Rating: 
Summary: Generally I love Hofstadter, but...
Review: ...I found this book infuriatingly in need of an editor!!! I bought a remaindered copy for $4 at Half-Price Books, but after reading it I realized I didn't get much of a bargain.Doug starts out by praising himself for being in total control of this book -- typesetting, page design, content, direction... Well, he shouldn't be so smug. The typography is a jumbled mess, the chapter introductions are amateurish, the page breaks are artificial and distracting, the content wanders off the subject into numerous, endless (and pointless) digressions, and most of the 30,000 versions of the poem he translates are laughably bad. There's a worthwhile message in here somewhere, buried under six tons of authorial effluvia -- something about the art of translation being a balance between form and content. But of the 632 pages here, only about 120 serve this purpose. Hofstadter has apparently become such a powerhouse author that he is allowed to wield total control, but it's a two edged sword and he proves himself no Galahad. Doug man, you need an editor.
Rating: 
Summary: Profound, but disappointing.
Review: As many of the reviews on here have noted (especially the great poem by 'A reader' on here, which was fantastic!), this book is NOT GEB. And that would be OK if Hofstadter made LTBDM at least vital in some way. As it stands, it mainly rehashes the intellect and sheer ingenuity of GEB and the moving appreciation of creativity found in Metamagical Themas, yet is subpar on both counts in comparison. The book deals with translation, and of course Hofstadter's side quests into all other sorts of tangential areas in relation. But the entire book lulls in pace, but more importantly, is just _dull_. Hofstadter, to his immense credit, has a seemingly endlessly fertile mind, yet this tome shows little of it. It isn't even GEB-lite; it lacks a solid direction and was seemingly made "just to make it." That said, I gave it 3 stars mainly because of the touching moments and memories Hofstadter shares of his late wife. I feel that the book, despite its immense dullness, should be read if only for his words about her. They are especially touching and brought me to tears at parts. The one thing that struck me about this book, and Hofstadter in general, is that I think he suffers from Biology-envy. What I mean is, he seems to be a bit frustrated with the fact that evolutionary psychology and similar sciences have shed more light on consciousness in the past 20 years than his work with AI (which is still of immense importance). I base this on some passages in this book that questioned Neuroscience's ability to find the underpinnings of consciousness. But I digress. Hofstadter's works are always exemplary, and if compared to any hack 'postmodern' work or 'new literary talent', Hofstadter destroys them. But in comparison to GEB and MT and even The Mind's I and Fluid Concepts, this falls flat, I hate to say.
Rating:
Summary: Profound, but disappointing.
Review: As many of the reviews on here have noted (especially the great poem by 'A reader' on here, which was fantastic!), this book is NOT GEB. And that would be OK if Hofstadter made LTBDM at least vital in some way. As it stands, it mainly rehashes the intellect and sheer ingenuity of GEB and the moving appreciation of creativity found in Metamagical Themas, yet is subpar on both counts in comparison. The book deals with translation, and of course Hofstadter's side quests into all other sorts of tangential areas in relation. But the entire book lulls in pace, but more importantly, is just _dull_. Hofstadter, to his immense credit, has a seemingly endlessly fertile mind, yet this tome shows little of it. It isn't even GEB-lite; it lacks a solid direction and was seemingly made "just to make it." That said, I gave it 3 stars mainly because of the touching moments and memories Hofstadter shares of his late wife. I feel that the book, despite its immense dullness, should be read if only for his words about her. They are especially touching and brought me to tears at parts. The one thing that struck me about this book, and Hofstadter in general, is that I think he suffers from Biology-envy. What I mean is, he seems to be a bit frustrated with the fact that evolutionary psychology and similar sciences have shed more light on consciousness in the past 20 years than his work with AI (which is still of immense importance). I base this on some passages in this book that questioned Neuroscience's ability to find the underpinnings of consciousness. But I digress. Hofstadter's works are always exemplary, and if compared to any hack 'postmodern' work or 'new literary talent', Hofstadter destroys them. But in comparison to GEB and MT and even The Mind's I and Fluid Concepts, this falls flat, I hate to say.
Rating:
Summary: Hofstadter Lite
Review: Autobiographical in scope and introspective in method, the usual pack of Hofstadterisms (Bognard problems; "slippability"; typefaces; creativity arising from constraint; the term "you guys") re-assembled in a low-density format. What should be relatively quick discussions are endlessly expanded into paragraph-after-paragraph dissertations that left me thinking "OK, I get it already." I found myself skimming paragraphs, and then pages, looking for the action. At times I felt like I was reading "The Making of Godel, Escher, Bach" as the author describes for us how he saved the various translation efforts of his magnum opus from the clutches of incompetent translators. His impatience with those of lesser genius contrasts with the nice-guy persona he's trying hard to project. The book is mostly about translation, using a simple poem, which was translated in several different ways by the author and his friends and colleagues to illustrate many important and interesting points. After awhile, though, I started to get tired of reading about what is wrong with everyone else's translations, and how no one gets it in quite the same way that Dr. Hofstadter does. In addition, the author's own poems are among the least interesting of the collection, and he repeatedly "corrects" translations of other contributors (even his mom!), producing results that are usually awful. If you've read his previous work, you're not going to find a lot new here, and you might be disappointed at how flat this seems.
Rating:
Summary: In Disparagement of the Monotony of Language
Review: Hofstadter addresses the significance of language as a mechanism to convey more substance than the individual words might. The essence of his work is that context and culture drive communication as much - or more - than does the written word absent the original context. The author is a writer, programmer, scientist, philosopher, linguist, mathematician, musician and a seeker of truth and beauty who has put his mind to the task of quantifying the art of translation. This is another fine exploration of a field well outside the mainstream press by Hofstadter. Well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: an idiosyncratic book, sometimes clever, but flawed
Review: Hofstadter is a very clever guy, with an ear for wordplay and some interesting things to say about the concept of translation. But he could use an editor and he has a number of blind spots as a thinker and as a literary judge. Much of what is most intriguing about the book is its strong individuality. H. knows what he wants to say, he knows how he wants to say it, he has intensely precise ideas of how the book should look. For example, it matters painfully to him that the pages come out just so, with just the right number of lines so that every word comes out on the right place on its page. He takes this to extremes -- when he can't get permission to quote from Catcher in the Rye, he is forced to improvise a passage of EXACTLY the same length in order to keep everything perfect. Incidentally, it's sort of surprising, given his feelings about the importance of all these details of presentation, that he can't understand Nabokov's insistence that translators, by paraphrasing and padding lines, inevitably alter dramatically the effects of the originals. H. would find his own book unacceptably altered if a linebreak was wrong, but he refuses to accept that someone might find something essential lacking when Pushkin's stanzas are rendered into English approximations. I'll confess to being somewhat biased in favor of Nabokov -- and I can't help but wonder if Hofstadter has ever read Pale Fire.
[in several places, H. plays upon the titles of Nabokov's works, but not in a way that gives any sense that he has read anything other than his essays on translation and his literal translation of Eugene Onegin] Anyway, back to *this* book -- it's a very personal book in content, too, the details of Hofstadter's life intertwine with the poem, all the translations, and the commentaries. At times, it's quite moving -- the illess of H.'s wife and his sense of loss come through almost everywhere, even when he seems to be discussing something completely unrelated; even the most playful parts of the book seem to have a slighly sad twinge. On the other hand, many of his reminiscences of his college days, or clever things someone came up with at a dinner party in Italy [something like that, I don't remember all the details any more] don't work for me. And I really don't like the way H. so often dismisses those he disagrees with in pretty, well, dismissive terms. If H. doesn't understand a psychologist, it's because he's speaking psychobabble or pseudo-intellectual fakery (maybe he is, of course; but I need more than H.'s word to believe it); if a modern poet tries to translate Dante without rhyme, or with only 37 stanzas in a canto instead of 45, H. is stunned and contemptuous. (Incidentally, it often seems to me that some of the mechanical details of a poem matter more to H. than the language and imagery it contains.) And, of course, he hits poor, dead Nabokov so hard you might think that he wasn't actually one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century as well as someone deeply aware of the issues of literary creativity in multiple languages and the problems of literary translation. To H., it's not enough that N. be wrong, he must be "jealous", full of "bitter bluster", and, finally,
"pathetic". I don't mean all this to be as negative as it sounds -- there *is* a lot to like in this book, and I'm very glad I read it. The series of translations of the Marot poem are charming and varied, though only a few of them sustain anything like the tone of the original (as I dimly sense it) throughout.
Rating: 
Summary: Translation has the full complexity of language
Review: I read the half of it the half it deserves (to borrow a Tolkien's expression), but I have no doubt about its uncommon qualities. The synthesis of cognitive science items, literature studies and personal experiences , together with an incredibly polished and refined language, into which English, French, Italian and others converge, makes this book a unique accomplished experiment. But I think it requires an unusual attention, and, unfortunately, I cannot afford to spend a very long time about translation difficulties, so distant from my daily activities. And even if Marot is neither Bach nor Escher (let alone Godel), and his poetry has none of their art, the strict entanglement between form and meaning Hofstadter successfully gives evidence to, raises interest also to the otherwise insignificant poem used as book's leitmotiv. Maybe, being Italian my mother tongue, my appreciation of the chapters about Dante' Comedy's translation could lead me to overestimation. The subject lacks of an appeal as wide as Godel, Escher, Bach, but the balance between a so personal style (the haunting memories diffused into the book) and a high level abstraction (the search for meaning), makes me feel the harmony of "the music of language".
Rating:
Summary: Un tome beau de Hofstadter!
Review: I strongly suspect that those who didn't read this work (I will not presume to call it a mere "book") missed the point entirely. The stories about his wife, Searle, Nabokov, et.al., were not meandering digressions; they were *examples* of how the many themes of translation, poetry, analogy, self-reference, etcetera, were woven into their lives. I received this book for my graduation from high school (begged for it, in fact), devoured it in two days, and have re-read it constantly since. When I lent it to a lover of mine who was from Toronto, and with whom I later broke up, the first thing on my mind when we arranged to meet some months later was, "Can I have my book back?" I re-read it immediately. Poetry translation is now one of my most enjoyable hobbies, and I would have to say that this book gave me the impetus in that direction. I would frankly have to class Le Ton beau de Marot as the book of Hofstadter's which I have most thoroughly enjoyed - more than GEB, more even than Metamagical Themas. Please read it.
Rating: 
Summary: An evocative look into Hofstadter's mind
Review: In this self-proclaimed "untranslatable" work, Hofstadter truly finds the perfect mix between "author-biography" and genuine linguistic adventures into translation, habitual usages, and verbal puns. The constant tounge-in-cheeck humor of GEB is back, and as before it ties in with the books thesis of meaning's origin. Marot's "Ma Mignonne" is cute, but it plays a far lesser role in the book than the title might suggest. Its translation provides a subtle counterpoint to the book's themes, but no more. Unfortunately, the book does not delve as deeply or as broadly into its subject matter as does GEB, and on some level the analysis is somewhat superficial. Yet Hofstadter's wit, charm and wordplay make up for this small shortcoming. Some might object to its autobiographical tone, yet I feel that Hofstadter's musings of times with his late wife, Carol, tend to give the book a more personal and therefore more profound subject matter. On the whole, a much more privately "Hofstadter" book than GEB, yet a book just as imaginative and fresh as its predicessor.
Rating:
Summary: Hofstadter does it again
Review: Let me state where I am coming from at the outset. Ever since acquiring Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" back in about 1980, I have been an unashamed fan of this man's writing. I return to "Godel, Escher, Bach" every few years and read it again in its entirety, and always find more to enjoy. When I became aware of "Le Ton Beau de Marot", I could hardly wait to get a copy, and the reading of it has not disappointed. Once again, Hofstadter has woven for us an incredibly rich tapestry of meanings, sub-meanings, sub-sub-meanings and more. Almost every sentence of this book is overlaid with wordplay, multiple meanings, and just plain fun with language. But although it starts from the thesis of the nature of translation, it ends up giving us rich insights into the very nature of consciousness, creativity, beauty, joy and pain: in short, what it is to be human. Sure, there were some places where he deals with some amazingly minute and recondite aspects of his subject where I found myself thinking "Douglas, who cares?!", but within the context of the whole work they are as nothing. I agree with nearly everything written by reviewer Karin Robinson, most especially that there are so many levels to this book. Even leaving aside all its masterful insights on language and translation (a huge liberty!), it is if nothing else a hymn of praise to his obviously much-loved wife Carol, whose shadow and influence on his life pervade every chapter. For me this is a hugely rewarding read, and I look forward to many re-readings in the future. Thank you , Douglas R. Hofstadter!
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