Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Books

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the MSA Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association""A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""Kalliney’s book is an intriguing read for those interested in understanding the Cold War and situating the relationship between the state and anticolonial writers."---Christina Obolenskaya, LSE Review of Books"A wonderful addition to the reevaluation of mid-century literary products."---A. S. Newson-Horst, Choice"A groundbreaking work. . . . [The Aesthetic Cold War] points to a prehistory of postcolonial literature that is almost never discussed in the field."---Nivedita Majumdar, Catalyst

Read more less

Book SynopsisConfirms the centrality of Catholic thought, imagery, and sacrament to the spiritual and ethical outlook of the work of Cormac McCarthy and, more specifically, its consistent assessment of Enlightenment values and their often-catastrophic realization in American history.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first in-depth study of the forty short texts James Joyce called ""epiphanies"". Composed between 1901 and 1904, at the beginning of Joyce's writing career, these texts are often dismissed as juvenilia. Sangam MacDuff instead argues that the epiphanies are an important point of origin for Joyce's entire body of work.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExamines how Southern literary depictions of the natural world were influenced by the historical, social, and ecological changes of the 1930s and 1940s. This title studies the ways that nature is conceived of and portrayed by four Southern writers of the era: Erskine Caldwell, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, and William Faulkner.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAlthough a handful of books and articles have been written about American literary minimalism, the mode remains misunderstood. Robert C. Clarkâs American Literary Minimalism demonstrates that the genre reflects the philosophy that âœform is thoughtâ, and that style alone dictates whether a poem, story, or novel falls within the parameters of the tradition.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this collection of interviews spanning 1953 to 1991, Saul Bellow speaks with his interviewers of the changing role of fiction, the literary establishment, and the place of literature in modern life. Since no definitive biography of Bellow has yet been written, these interviews provide valuable insights into this pre-eminent American novelist.

Read more less

Book SynopsisOptical Impersonality will appeal to scholars and advanced students of modernist literature and visual culture and to those interested in the intersections of art, literature, science, and technology.Trade ReviewWalter's book certainly and productively opens up a rethinking of optical subjectivity, and offers engaging ways of critiquing the relationship between textual and imagistic form. British Society for Literature and Science Christina Walter makes clear that hers is an account of impersonality whose critical stakes turn on their difference from previous scholarship on the topic. Isis Walter displays her "individual talent," which lies in showing not just how writers like Eliot manipulate impersonality toward their own ends, but also how critics' misinterpretations of these maneuvers have led to an impoverished model of impersonal existence. Journal of Modern LiteratureTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Eye Don't See: Embodied Vision, Ontology, and Modernist ImpersonalityThe Visual Vernacular, Imagetextuality, and Modernism'sOptical UnconsciousThe Modern Image and Impersonality's Critique of Identity1. A Protomodern Picture Impersonality: Walter Pater and Michael Field's VisionVision, Anders-streben, and Performance in The RenaissancePater contra Mérimée: Toward an Imperfect ImpersonalityThe Visual Field(s): Framing the Politics of Paterian Impersonality2. Images of Incoherence: The Visual Body of H.D. ImpersonalisteMixing an Imagist Pigment: Modern Art, Science, and Materiality in Sea Garden"Sign-posting" Impersonality in Notes on Thought and VisionClose Up and Impersonal: Subjectivity through the Camera Lens and the Talking CureBorderline's Aesthetic of Identity Dis-order3. Getting Impersonal: Body Politics and Mina Loy's "Anti-Thesis of Self-Expression"Feminism and Faces: Staving Off the Threat of Impersonal NegationOptical Experiments and a Poetics "Beyond the Personal""Insel in the Air": Weighing the Politics of Impersonality4. D. H. Lawrence's Impersonal Imperative: Vision, Bodies, and theRecovery of Identity"Chaos Lit Up by Visions": Poetic Attention and Its Material LimitsFrom Impersonality to "Creative Identity": A Critical Sleight of HandVisual Evolution and Identitarian Futurity in Lady Chatterley's Lover5. Managing the "Feeling into Which We Cannot Peer": T. S. Eliot'sImpersonal Matters"New and Wonderful Visions": The Science of Eliot's ImpersonalityThe Waste and Repair Land: Impersonality, but with GenderRedeeming the Still "Unread Vision": The Family Reunion's Dramatic BodiesAfterword: Modernist Futurity: The "Creative Contagion" of Impersonality and AffectA Shared Visual Vernacular: Affect Theory's ImpersonalityOpen Ended: Affecting Impersonality, Impersonalizing AffectNotesBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat might behaviorism, that debunked school of psychology, tell us about literature?If inanimate objects such as novels or poems have no mental properties of their own, then why do we talk about them as if they do? Why do we perceive the minds of characters, narrators, and speakers as if they were comparable to our own? In Behaviorism, Consciousness, and the Literary Mind, Joshua Gang offers a radical new approach to these questions, which are among the most challenging philosophical problems faced by literary study today. Recent cognitive criticism has tried to answer these questions by looking for similarities and analogies between literary form and the processes of the brain. In contrast, Gang turns to one of the twentieth century's most infamous psychological doctrines: behaviorism. Beginning in 1913, a range of psychologists and philosophersincluding John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Gilbert Ryleargued that many of the things we talk about as mental phenomena aren't at all intTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Literary Experience and the Concept of Mind1. Behaviorism and the Beginnings of Close Reading2. Inner Sights3. Mental Acts4. The Form of ThoughtCoda. Observations and/or ReflectionsNotesWorks CitedIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisModernist literature at the end of the British empire challenges conventional notions of homeland, heritage, and community. Finalist of the MSA First Book Prize by The Modernist Studies AssociationThe waning British empire left behind an abundance of material relics and an inventory of feelings not easily relinquished. In The Obsolete Empire, Philip Tsang brings together an unusual constellation of writersHenry James, James Joyce, Doris Lessing, and V. S. Naipaulto trace an aesthetics of frustrated attachment that emerged in the wake of imperial decline. Caught between an expansive Britishness and an exclusive Englishness, these writers explored what it meant to belong to an empire that did not belong to them. Thanks to their voracious reading of English fiction and poetry in their formative years, all of these writers experienced a richly textured world with which they deeply identified but from which they felt excluded. The literary England they imagined, frozen in time and out oTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. The Peripheral Sense of an EndingChapter One. Henry James and the Perversity of EmpireChapter Two. James Joyce and the Negative CommunityChapter Three. Doris Lessing and Late RealismChapter Four. V. S. Naipaul and the Rhetoric of EnchantmentEpilogue. Time of the OtherNotesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisWith this profound final work, completed in the days leading up to his death, Michel Serres presents a vivid picture of his thinking about religion—a constant preoccupation since childhood—thereby completing Le Grand Récit, the comprehensive explanation of the world and of humanity to which he devoted the last twenty years of his life. Themes from Serres's earlier writings—energy and information, the role of the media in modern society, the anthropological function of sacrifice, the role of scientific knowledge, the problem of evil—are reinterpreted here in the light of the Old Testament accounts of Isaac and Jonah and a variety of Gospel episodes, including the Three Wise Men of the Epiphany, the Transfiguration, Peter's denying Christ, the Crucifixion, Emmaus, and the Pentecost. Monotheistic religion, Serres argues, resembles mathematical abstraction in its dazzling power to bring together the real and the virtual, the natural and the transcendent; but only in its Christian embodiment is it capable of binding together human beings in such a way that partisan attachments are dissolved and a new era of history, free for once of the lethal repetition of collective violence, can be entered into.Trade Review"A stunning book by one of the most profound and original philosophers of science of the twentieth century, written in the final moments that separate life from death. Michel Serres realized that the whole of his thought over the course of an astonishingly prolific career would be incomplete if it did not take into account the indispensable role played by religion in every aspect of human life, and he tells us why in his own inimitable way."—Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, École Polytechnique, Paris

Read more less

Book SynopsisDemonstrates, contrary to conventional wisdom, that European modernism developed not only in the great metropolitan centers, but also in provincial cities such as Jena. The conventional wisdom is that the cultural sea change that was European modernism arose in urban centers like Berlin, Paris, Munich, and Vienna. Meike G. Werner's book, now in English translation, is a study of modernism in the provinces. Taking the small provincial city of Jena as a paradigmatic case, it re-creates the very different social and intellectual framework in which modernist experimentation occurred beyond the metropolitan centers. Invented traditions, social and spatial "liminality," and new ideas of social and aesthetic transformation combined in Jena to create a unique moment of cultural innovation. In the years leading up to the First World War, the Jena publisher Eugen Diederichs envisioned and guided the development of this alternative modernism. Taken up by young writers including Diederichs's wife Helene Voigt-Diederichs, numerous intellectual outsiders from across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and members of the Free Student movement and of Jena's Sera Circle, this "other" modernism was above all a youth movement, full of energy and bold optimism. Figures such as Rudolf Carnap, Wilhelm Flitner, Hans Freyer, Karl Korsch, and Elisabeth Busse-Wilson emerged from this Jena paradigm. Werner pieces together the story of Jena's modernism in its full richness, complexity, and inner contradictions.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Abbreviations Prologue 1: The Stage, or: Genius loci 2: The Publisher as Founder of a Cultural Empire: Eugen Diederichs in Jena 3: "Away from Berlin" and Literature in Jena: Helene Voigt-Diederichs 4: Dancing on the Volcano: "Young Jena" Epilogue: What They Wanted, What They Became Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Tao of S is an engaging study of American racialization of Chinese and Asians, Asian American writing, and contemporary Chinese cultural production, stretching from the nineteenth century to the present. Sheng-mei Ma examines the work of nineteenth-century "Sinophobic" American writers, such as Bret Harte, Jack London, and Frank Norris, and twentieth-century "Sinophiliac" authors, such as John Steinbeck and Philip K. Dick, as well as the movies Crazy Rich Asians and Disney's Mulan and a host of contemporary Chinese authors, to illuminate how cultural stereotypes have swung from fearmongering to an overcompensating exultation of everything Asian. Within this framework Ma employs the Taoist principle of yin and yang to illuminate how roles of the once-dominant American hegemony—the yang—and the once-declining Asian civilization—the yin—are now, in the twenty-first century, turned upside down as China rises to write its side of the story, particularly through the soft power of television and media streamed worldwide.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow ideas and ideals of an imagined, protean, national Middle Ages have once again become a convergence point for anxieties about politics, history and cultural identity in our time - and why. After a period of abeyance, the link forged in the nineteenth century between the Middle Ages and national identity is increasingly being reclaimed, with numerous groups and individuals mining an imagined medieval past to present ideas and ideals of modern nationhood. Today's national medievalism asserts itself at the interface of culture and politics: in literature and television programming, in journalism and heritage tourism, and in the way political actors of various stripes use a deep past that supposedly proves the nation's steady exceptionalism in a hectic globalised world. This book traces these ongoing developments in Switzerland and Britain, two countries where the medieval past has recently been much invoked in negotiations of national identity, independence and Euroscepticism. Through comparative analysis, it explores examples of reemerging stories of national exceptionalism - stories that, ironically, echo those of other nations. The author analyses depictions of Robert the Bruce and Wilhelm Tell; medievalism in the discourse surrounding Brexit as well as at the Welsh Senedd; novels like Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake; community-based art such as the Great Tapestry of Scotland; and elaborate public commemorations of Swiss victories (and defeats) in battle. Basing his critical readings in current theories of cultural memory, heritage and nationalism, the author explores how the protean national Middle Ages have once again become a convergence point for anxieties about politics, history and cultural identity in our time - and why.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Author's Note List of Abbreviations Introduction 1 Constructing Continuity: Four Nations Imagine Their Beginnings PART I THE POLITICS OF AUTOCHTHONY 2 For Freedom Alone: The Scottish Independence Referendum 3 2016 and All That: Brexit 4 Freiheit statt Vögte: The Swiss National-Conservatives PART II THE OTHERS OF NATIONAL MEDIEVALISM 5 Masculine Middle Ages: Gender 6 In Strange Lands: Race, Ethnicity, Immigration Conclusion: The Demands of the Past Afterword: National Medievalism in the Age of COVID-19 Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA celebrity in his own day, who gave lectures dressed as Napoleon or seated on the back of an elephant, Ramón Gómez de la Serna is the most representative writer of the interwar Spanish avant-garde. This book explores Gómez de la Serna's art and his quest to break down the barriers between literature and life, addressing two elements - already present in his work - of radical relevance in today's cultural debates: the relation of humans to the material world and the reduction of all experience to a singular individuality. Bringing Gómez de la Serna to an Anglophone audience, it reveals him to be the embodiment of a new kind of art on both sides of the Atlantic.Table of ContentsIntroduction - Ricardo Fernández Romero 1. Ramón, the Artist and His Brand - Ricardo Fernández Romero 2. Ramón as Art-Collector and Visual Artist: Slum of Oddities - Eduardo Alaminos López 3. Ramón and Photography. 'The Dead Thing' - Humberto Huergo Cardoso 4. Ramón and Theater: Staging Reform in El drama del palacio deshabitado (1909)" - Nicolás Fernández-Medina 5. Ramón and the New Materialism: The Ecstasy of Objects - Juli Highfill 6. Ramón and Cervantes - Alan Hoyle Gómez de la Serna's Life, a Chronology A Guide to Gómez de la Serna´s Literary Works

Read more less

Book SynopsisA reading of the oeuvre of Toni Morrison—fiction, non-fiction, and other—drawing extensively from her many interviews as well as her primary texts, Toni Morrison: A Literary Life, second edition provides an overview of Morrison’s intellectual growth as an artist. Linda Wagner-Martin aligns Morrison's novels with the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, assessing her works as among the most innovative, and most significant, worldwide, of the past fifty plus years. The revised edition includes new discussion of God Help the Child, The Origin of Others, and The Source of Self-Regard. These additions present and intensify scholarship on Morrison’s major literary contributions, but also trace her significant role as a public intellectual, bringing to light the consistency of Morrison’s aesthetic and political visions. Table of ContentsIntroduction: Morrison’s Early YearsSong of Solomon: One Beginning of Morrison’s CareerTar Baby and Other Folktales.- Beloved, Beloved, BelovedJazz and Morrison’s Trilogy: New York in the 1920sMorrison as Public IntellectualThe Nobel Prize in Literature and Morrison’s TrilogyMorrison and the Twenty-first Century: Love.- Morrison and Various MerciesMorrison and the Definitions of HomeGod Help the Child.- The Origin of Others and The Source of Self-RegardCoda

Read more less

Book SynopsisRichmal Crompton, Author of Just William: A Literary Life celebrates the first two William books, Just William (1922) and More William (1922). As well as a study of her famous character William Brown, this book is an introduction to Richmal Crompton’s less well-known fiction and a story about her writing life. Her multifaceted identity—her deep knowledge of Classical Greek and Latin literature and languages, her life as a disabled writer, and her writing about domestic violence and disability—played a role in her literary persona. Jane McVeigh moves beyond Richmal Crompton’s impact on children’s literature and offers an appraisal of all her writing including her novels and short fiction, her media profile on radio and TV, her impact on her readers—both adults and children—and her international success. Particularly, McVeigh considers Crompton in the context of twentieth century woman writers and the development of crossover fiction for dual audiences. The book argues that as a woman writer pigeon-holed as a writer for children, Crompton’s other novels and short stories have been side-lined and overlooked. More than a century after the first book collection of Crompton’s William stories was published, this biography places Richmal Crompton among other twentieth century women writers.Trade Review“Jane McVeigh has written an informative and comprehensive biography to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the publication of the first two William novels, Just William and More William in 1922, now collector's items worth thousands of dollars. … McVeigh effectively documents the life of one of the best-selling female authors of the 20th century, who, in William Brown, created one of the immortals of children's literature.” (Colin Steele, The Canberra Times, canberratimes.com.au, December 23, 2022)“The books alone were enormously popular, the adaptation of just William for radio, television and film have helped ensure this naughty schoolboy will forever be remembered in post-war British culture. By 1946 the BBC radio plays – many of them written by Crompton herself – were enjoying an audience of nine million.” (Dominic Bliss, Daily Express, express.co.uk, December 16, 2022)“Jane McVeigh’s book celebrates the centenary of the first two William books – Just William and More William, both published in 1922. … The work is attractively produced with many illustrations, and its twenty chapters are extremely well researched with substantial notes and references. What it does, first of all, is to emphasise Richmal’s very rich and full life.” (Dennis Butts, Children’s Books History Society, Newsletter, Issue 133, August, 2022)“This is a model biography for the way it delivers the facts about the life of its subject and analyses the attraction or magic of the stories for subsequent writers, as well as readers across generations. The best praise of this biography is that it will send many readers back to encounter the thrills of reading once more of William’s misadventures.” (Sarah Curtis, TLS The Times Literary Supplement, July 22, 2022)Table of Contents1. Introduction PART I (1890-191122. Edward Lamburn and a Classical Education3. William and Mr Brown 4. Clara Crompton and her Family in Bury5. William, Mrs Brown and Mothers in Crompton’s Fiction PART II (1911-1923)6. Royal Holloway College, the First World War and Women’s Suffrage7. Birth of Auntie and the Story of a Marriage8. Birth of Richmal Crompton and William Brown 9. More than Auntie Richmal, the Spinster10. Polio in Summer 1923 PART III (1924-1938)11. Birth of Violet Elizabeth and Introducing William-Lite Characters 12. Growing Up13. On Stage and in Literary London14. Richmal Crompton, the Wanderer PART IV (1939-1945)15. On the Home Front with William and Richmal16. William, Flawed Hero PART V (1946-1969)17. William Becomes a Postwar Hero on TV and Radio18. Richmal Crompton in Her Own Words PART VI (Fans at Home and Abroad)19. William, At Home and Abroad20. Writers’ Homage to Crompton and William

Read more less

Book SynopsisA book length collaboration between two underground legends, Charles Bukowski and Robert Crumb. Bukowski's last journals candidly and humorously reveal the events in the writer's life as death draws inexorably nearer, thereby illuminating our own lives and natures, and to give new meaning to what was once only familiar. Crumb has illustrated the text with 12 full-page drawings and a portrait of Bukowski.

Read more less

Book SynopsisExplores a new development in contemporary poetry: the repurposing of other people's words in order to make new works, by framing, citing, and recycling already existing phrases, sentences, and even full texts. This book concludes with a discussion of Kenneth Goldsmith's conceptualist book "Traffic".

Read more less

Book SynopsisAidan explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity, and the desert in literature ranging from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo; from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.

Read more less

Book SynopsisKahlil Gibran’s bestselling poetic masterpiece, The Prophet, originally published in 1923, continues to inspire millions worldwide with its timeless words of love and mystical longing. Yet Gibran’s genius went much further than this, to produce over twenty literary works, in both English and Arabic, as well as over 500 works of art, all characterized by an otherworldly beauty. Going beyond the many myths that surround Gibran, this incisive biography charts his colourful life, his dramatic love affairs, and his artistic achievements, to present a fascinating and unique portrait of this remarkable man.Trade Review"If you enjoy Gibran’s style, you will relish that of Bushrui and Jenkins." * The Daily Telegraph *"Breaks new ground" * The New York Times *Table of ContentsBeginnings (1883-1895); the new world (1895-1898); returning to the roots (1898-1902); overcoming tragedy (1902-1908); the city of light (1908-1910); the poet-painter in search (1910-1914); the madman (1914-1920); a literary movement is born (1920); a strange little book (1921-1923); the master poet (1923-1928); the return of the wanderer (1929-1931).

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"This essay collection assesses the stakes and real-world relevance of Nabokov’s writing, from his lectures and short stories to his major novels. It’s a great read if you’re a Nabokov fan, or if you’ve ever wondered, ‘Why did this guy write Lolita?'" * Literary Hub *"These clear and dazzlingly erudite essays offer a superb introduction to the writer’s life and work."---David Herman, Jewish Chronicle"Robert Alter’s new book Nabokov and the Real World presents a fascinating study of the works of Vladimir Nabokov. . . . Alter’s Nabokov and the Real World provides an engaging analysis of Nabokov’s robust body of work and artfully articulates how he weaves a tapestry of linguistic tools, literary devices, nuanced visual descriptions, and empirical classifications to create beautifully crafted stories that help us better to understand the complex spectrum of human existence."---Leonara Cravotta, American Spectator"Alter is one of America’s most distinguished persons of letters. His primary task in Nabokov and the Real World is to dismantle the widely-echoed theory of critics who accuse Nabokov of playing an elaborate literary game—a set of stylistic maneuvers, mannered, overwrought and arch. Alter counters that Nabokov. . .used language to awaken readers to the dense, many-layered, multi-connected reality of which we are part."---David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express"Nabokov and the Real World is a wonderful contribution and . . . [a] beautiful collection."---Erik Eklund, Nabokov Online Journal

Read more less

Book SynopsisSince the appearance of her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960—a book that undermined the nation’s ideal of innocent and pious Irish girlhood­—Edna O’Brien has provoked controversy in her native Ireland and abroad. Indeed, several of her early novels were condemned by church authorities and banned by the Irish government for their frank portrayals of sexual matters and the inner lives of women. Now an internationally acclaimed writer, O’Brien must be critically reassessed for a twenty-first century audience. Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction provides an urgent retrospective consideration of one of the English-speaking world’s best-selling and most prolific contemporary authors. Drawing on O’Brien’s fiction as well as archival material, and applying new theoretical approaches—including ecocritical and feminist new materialist readings—this study considers the pioneering and enduring ways O’Brien represents women’s experience, family relationships, the natural world, sex, creativity, and death, and her work’s long anticipation of contemporary movements such as #metoo.Trade Review"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *“O’Connor’s close readings, coupled with a deft use of theory, nimbly move between texts in O’Brien’s oeuvre, highlighting recurring images and preoccupations, resulting in a valuable critical account that firmly illustrates O’Brien’s mastery as a writer; and asserts her as a figure in Irish literary culture deserving of continued attention.” * Irish University Review *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Edna O’Brien, Leader of the Banned 1 Anti-Oedipal Desires 2 The Liberating Sadomasochism of Things 3 The Ungrammatical Sublime 4 Otherworldly Possessions 5 Myth and Mutation 6 Disorder, Dirt, and Death Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe ancient form of the animal fable, in which the characteristics of humans and animals are playfully and educationally intertwined, took on a wholly new meaning after Darwin''s theory of evolution changed forever the relationship between humans and animals. In this original study, Chris Danta provides an important and original account of how the fable was adopted and re-adapted by nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors to challenge traditional views of species hierarchy. The rise of the biological sciences in the second half of the nineteenth century provided literary writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Franz Kafka, Angela Carter and J. M. Coetzee with new material for the fable. By interrogating the form of the fable, and through it the idea of human exceptionalism, writers asked new questions about the place of the human in relation to its biological milieu.Trade Review'Chris Danta's engaging study of post-Darwinian fables represents the culmination of over a decade's research into the relationship between human and nonhuman animals. It synthesises and develops ideas put forward in some of his earlier published works, and overall his book comes across as cohesive, persuasive, and refreshingly original.' Janette Leaf, The British Society for Literature and Science'Chris Danta brilliantly demonstrates that attention to animal lives in the post-Darwinian fable has the potential to generate strong new readings, not only of a ubiquitous yet neglected genre in Anglo-American literary criticism, but also of an ensemble of texts that for too long have been read primarily as ciphers for purely human concerns.' Jennifer McDonell, Social AlternativesTable of ContentsPrologue: uplifting animals; 1. Looking up, looking down: orientations of the human; 2. The grotesque mouth; 3. 'The highest civilisation among ants': Stevenson and the fable; 4. 'An animal among the animals': Wells and the thought of the future; 5. Animal bachelors and animal brides: Kafka, Carter, Garnett; 6. Scapegoats and scapegraces: becoming sacrificial animal in Kafka and Coetzee; Coda: 'Diogenes of the zoo'.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA son’s poignant letter to his father—from the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial, and one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. • “One of the great confessions of literature.” —The New York Times Book Review Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka’s probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existential predicament depicted in so much of his work. Probably realizing the futility of her son’s gesture, Julie Kafka did not deliver the letter but instead returned it to its author.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNaked Lunch was banned, ridiculed, and castigated on publication in 1959. Tracing its origins from Texas to Tangier, from Mexico City to New York and Paris, crossing time zones and cultures, this book helps understands this most influential but elusive of texts.Trade ReviewI can think of no other work of literary criticism that brings together such a multiplicity of artists, practitioners, and critics in such a dynamic assembly of writing forms. The resulting symbiosis strikes me as a whole new critical form, utterly pertinent to Burroughs' milieu. - Michael Hrebeniak, author of Action Writing: Jack Kerouac's Wild Form

Read more less

Book SynopsisContains eighteen original essays by leading Joyce scholars on the eighteen separate chapters of "Ulysses". This book attempts to explore the richness of Joyce's extraordinary novel. It covers Joyce's habit of using, when writing each chapter in "Ulysses", a particular style, tone, point of view, and narrative structure.Trade Review"A landmark in interpretation. . . . Never have Joyce's polytropic techniques been explicated with such thoroughness, sensitivity, and sympathy. The result is an achievement of new perspectives. . . . These writers have achieved the seemingly impossible feat of reading Ulysses afresh. * James Joyce Quarterly *"Some of the best scholars in the field take a fresh look at Joyce's novel. . . . The collection offers much to evoke the interest of even the most jaded Joyce devotee. It should not be overlooked by any serious scholar of Ulysses." * Virginia Quarterly Review *"The essays are remarkably uniform in quality, and consistently reflect a determined effort to move beyond mere explication and develop general notions about the art and meaning of Ulysses through close examination of specific passages within individual chapters. A well planned, effectively executed 'appreciation' in the best sense of the term, this important volume should prove a very valuable addition to any collection serving serious readers of Joyce." * Library Journal *Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments Abbreviations and Conventions Telemachus by Bernard Benstock Nestor by E. L. Epstein Proteus by J. Mitchell Morse Calypso by Adaline Glasheen Lotus Eaters by Phillip F. Herring Hades by R. M. Adams Aeolus by M. J. C. Hodgart Lestrygonians by Melvin J. Friedman Scylla and Charybdis by Robert Kellogg Wandering Rocks by Clive Hart Sirens by Jackson I. Cope Cyclops by David Hayman Nausicaa by Fritz Senn The Oxen of the Sun by J. S. Atherton Circe by Hugh Kenner Eumaeus by Gerald L. Bruns Ithaca by A. Walton Litz Penelope by Fr. Robert Boyle, S. J.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThomas Paine was the impassioned democratic voice of the Age of Revolution, and this volume brings together his best-known works: Common Sense, The American Crisis, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason, along with a selection of letters, articles and pamphlets that emphasizes Paine''s American years. “I know not whether any man in the world,” wrote John Adams in 1805, “has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Tom Paine.” The impassioned democratic voice of the Age of Revolution, Paine wrote for his mass audience with vigor, clarity, and “common sense.” This Library of America volume is the first major new edition of his work in 50 years, and the most comprehensive single-volume collection of his writings available. Paine came to America in 1774 at age 37 after a life of obscurity and failure in England. Within fourteen months he published Common Sense, the most influential pamphlet for the American Revolution, and began a career that would see him prosecuted in England, imprisoned and nearly executed in France, and hailed and reviled in the American nation he helped create. In Common Sense, Paine set forth an inspiring vision of an independent America as an asylum for freedom and an example of popular self-government in a world oppressed by despotism and hereditary privilege. The American Crisis, begun during “the times that try men’s souls” in 1776, is a masterpiece of popular pamphleteering in which Paine vividly reports current developments, taunts and ridicules British adversaries, and enjoins his readers to remember the immense stakes of their struggle. Among the many other items included in the volume are the combative “Forester” letters, written in a reply to a Tory critic of Common Sense, and several pieces concerning the French Revolution, including an incisive argument against executing Louis XVI. Rights of Man (1791–1792), written in response to Edmund Burke’s attacks on the French Revolution, is a bold vision of an egalitarian society founded on natural rights and unbound by tradition. Paine’s detailed proposal for government assistance to the poor inspired generations of subsequent radicals and reformers. The Age of Reason (1794–1795), Paine’s most controversial work, is an unrestrained assault on the authority of the Bible and a fervent defense of the benevolent God of deism. Included in this volume are a detailed chronology of Paine’s life, informative notes, an essay on the complex printing history of Paine’s work, and an index.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

Read more less

Book SynopsisKey dimensions of Dostoevskii's writing and life are explored in this collection of specially commissioned essays. While remaining accessible to an undergraduate and non-specialist readership, the essays as a whole seek to renegotiate the terms in which Dostoevskii and his works are to be approached. This is achieved by replacing the conventional 'life and works' format by one that seeks instead to foreground key aspects of the cultural context in which those works were produced. Contributors trace the often complex relationship between those aspects and the processes accompanying the creation of Dostoevskii's art. They examine topics such as Dostoevskii's relation to folk literature, money, religion, the family and science. The essays are well supported by supplementary material including a chronology of the period and detailed guides to further reading. Altogether the volume provides an invaluable resource for scholars and students.Trade Review'This collection fully equals the earlier publications in this widely respected series.' Contemporary Review'Indispensable for all those teaching or studying Dostoevskii.' Rusistika'Professor Leatherbarrow deserves congratulation as well as the thanks of students and scholars for producing such a useful and stimulating volume. It will doubtless join his other works on many a reading list.' Arnold McMillin, Slavonic & East European ReviewTable of ContentsNotes on contributors; Chronology; Editor's note; Introduction W. J. Leatherbarrow; 1. Dostoevskii and the Russian folk heritage Faith Wigzell; 2. Dostoevskii and literature W. J. Leatherbarrow; 3. Dostoevskii as a professional writer William Mills Todd; 4. Dostoevskii and money Boris Christa; 5. Dostoevskii as an Intelligent Derek Offord; 6. Dostoevskii and psychology Robert L. Belknap; 7. Dostoevskii and religion Malcolm V. Jones; 8. Dostoevskii and the family Susanne Fusso; 9. Dostoevskii and science Dianne Oenning Thompson; 10. Conclusion Gary Saul Morson.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book provides a stimulating account of the dominant cultural forms of 1950s America: fiction and poetry; theatre and performance; film and television; music and radio; and the visual arts. Through detailed commentary and focused case studies of influential texts and events - from Invisible Man to West Side Story, from Disneyland to the Seattle World''s Fair, from Rear Window to The Americans - the book examines the way in which modernism and the cold war offer two frames of reference for understanding the trajectory of postwar culture. The two core aims of this volume are to chart the changing complexion of American culture in the years following World War II and to provide readers with a critical investigation of ''the 1950s''. The book provides an intellectual context for approaching 1950s American culture and considers the historical impact of the decade on recent social and cultural developments.Trade ReviewThe 1950s has been transformed in the scholarly literature from a "tranquillized" decade to an almost "tumultuous" one, and therefore is badly in need of a restorative balance. This is the achievement of Martin Halliwell's superb account of a postwar period that, for all of its familiarity, remains tantalizingly elusive. By showing the persistence of the varieties of cultural modernism, he advances the retrospective understanding of a decade that was not merely the lengthened shadow of the Cold War. His book is thoughtful, expansive and engaging. -- Stephen J. Whitfield, Professor of American Studies, Brandeis University, Massachusetts The author has a good command of the variety of cultural forms in the period and has planned the shape and contents of the book thoughtfully. -- Professor Lucy Maddox, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. The 1950s has been transformed in the scholarly literature from a "tranquillized" decade to an almost "tumultuous" one, and therefore is badly in need of a restorative balance. This is the achievement of Martin Halliwell's superb account of a postwar period that, for all of its familiarity, remains tantalizingly elusive. By showing the persistence of the varieties of cultural modernism, he advances the retrospective understanding of a decade that was not merely the lengthened shadow of the Cold War. His book is thoughtful, expansive and engaging. The author has a good command of the variety of cultural forms in the period and has planned the shape and contents of the book thoughtfully.Table of ContentsAmerican Culture in the 1950s; Martin Halliwell; Contents;; Illustrations; Case Studies; Acknowledgements; Chronology of 1950s American Culture; Introduction: The Intellectual Context; 1. Fiction and Poetry; 2. Drama and Performance; 3. Music and Radio; 4. Film and Television; 5. The Visual Arts beyond Modernism; Conclusion: Rethinking the 1950s; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSmart, funny, often irreverent observations on 150 years of science fiction writing, from a literary master. This book brings together, from a quarter century of writing, great essays by the celebrated writer Thomas Disch from such diverse places as ""The Nation"", ""New York Times Book Review"", ""Atlantic Monthly"", ""Fantasy"", and ""Twilight Zone"".

Read more less

Book SynopsisWidely acclaimed as one of America's most distinguished female playwrights, Lillian Hellman made an entrance into a largely male-dominated field in 1934 with The Children's Hour, a drama that rocked the literary establishment with its frank treatment of lesbianism while calling attention to her writing talents.Table of ContentsPreface Chronology Life and Career The Plays: Summaries, Productions, and Critical Overviews Primary Bibliography Secondary Bibliography: Reviews Secondary Bibliography: Books, Articles, Sections Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMen and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooksthe ancestors of Google and blogging. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, African American janitors to farmwomen, abolitionists to Confederates, people cut out and pasted down their reading. Writing with Scissors opens a new window into the feelings and thoughts of ordinary and extraordinary Americans. Like us, nineteenth-century readers spoke back to the media, and treasured what mattered to them. In this groundbreaking book, Ellen Gruber Garvey reveals a previously unexplored layer of American popular culture, where the proliferating cheap press touched the lives of activists and mourning parents, and all who yearned for a place in history. Scrapbook makers documented their feelings about momentous public events such as living through the Civil War, mediated through the newspapers. African Americans and women''s rights activists collected, concentrated, and critiqued accounts from a press that they did not control to create unwritten histories in books they wrote with scissors. Whether scrapbook makers pasted their clippings into blank books, sermon collections, or the pre-gummed scrapbook that Mark Twain invented, they claimed ownership of their reading. They created their own democratic archives. Writing with Scissors argues that people have long had a strong personal relationship to media. Like newspaper editors who enthusiastically scissorized and reprinted attractive items from other newspapers, scrapbook makers passed their reading along to family and community. This book explains how their scrapbooks underlie our present-day ways of thinking about information, news, and what we do with it.Trade ReviewEminently readable and endlessly fascinating. * Libby Bischof, University of Southern Maine *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Chapter 1: Reuse, Recycle, Recirculate: Scrapbooks Remake Value ; Chapter 2: Mark Twain's Scrapbook Innovations ; Chapter 3: Civil War Scrapbooks: Newspaper and Nation ; Chapter 4 Alternative Histories in African American Scrapbooks ; Chapter 5: Strategic Scrapbooks: Activist Women's Clipping and Self-Creation ; Chapter 6: Scrapbook as Archive, Scrapbooks in Archives ; Chapter 7: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth-Century Scrapbook ; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisA sparkling collection of journalism from the critically acclaimed author of BAD BLOOD and MOMENTS OF TRUTH.Trade ReviewPraise for GOOD AS HER WORD: 'A tremendous and bracing read that almost brings Sage back to life … Dazzling, erudite pieces.' Observer 'A brilliant collection … When reading her reviews, you get a wonderful feeling of collusion, of attending the best kind of party which mixes great warmth with sophistication.' Time Out 'Smart …. At her epigrammatic best' Daily Telegraph Praise for MOMENTS OF TRUTH ‘Packed with razor-sharp observations and exhilerating humour.’ Sunday Times ‘Thank goodness for Lorna Sage’s brilliant ‘Moments of Truth’. Going into a book with her is like going into a gloomy church, say, in some some foreign city: her eyes adjust to the light so fast she can see the frescoes, and describe them to you in vivd detail, while you are still blinking like a mole.’ Financial Times This is writerly criticism – down to earth, incisive, peppered with memorable phrases – and it makes exhilarating reading.’ Irish Times ‘An apt memorial to a brilliant and stimulating mind.’ Literary Review

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrantz Fanon may be most known for his more obviously political writings, but in the first instance, he was a clinician, a black Caribbean psychiatrist who had the improbable task of treating disturbed and traumatized North African patients during the wars of decolonization. Investigating and foregrounding the clinical system that Fanon devised in an attempt to intervene against negrophobia and anti-blackness, this book rereads his clinical and political work together, arguing that the two are mutually imbricated. For the first time, Fanon's therapeutic innovations are considered along with his more overtly political and cultural writings to ask how the crises of war affected his practice, informed his politics, and shaped his subsequent ideas. As David Marriott suggests, this combination of the clinical and political involves a psychopolitics that is, by definition, complex, difficult, and perpetually challenging. He details this psychopolitics from two points of view, focusing first on Fanon's sociotherapy, its diagnostic methods and concepts, and second, on Fanon's cultural theory more generally. In our present climate of fear and terror over black presence and the violence to which it gives rise, Whither Fanon? reminds us of Fanon's scandalous actuality and of the continued urgency of his message.Trade Review"This book is a clarifying event amid recent readings of Fanon and a radical intervention in the conventional ones. Writing with an intensity and momentum unparalleled by other scholars in the field, David Marriott is Frantz Fanon's first reader." -- Frank B. Wilderson III * University of California, Irvine *"Whither Fanon? is one of the most original and significant works of theory of this generation. Drawing deeply from Fanon's clinical psychoanalytic work, David Marriott shows in labyrinthine precision how Fanon's colonial racial interiority is both far more unfree than has been imagined and open to an ungrounded revolution without reserve. Perhaps alone among Fanon's readers, Marriott keeps up with Fanon's own complexity, radical negativity, and creative criticality." -- Rei Terada * University of California, Irvine *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis introduction considers recent responses to what has become known as "critical Fanonism." Is Fanonism reducible to a narrative of liberation in which national and human liberation remains both telos and eschatology? Or does his work offer a different way of thinking about the relationship between time and event, law and violence, sovereignty and subject? Taking its cue from Fanon's meditation on the revolutionary moment as a tabula rasa, this introduction considers two broad ways of dealing with critical Fanonism: as a dialectical phenomenology and as a politics of redemption and/or liberation. Along the way, it asks why "narrative" and "experience" continue to be more or less the principal terms for engaging with Fanon's thought and attempts to show how Fanon escapes the teleological and phenomenological hold of both terms in a way that suggests differing theoretical possibilities. 1Psychodramas chapter abstractThis chapter presents an overview of the development and genealogy of Fanon's socialthérapie, showing how this innovation in clinical method followed from a radically new approach to the colony as both group idea and praxis. Drawing on Fanon's clinical papers, it pursues the following questions: how does politics inform Fanon's therapeutics? And what of psychoanalysis in the colony? What is the relation between Fanonian socialthérapie and François Tosquelles's thérapeutiques institutionnelles? And why did Fanon describe group therapy as a "transvaluation"? In the course of the discussion, Fanon's notions of madness and alienation are presented—including his view of the clinic itself as a form of psychodrama and psychic life as a form of occupation. 2The Clinic as Praxis chapter abstractThis chapter compares Fanon's critiques of colonial neuropsychiatry and, in particular, its diagnostic use of racial heredity to the institutional innovations of his own therapeutic practices, including his use of psychoanalytic therapies. The chapter charts the complex evolution of that usage from 1952 to 1958, a period in which the notion of therapy changes from that of a mirror of disalienation to that of a more unnameable n'est pas in which resolution is no longer seen as a move towards egoic reintegration. It becomes clear that identification is conceived no longer in specular terms as an imaginary misrecognition but more in terms of something foreclosed, lost, or missing; in other words, the experience of colonial racism is compared to that of an unconscious content that is irreversible, nontransferable, and inexplicable and yet is coextensive with the feeling of an uncanny wretchedness. 3Negrophobogenesis chapter abstractThis brief chapter outlines the main diagnostic terms of Fanon's socialthérapie—epidermalization, petrification, and sociogeny. The question of how racism comes to be embodied, or how the body comes to acquire a racial signifiance, for example, is shown to be a key element of Fanon's conception of le vécu noir, or black lived experience. What that conception shows is the dilemma of becoming black when becoming is established via a certain historicity of hatred that fails to go beyond the level of affect, which remains tied to the various episodes of its racialization. 4Historicity and Guilt chapter abstractThe chapter begins with a reconsideration of the relation between institutional therapy and the entire problem of the semblable, then moving on to discuss Fanon's struggle, in his clinical writings, to understand the resistance to treatment by the colonisé. The starting point for this discussion is Mannoni's Psychologie de la colonisation and Fanon's critique of its oedipalization of cultural conflict. It is here, in this critique, that Fanon begins his alternative investigations of guilt, truth, historicity, and reason—defined and elaborated via Jaspers's notion of Grenzsituationen, language and cultural translation in the colony, and the cultural conflict over signs, signification, and media. In the course of the discussion, Fanon's alternative ideology of the sign—which indicates a new psycho-political message—is elaborated. 5Racial Fetishism chapter abstractThis chapter presents Fanon's work on anxiety in relation to fetishism. The aim here is to show how negrophobia—as stereotype, fantasy, idea, and affect—functions as a source of traumatic energy in the psychic life of the colonized. The chapter begins with a detailed survey of one of the longest case histories in Black Skin, White Masks in order to elicit Fanon's explanation of racial anxiety, before moving on to consider the stereotype as a type of fetishistic thinking and practice in the libidinal and political economies of the colony (and postcolony). The stereotype-as-fetish is integral to Fanon's discussion of disguised or repressed representations and what he calls the overdetermination of blackness as phobic object. What is also clear is that representation itself does not allow us to accurately recognize the differences between Vorstellung and Darstellung in Fanon's analyses, nor the question of racial capitalism more generally. 6Desire and Law chapter abstractThough the initial hypothesis of this chapter—that Oedipus as colonus must be distinguished from its classical version—has met with little if any discussion, it is nonetheless fundamental for understanding the way in which the colonisé experiences both its desire and its inhibition as a form of guilty indebtedness. The chapter explores this guilt as arising from a flaw that is both de facto and de jure subject to a command that can neither be forsworn nor borne. The chapter also discusses Fanon's analyses of dispossession together with his clinical study of subjects who have succumbed to an absolute depersonalization during total war. Accordingly, the following questions are discussed: how is this flaw experienced as Erlebnis? How can blackness appear to itself other than as guilt and expiation? What is the role of this anti-Oedipus in colonial war, torture, and state violence? 7The Condemned chapter abstractThis chapter discusses Fanon's refusal, in contrast to the supporters of cultural nationalism, to advocate a black conception of the world, ethics, and politics, alongside his rejection of any teleological view of time, emancipation, or freedom. The chapter looks at Fanon's call for a blackness that is n'est pas and that cannot be put to work either dialectically, speculatively, progressively, or fugitively. Only the n'est pas is capable of expressing the temporal sensibility of Fanonism and its struggle to make known the pathologies of blackness and its reactionary culture of ressentiment. The chapter charts this struggle via afro-pessimism, which it uses to illustrate the central antinomies of what are, by definition, the blackest characteristics of Fanon's thought. 8Invention chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the various notions of invention in Fanon's work. Fanon invokes invention as a descent that is also a surpassing, a leap, that allows the colonisé to grasp the non-permanent nature of colonial historic truth. This is why, politically, Fanon's thinking of invention criticizes traditional notions of political organization, or sovereign will, and argues overtly for a revolutionary violence that is separated from the institutions of politics. In this chapter, Fanon's notion of invention is compared to that of Georges Sorel and C. L. R. James—two thinkers who make invention synonymous with class struggle and who thereby oppose spontaneity to certain forms of bureaucracy and the values of the bourgeois order as such. While James situates invention in a Marxist milieu, the chapter argues that the form in which Fanonian invention manifests itself cannot be plotted according to the preestablished forms of Marxist philosophy or dialectics. 9Existence chapter abstractThis chapter examines invention not as a figure of history, scientific method, anthropology, or politics but as a question of existence. It shows how invention cannot be limited to knowledge, narrative, or even the political command for a greater awareness of illusion or reality. These paths—which continue to dominate readings of Fanonism—are shown to be simplifications of what Fanon expresses as the sociogenic truths of colonialism. In a reading of sociogeny that engages with the psychoanalytic genealogy of the term, the chapter argues that modern readings of sociogeny need remedying in order to link sociogeny to trauma, repetition, and neurosis. 10The Abyssal chapter abstractThis chapter revisits Fanon's complex relationship to negritude and, in particular, to the poetry of Aimé Césaire. On the one hand, it establishes a clear link between Césaire's abyssal theory of negritude and Fanon's no less poetic attempt to rethink the relation between the universal and the particular at the point where either becomes the abyssal mediation of the other in the conjoined sphere of an enriching saturation. The abyssal, for its part, indicates a profoundly original approach to black writing and thought and designates a perpetual opening that is, by definition, oblique and singular. This opening is pursued via the interrelated figures of corpsing, social death, and orphic descent.

Read more less

Book SynopsisBorn into the English landed gentry, the heir to a substantial country estate, Christopher Isherwood ended up in California, an American citizen and the disciple of a Hindu swami. En route, he became a leading writer of the 1930's generation, an unmatched chronicler of pre-Hitler Berlin, an experimental dramatist, a war reporter, a travel writer, a pacifist, a Hollywood screenwriter, a monk, and a grand old man of the emerging gay liberation movement. In this biography, the first to be written since Isherwood's death, and the only one with access to all Isherwood's papers, Peter Parker traces the long journey of a man who never felt at home wherever he lived. Isherwood's travels were a means of escape: from his family, his class, his country, and the dead weight of the past. Parker reveals the truth about Isherwood's relationship with his war-hero father, his strong-willed mother, and his disturbed younger brother, Richard, who was also homosexual. He also draws upon a vast number of letters to describe Isherwood's complicated relationships with such lifelong friends as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edward Upward and John Lehmann. The result is a frank portrait of contradictions, a man searching for meaning in life, and one of the twentieth century's most significant writers.

Read more less

Book SynopsisLong recognized as a masterpiece of modern American poetry, William Carlos Williams' Paterson is one man's testament and vision, "a humanist manifesto enacted in five books, a grammar to help us live" (Denis Donoghue).

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne of the world's most original works of fiction from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. • No one ever wrote better about the power struggles of sex and love. —Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize-winning Author of The Golden Notebook Gertrude Morel is a refined woman who married beneath her and has come to loathe her brutal, working-class husband. She focuses her passion instead on her two sons, who return her love and despise their father. Trouble begins when Paul Morel, a budding artist, falls in love with a young woman who seems capable of rivaling his mother for possession of his soul. In the ensuing battle, he finds his path to adulthood tragically impeded by the enduring power of his mother’s grasp. SONS AND LOVERS confirmed Lawrence’s genius and inaugurated the controversy over his explicit writing about sexuality and human relationships that would follow him to the end of his career.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe more than 600 stories written by O. Henry provided an embarrassment of riches for the compilers of this volume.  The final selection of the thirty-eight stories in this collection offers for the reader's delight those tales honored almost unanimously by anthologists and those that represent, in variety and balance, the best work of America's favorite storyteller.  They are tales in his most mellow, humorous, and ironic moods.  They give the full range and flavor of the man born William Sydney Porter but known throughout the world as O. Henry, one of the great masters of the short story.

Read more less

Book SynopsisTwo-Timing Modernity integrates queer, feminist, and narratological approaches to show how key works by Japanese male authors in the early twentieth century encompassed both a straight future and a queer past by staging tensions between Japan's newly heteronormative culture and the recent memory of a male homosocial past now read as perverse.Trade ReviewOffering incisive textual analyses of homosociality in the texts of three canonical writers (Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, and Mishima Yukio) and one relatively unknown writer (Hamao Shiro), Vincent examines the male homosocial continuum in Japanese fiction, exploring the way male–male relationships in the novels under discussion have been relegated to a historical and narrative past where they persist in the ‘amber of memory.’ …Vincent’s study is unique in its careful articulation of the interface between the homosexual and the homosocial and the interaction both have with feminist theories and queer studies. What is perhaps even more significant, however, is the way Vincent reads the temporality of homosexual desire in both extratextual historical contexts and the intertextual narrative structure. In so doing, he shifts the focus of his argument from a general critique of culture to close textual readings. Here his literary analyses are astute, linguistically deft, and original. This is a path breaking work that will be an important resource for scholars of literature and sexuality. -- R. L. Copeland * Choice *Keith Vincent creatively illuminates the narrative structures, reading practices, and cultural assumptions through which key Japanese texts from the first half of the twentieth century articulate the close proximity of historical and developmental understandings of male–male desire to modern formulations of homosociality. Meticulously researched and rigorously argued, Two-Timing Modernity is a most welcome contribution to the field. -- James Reichert, Stanford UniversityIn this absorbing study, Keith Vincent brings insight into the split of homosociality and heteronormativity imposed on the nation-state and the individual in modern Japan, demonstrating that sexuality is not only subject matter for literary narratives but that it also defines and is defined by the rhetoric of narration. Engaging the reader in careful rethinking of how these texts have been read—and how they should be read now—Vincent’s book will resonate with a broad audience, making indelible marks in the fields of narrative studies, queer theory, and modern Japanese literature. -- Atsuko Sakaki, University of TorontoTwo-Timing Modernity sets a new standard for innovative engagement with queer theory in Japanese literary studies. At the same time, this work reminds us that established approaches in literary studies such as narratology and ‘good old’ close reading still serve as great tools for cutting-edge scholarship. -- Tomiko Yoda, Harvard University

Read more less