Showing papers in "Critique-studies in Contemporary Fiction in 1998"
TL;DR: McCarthy's Blood Meridian as discussed by the authors is the story of a judge who seduces a nomadic horde of scalp hunters into a "terrible covenant", which consigns both their spiritual and physical lives to the judge's jurisdiction.
Abstract: At the center of Cormac McCarthy's epic fifth novel, Blood Meridian (1985), we find Judge Holden,1 a Mephistophelean figure who seduces a nomadic horde of scalp hunters into a “terrible covenant” (126), which consigns both their spiritual and physical lives to the judge's jurisdiction. With his “disciples of a new faith” (130), the judge wanders the Mexican-American borderlands like an anti-Moses, a lawgiver who has made no covenant with a higher power, save, of course, war. Amidst the arbitrary violence and mindless wanderings of the Glanton Gang, we find only the judge's voice, for he provides the coherence, the order, the meaning that defines the scalp hunter's pilgrimage west.
41 citations
TL;DR: Pat Barker's trilogy about World War I as mentioned in this paper interweaves fact and fiction, deriving fictive scenarios from “factual” circumstances, and the Ghost Road (1995) is a classic example of such a novel.
Abstract: Pat Barker's trilogy about World War I—Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993). and The Ghost Road (1995)—intricately interweaves fact and fiction, deriving fictive scenarios from “factual” circumstances.
15 citations
TL;DR: Pierro et al. as discussed by the authors showed that the good detective knows how to read his criminal, how to decipher his "intellect" and how to identify with it (The Purloined Letter, p. 118).
Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe's legendary detective, Dupin, insisted that the good detective know how to read his criminal, how to decipher his “intellect” and “identify” with it (“The Purloined Letter” 118).
15 citations
TL;DR: In this century, and particularly since Joyce's Ulysses, numerous novels and poems have attempted to retell earlier stories, myths, and fairy tales as discussed by the authors, and many of them have achieved mythic significance.
Abstract: In this century, and particularly since Joyce's Ulysses, numerous novels and poems have attempted to retell earlier stories, myths, and fairy tales. Between 1920 and 1980, writers such as Yeats, Lawrence, Faulkner, Mann, Hermann Hesse, Max Frisch, Anthony Burgess, John Barth, Bernard Malamud, Jean Rhys, John Gardner, Donald Barthelme, Anne Sexton, John Updike, and Angela Carter have employed the “mythical method,” a term for literature that explicitly attempts to retell earlier stories that have achieved mythic significance.
14 citations
TL;DR: The metaphysics of the detective story has been recognized as a significant figure in post-modern fiction as discussed by the authors, and the importance of that figure to postmodernism has been discussed.
Abstract: Ever since Michael Holquist suggested that what the “presuppositions of myth and depth psychology were to Modernism … the detective story is to Post-Modernism” (133, critics have recognized the “metaphysical detective,” or “anti-detective,” as a significant figure in postmodern fiction. What is the metaphysical detective, and what is the importance of that figure to postmodernism?
13 citations
TL;DR: Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude uses and questions the validity of postmodem typologies and thus properly can be read in light of recent postmodernist theory as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude uses and questions the validity of post-modem typologies and thus properly can be read in light of recent postmodernist theory. At the same time, Invention challenges the idea that autobiography issues from a pre-existing self or a unique and autonomous self.
10 citations
TL;DR: Gordimer chose the epigraph from Antonio Gramsci for July's People as mentioned in this paper, which states: "The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms,”
Abstract: Nadine Gordimer chose well in selecting the epigraph, from Antonio Gramsci, for July's People: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms,”
9 citations
TL;DR: Leviathan as mentioned in this paper is a novel written by Peter Aaron, who decides to reconstruct, to the best of his ability, the tale of his friend and fellow writer Benjamin Sachs, who was born on the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and was himself blown to smithereens about forty-five years later.
Abstract: Leviathan is a novel begun by chance. The narrator, Peter Aaron, decides to reconstruct, to the best of his ability and beginning on July 4, 1990, the tale of his friend and fellow writer Benjamin Sachs, who was born on the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and was himself blown to smithereens about forty-five years later.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Carver's short stories tend to take one of two tracks: the first assigns Carver to the "minimalist" school of fiction that came of age in the United States in the 1970s.
Abstract: Criticism of Raymond Carver's short stories tends to take one of two tracks. The first assigns Carver to the “minimalist” school of fiction that came of age in the United States in the 1970s.
7 citations
TL;DR: Swift and Shuttlecock as mentioned in this paper argue that storytelling is a means of creating "gaps" in history, of escaping truth, of controlling, manipulating, or destroying certain information that may implicate one in the present.
Abstract: Graham Swift's Shuttlecock, like his better known Waterland, foregrounds the postmodern view of history as text. Yet the two novels approach that position from quite different angles. Waterland suggests, among other things, that storytelling gives meaning to the present by filling in the “gaps” of history. “What do you do when reality is an empty space?” Tom Crick asks his students, “like the Cricks who out of their watery toils could always dredge up a tale or two, you can tell stories” (46). Shuttlecock, on the other hand, suggests storytelling is a means of creating “gaps” in history, of escaping truth, of controlling, manipulating, or destroying certain information that may implicate one in the present.
5 citations
TL;DR: The Irish novelist John Banville believes that contemporary writers need to seek an art which knows that truth is arbitrary, that reality is multifarious, that language is not a clear lens as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The Irish novelist John Banville believes that contemporary writers need to seek “an art which knows that truth is arbitrary, that reality is multifarious, that language is not a clear lens” (“A Talk” 17).
TL;DR: For the very first European settlers in the New World, America has been represented as a promised land-a land not only of openness and opportunity but of milk and honey, a new Eden where man might rediscover the paradise he once lost or else claim the biblical land he had once been promised as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Since the time of the very first European settlers in the New World, America has been represented as a promised land-a land not only of openness and opportunity but of milk and honey, a new Eden where man might rediscover the paradise he once lost or else claim the biblical land he had once been promised.
TL;DR: Purdy as mentioned in this paper discusses racial stereotypes, sexual fantasy, political correctness, religious fundamentalism, gay relationships, and contemporary American culture, and discusses the reasons for his neglect and discusses race stereotypes.
Abstract: James Purdy, who was born in 1923 near Pauldine, Ohio, has written several collections of poetry, twenty plays, and sixteen novels, including Malcolm, Narrow Rooms, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, In a Shallow Grave, Garments the Living Wear, and most recently, Out with the Stars. Despite moments of critical acclaim and popularity, Purdy's work generally has met with hostility, ambivalence, and indifference from the literary establishment. His novels also have provoked a mixed response from lesbian and gay communities in the United States. In this interview, Purdy talks about the reasons for his neglect and discusses racial stereotypes, sexual fantasy, political correctness, religious fundamentalism, gay relationships, and contemporary American culture.
TL;DR: In past centuries, the fin de sibcle has coincided with remarkable literary moments in both Europe and America as discussed by the authors, including the rise of romanticism and decadence, symbolism, and modernism.
Abstract: In past centuries, the fin de sibcle has coincided with remarkable literary moments in both Europe and America. The sixteenth century ended in the eloquence of Elizabethan drama; the seventeenth, with the first echoes of the rhetoric of reason; the eighteenth, with the French Revolution and the rise of romanticism; and the nineteenth, with decadence, symbolism, and modernism.
TL;DR: In The Gift of Death (originally published in 1992 as Donner la mort), Derrida links the gift to secrecy: a gift that could be recognized as such in the light of day, a gift destined for recognition, would immediately annul itself as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In The Gift of Death (originally published in 1992 as Donner la mort), Derrida links the gift to secrecy: “a gift that could be recognized as such in the light of day, a gift destined for recognition, would immediately annul itself. … Secrecy is the last word of the gift which is the last word of the secret.”
TL;DR: In Fahrenheir 451, Ray Bradbury creates an unthinking society so compulsively hedonistic that it must be atom-bombed flat before it ever can be rebuilt as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In Fahrenheir 451 Ray Bradbury creates an unthinking society so compulsively hedonistic that it must be atom-bombed flat before it ever can be rebuilt. Bradbury's clearest suggestion to the survivors of America's third atomic war “started … since 1990” (73) is “to build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors … and take a long look in them” (164).
TL;DR: McMurtry's American West Lonesome Dove as mentioned in this paper pits a ragtag, horse-rustling, Montana-bound outfit of former Texas Rangers against evil incarnate in a renegade Comanche named Blue Duck.
Abstract: Larry McMurtry's epic novel of the American West Lonesome Dove pits a ragtag, horse-rustling, Montana-bound outfit of former Texas Rangers against evil incarnate in a renegade Comanche named Blue Duck. The characters act out a life-or-death struggle against the backdrop of a relentlessly harsh, indifferent landscape.
TL;DR: More Die of Heartbreak as mentioned in this paper opens with the observation of its narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg that his maternal uncle Benn Crader is obsessed with a cartoon by Charles Addams, author of Monster Rally.
Abstract: Saul Bellow's novel More Die of Heartbreak opens with the observation of its narrator Kenneth Trachtenberg that his maternal uncle Benn Crader is obsessed with a cartoon by Charles Addams, author of Monster Rally.
TL;DR: The narrator of the novel Oranges as mentioned in this paper discovers that her mother had been rewriting the ending of the story when reading it out loud to her (72-73) when she was a child.
Abstract: The narrator of Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit cites two of the most painful events of her childhood as follows: first, the moment in which she discovered, by reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre for herself, that her mother had been rewriting the ending of Bronte's story when reading it out loud to her (72-73). In the mother's version, Jane Eyre marries St. John Rivers and the couple become missionaries. The narrator of Oranges views her mother's revision as an act of betrayal and refuses to read Jane Eyre ever again.
TL;DR: The specter of nihilism raised by the critique of objectivity is especially troubling to moral philosophy as discussed by the authors, and the argument certifies that any quest for an incorrigible foundation of values is a category mistake.
Abstract: The specter of nihilism raised by the critique of objectivity is especially troubling to moral philosophy. Inscribed in the glossolalia of contemporary theory, the argument certifies that any quest for an incorrigible foundation of values is a category mistake. All such foundational “objects” are but verbal constructions, which upon careful consideration reveal the following sequence: the absence of a presumed presence, hence of representation, hence of stable meaning.
TL;DR: On our last evening together, drinking whisky and then more whisky, and then yet more, I have never forgotten how we came (whose idea was it, his or mine? I no longer remember) to open up his Thesaurus at random, selecting quite arbitrarily a single, humble word, and chuckling as our fingers promiscuously roamed back and forth across the pages, up and down, between and below, touching every inch and scrap, every glorious, throbbing vowel and consonant and crackling, pulsating fiery connotation, until at last, drenched
Abstract: On our last evening together, drinking whisky, and then more whisky, and then yet more, I have never forgotten how we came (whose idea was it—his or mine? I no longer remember) to open up his Thesaurus at random, selecting quite arbitrarily a single, humble word, and chuckling as our fingers promiscuously roamed back and forth across the pages, up and down, between and below, touching every inch and scrap, every glorious, throbbing vowel and consonant and crackling, pulsating fiery connotation, until at last, drenched in sweat, half-drunk, utterly fatigued by our endeavours, we tumbled into a wordless, innocent and dreamless sleep. Ah, what it is to bathe in language, to cavort there, unashamed, ecstatic, up to the very ceiling of one's mind in beauty and resonance, drifting and gliding amid the harmonic choruses, the plangent chords, hearing the sweet hum of pluralism, soaring across the dazzling ranges of multiplicity, then falling, falling, dizzy, satiated, drained and drowsy, soothed by exces...
TL;DR: The surrealism of Leonora Carrington's fiction is informed by the fantastic creatures and enchanted landscapes of her more celebrated visual art as mentioned in this paper, but her writing, which is at once whimsical and macabre, also takes its place in an eclectic tradition of literary transgression.
Abstract: The surrealism of Leonora Carrington's fiction is informed by the fantastic creatures and enchanted landscapes of her more celebrated visual art. but her writing, which is at once whimsical and macabre, also takes its place in an eclectic tradition of literary transgression.
TL;DR: In the case of as discussed by the authors, Parker threatened to take legal action on the grounds of obscenity against the publication in French of Henry Miller's Tropics of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring.
Abstract: In 1946, Daniel Parker—the self-proclaimed “President du Cartel d'Actions Sociales et Morales”—threatened to take legal action on the grounds of obscenity against the publication in French of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring1 The subsequent “Affaire Miller” brought Henry Miller's authorship to the forefront of a literary debate on obscenity and censorship and resulted in the formation of a “Defense Committee for Miller and Free Expression” Among its members were such literary figures as Andre Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Robert Queaneau, and a number of other well-known writers
TL;DR: In the past, when critics have spoken about Singer and the grotesque, they have turned to Wolfgang Kayser's The Grotesque in Art and Literature and used his definition as the lens through which to view Singer's fiction.
Abstract: In the past, when critics have spoken about Singer and the grotesque, they have turned to Wolfgang Kayser's The Grotesque in Art and Literature and used his definition as the lens through which to view Singer's fiction.
TL;DR: In this paper, the Beet Queen develops a new hobby: palmistry, and her friend Celestine dismisses palm reading as meaningless, but Mary, ever concerned that people agree with her, argues forcefully: “Well then answer me this … a child is born with certain lines in its hand. Those lines and no others. How do you explain it?
Abstract: In Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen, Mary Adare, having taken over Celestine James's household, develops a new hobby: palmistry. Understandably skeptical, her friend Celestine dismisses palm-reading as meaningless, but Mary, ever concerned that people agree with her, argues forcefully: “Well then answer me this … a child is born with certain lines in its hand. Those lines and no others. How do you explain it?”
TL;DR: For the most part readers and critics have journeyed with him through his various experiments and fresh literary excursions; however, often there also has been a note of discord, especially from critics who feel his imagination is too amply stocked and too willingly displayed as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Over the span of his long and prodigious career, Paul West has produced a body of fiction that is as varied as it is demanding. He has never been content to rest comfortably in any current fashion nor to adjust his works to fit the tastes of some imagined audience. All of that is to say that West is something of a literary iconoclast, a writer who consistently follows his own lights and goes his own way. For the most part readers and critics willingly have journeyed with him through his various experiments and fresh literary excursions; however, often there also has been a note of discord, especially from critics who feel his imagination is too amply stocked and too willingly displayed.