Search results for ""author timothy bewes""

Everywhere today, we are urged to “connect.” Literary critics celebrate a new “honesty” in contemporary fiction or call for a return to “realism.” Yet such rhetoric is strikingly reminiscent of earlier theorizations. Two of the most famous injunctions of twentieth-century writing—E. M. Forster’s “Only connect . . .” and Fredric Jameson’s “Always historicize!”—helped establish connection as the purpose of the novel and its reconstruction as the task of criticism. But what if connection was not the novel’s modus operandi but the defining aesthetic ideology of our era—and its most monetizable commodity? What kind of thought is left for the novel when all ideas are acceptable as long as they can be fitted to a consumer profile?This book develops a new theory of the novel for the twenty-first century. In the works of writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk, James Kelman, W. G. Sebald, and Zadie Smith, Timothy Bewes identifies a mode of thought that he calls “free indirect,” in which the novel’s refusal of prevailing ideologies can be found. It is not situated in a character or a narrator and does not take a subjective or perceptual form. Far from heralding the arrival of a new literary genre, this development represents the rediscovery of a quality that has been largely ignored by theorists: thought at the limits of form. Free Indirect contends that this self-awakening of contemporary fiction represents the most promising solution to the problem of thought today.

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This issue of Novel proposes a new type of novelistic hero: the “anagonist.” Unlike the protagonist, the anagonist does not act; or if she does, her action is inconsequential to the work. The concept itself, however, is problematic, for the figure of the anagonist is averse to typology, such that its decisive identification in any particular work is almost impossible. More than a contribution to narrative categories therefore, the appearance of the anagonist as a critical term is a reconceptualization and rethinking of the nature and role of action in the novel form.

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Everywhere today, we are urged to “connect.” Literary critics celebrate a new “honesty” in contemporary fiction or call for a return to “realism.” Yet such rhetoric is strikingly reminiscent of earlier theorizations. Two of the most famous injunctions of twentieth-century writing—E. M. Forster’s “Only connect . . .” and Fredric Jameson’s “Always historicize!”—helped establish connection as the purpose of the novel and its reconstruction as the task of criticism. But what if connection was not the novel’s modus operandi but the defining aesthetic ideology of our era—and its most monetizable commodity? What kind of thought is left for the novel when all ideas are acceptable as long as they can be fitted to a consumer profile?This book develops a new theory of the novel for the twenty-first century. In the works of writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk, James Kelman, W. G. Sebald, and Zadie Smith, Timothy Bewes identifies a mode of thought that he calls “free indirect,” in which the novel’s refusal of prevailing ideologies can be found. It is not situated in a character or a narrator and does not take a subjective or perceptual form. Far from heralding the arrival of a new literary genre, this development represents the rediscovery of a quality that has been largely ignored by theorists: thought at the limits of form. Free Indirect contends that this self-awakening of contemporary fiction represents the most promising solution to the problem of thought today.

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Since culture is the mediator between the individual and society, it is not surprising that it is a crucial part of politics. This is recognized by New Labour. Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a speech soon after the 1997 Labour election victory, stated that "Culture is what gives us a sense of identity both as individuals and as a nation". He argued that culture lies at the very heart of the mission of the new government. This book presents a series of differing inflections of the relationship between politics and culture. The editors argue that it is crucial to analyze the culture of New Labour; but also that any politics in the age of "the triumph of capitalism" needs to be informed by cultural theory.

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