Book dossier

Look, listen, read

by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Over the course of a monumental career, Claude Levi-Strauss has interwoven artistic materials and themes into his seminal analyses of the "savage mind." In this work, the world's most famous anthropologist turns his attention entirely to the domain of aesthetics. In a series of brilliant but meticulous studies, the author ranges widely across the domains of painting, music, literature, and the plastic arts, his fertile mind opening more general, philosophical perspective. Look, Listen, Read is a truly original work, far removed from the intellectual fads that mark contemporary discussions on aesthetics, as Levi-Strauss advances into new territory even as he remains faithful to his structuralist inspiration. The book weaves a dense tissue of connections, correspondences, and principles, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the specificities of each of the beaux-arts. In a valedictory statement capping a lifetime's work, Levi-Strauss has made a major new contribution to our understanding of the place of art in human life, the nature of its appeal, the source of its creativity, and its universality.