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A literary "Shock of the New" from critic and novelist Bradbury
(Cuts, 1987; Unsent Letters, p. 799; etc.) - here illuminating the modern
movement in literature through ten great writers. Originally the companion text
to a 1988 British TV series, this is a general but thoughtful collage. Bradbury
starts with the 1860's and 70's, with the great, tormented Underground Man,
Dostoyevsky. Describing the crime in Crime and Punishment, Bradbury shows the
Russian writer single-handedly inventing a novel form in which the dark warrior
of the unconscious emerged. Dostoyevsky became the radiating central character
of modern literature, powerfully influencing every writer who tried to write a
novel of consciousness. After digressing to describe Ibsen, Bradbury goes on to
line up Dostoyevsky's novelistic children and grandchildren, starting with the
brooding meditations of Mann and Conrad (with the latter's gift for showing the
horror beneath the sentimental lie of civilation). Much attention is lavished
on Proust and his great cathedral of a novel, Remembrance of Things Past.
Brilliant social history anchored to a deep "autobiography of
sensation," Proust's astonishing novel, Bradbury argues, tested the very
limits of memory and conscious creation. Bradbury quotes Proust: "Genius
consists in the reflective power of a writer and not in the intrinsic quality
of the scene reflected"; through the works of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot,
Pirandello, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka, Bradbury shows how, after Proust,
writer and scene became one. Bradbury attempts to follow Pound's famous
exhortation to "Make it new." Undaunted by the extensive scholarship
on all of these writers, he produces a solid introduction to the literature
that has shaped modern imagination.
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright
1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Publishers Weekly
"Make it new" was Ezra Pound's advice to aspiring writers. In this
spin-off from a British TV series, novelist-critic Bradbury shows how James
Joyce's experimentalism, Kafka's allegories of the spirit, Pirandello's
unmasking of personal illusions, Virginia Woolf's lyrical novels and Proust's
autobiography of human sensation all provoked shock and surprise with
innovative approaches to contemporary experience. Bradbury ( The History Man ,
Rates of Exchange ) intriguingly views Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain as a
historical novel: the record of our tormented age. The other modernists
considered here are Conrad, Eliot and two precursorsDostoyevski and Ibsen.
Despite its occasional hyperbole and its assumption of the reader's general
unfamiliarity with the writers discussed, this skillful meld of biography,
history and literary criticism is a coherent, even exciting reappraisal of the
modernist movement. Facing the cultural bankruptcy of the secular state and the
fragmented language of our time, modernists sought ways to go beyond inner
anguish and dislocation. Bradbury charts 10 representative modernist
trajectories with empathetic insight and flair.
Copyright 1988
Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This book treats Dostoevsky, Ibsen, Conrad, Mann, Joyce, Proust, Eliot,
Pirandello, Woolf, and Kafka, discussing "their achievement, their
interconnections, their influence, and their perception of the modern
world." A brief essay on each author deals with biography and oeuvre,
focusing on one major work. In the process, Bradbury highlights various
qualities or themes of modernism such as exile, the city, naturalism,
symbolism, tragicomedy, fragmentation, etc. There is little exploration of
these concepts, however, and much use of the word great. A companion to a
British television series, this book is a readable if very basic introduction
for the general reader to European modernism in the novel, drama, and poetry.
Published
by Richard Kuczkowski, Dominican Coll., Blauvelt, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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