Children of Silence

ISBN: 0231050488

Author: Wood, Michael

Condition: New

Review[Wood] is one of our most distinguished and lucid writers on contemporary literature. -- Janet Malcolm[A] remarkable study of contermporary fiction. - South Carolina ReviewProduct DescriptionAn engaging series of reflections on the literary landscape of our time-from the writings of Roland Barthes to those of Stephen King-Wood explores such issues as the shift of interest from novel to story, the blurring of the line between fiction and criticism, the persistence of the notion of paradise, the lure of horror, and the tendency of fiction both to reflect and to resist contemporary history. Wood casts his net wide: a brilliant dissection of Beckett's prose comedy is followed by an absorbing sequence of essays on Kundera, Calvino and García Márquez. Chapters on Toni Morrison and on Angela Carter lead us to chapters on Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson.From Library Journal"Books" writes Marcel Proust, are "children of silence," written and read alone. Nevertheless, according to Wood (English, Princeton, and film and literary criticism writer for London Review of Books and New York Times Book Review), modern narrative fiction has a tendency to move toward a more public discourse, storytelling. Taking the writings of French critic Roland Barthes as his starting point, Wood examines 14 modern writers chronologically from Samuel Beckett to Jeanette Winterson, including chapters on Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Italo Calvino, and Latin American authors Julio Cortazar, Guillermo Infante, and Reinaldo Arenas. Wood's essays are sophisticated and insightful yet accessible, embracing an enthusiasm for the play of idea. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.?Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Univ., Savannah, GACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorMichael Wood writes film and literary criticism for the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and other publications. He is Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English at Princeton University, a frequent teacher at the Middlebury Breadloaf School of English, and the author of many books, including America in the Movies (Columbia 1989).