts to Sanity, since "the man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his mind a Parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others. The dreamers of these Nightmares did not adopt this technique; it is hoped that the reader will have more wisdom!"" "Bertrand Russell added two longer stories to complete this, his second volume of short stories. The first volume, Satan in the Suburbs, has also been published in a new edition by Spokesman."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved… (more)

Media reviews

Indexers & Indexes in Fact & Fiction

The mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, at the age of 80 turned to writing `a series of moral satires'. He told Stanley Unwin that he had `broken out in a new place and taken to writing fantastic stories'. Unwin published two collections of these, Satan in the Suburbs in 1953, and

Nightmares of Eminent Persons in 1954.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini

Less than the some of its parts. Apparently on a lark, Lord Bertie decides to write some short stories expounding on some of is favourite themes in a new medium. Of the "nightmares", a couple are stellar--the psychoanalyst's nightmare in which Hamlet, Othello, Romeo, Lear and Antony are sitting

around in purgatory talking about how he made good stable citizens of them all; Stalin's dream, where he is remanded by a war crimes trial to the custody of understanding Quakers, out of whom he cannot get a rise even when he burns them with hot soup. That shows inventiveness, and he has a kind of overponderous humour, and I like the future dystopia in "Zahatopolk" where the Inca rule the world and eat their babies (of course), even if it is a bit sub-Huxley. But as you read, you see the same stories--the exact same allegories, only illustrated in a new way--make their appearance, and people get up and say their set pieces in tortuous word sequences no human would ever have spoke, and it all gets a bit twee and dusty and tedious, really. Famous as he is as a logician and ethicist, Russell was canny enough to keep the former out of his little fictional side project here; he would have been better off if he could have said the same about the latter.

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Language

English

Original publication date

1954

Physical description

177 p.; 22 cm

LibraryThing

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