The s The gathering storm. That's what Winston Churchill titled the first volume of his history of World War II, describing the period when the Nazis were gaining strength and the other European powers failed to see or deal with the impending threat. The western powers insisted on Germany paying reparations in gold or foreign currency, and turning over more than a quarter of the value of the exports from its industries, which were Germany's key strength and had mostly remained intact at the end of the war. During World War I, tight government controls on the press meant that German citizens had little idea that they would lose the war until it was suddenly over.
This article has been published online by Springer academic publishers at https: Modernism, the revolution in the arts that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century, had delivered all it had to deliver, and was in fact sometimes leaving empty boxes on the curb.
The age of iconoclastic landmarks like Ulysses, Metamorphosis, The Magic Mountain, To the Lighthouse, was long past and some of them, such as Ulysses, were looking a little shopworn.
The promise of a revolutionary breakthrough in consciousness, of aesthetic transformation and transcendence of life, man, society, was long past, and far from being fulfilled.
The image of the writer and artist as a sacred figure, the prophet or shaman who led to the depths of experience beyond the ordinary, was growing faint. With such as Gaddis, Pynchon, Doctorow, DeLillo, Beattie, Coover, Carver, Hawkes, Barth, reading had become something of a chore—dry, sullen minimalist works with very little payoff, or maybe big books trying very hard but giving no particular reason to plough through them.
I can read it, a friend said to me of one page number, but why? Truth to tell, though, some of these books did become cult classics, especially with younger men. Poetry too, had long gone from the expansive, soul shattering visions of the likes of T. Eliot, Robert Frost, and William Butler Yeats, who took on important themes and managed to make their own peculiar angle of vision large enough for others to enter.
Later poets turned increasingly inward to explorations of the self and subjective experience. We went from hearing vigor in language and haunting lines to increasingly hermetic utterances that escaped any kind of recall.
A reading by John Ashbery that I attended almost finished poetry for me. In the other arts too, we were long past the exciting forays of the early modern period--Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Brancusi. As for music, the Stravinskys and Coplands were no more, and one was always wary of having some frightful contemporary piece sprung on one, usually before the intermission at a concert, with the possibility of escape foreclosed.
Then our ever-dissenting white-suited Southern gentleman came up with his new-old idea in Bonfire—back to the future with unvarnished realism in fiction.
Instead of shattering limits and erasing boundaries, Wolfe recommended acknowledging the boundaries and presenting what lies within them with minute faithfulness, turning back to the literary techniques of nineteenth century writers such as Dickens and Zola, with their broad social canvas, numerous characters from varied levels of society, and multiple plots and subplots.
Driving into the city from the airport, Sherman could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight. Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets!
There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening--and he was among the victors!
Not for long, however. As he glides with his married mistress into Manhattan in his Mercedes, the also-married Sherman misses the exit ramp and winds up in the South Bronx. In the ensuing confusion, his mistress takes the wheel and accidentally hits a black teenager. For Wolfe, we were way past the principled, high minded, colorblind idealism of the civil rights movement.
Blacks were not just victims of a racist society, but capable of a full range of human action, including mayhem and race-baiting. And some, like the poor black teenager, actually are victims, of other blacks as well as of whites.
Actually, it was Roth who gave Wolfe his cue toward realism in fiction, albeit inadvertently. Reality is too great for the novelist today, Roth had declared as far back as Thanks to Roth, as Wolfe saw it, a generation of young talented writers averted their eyes from the outward scene and turned inward, toward preoccupation with words and form and showing off in the act of writing itself.
Yes, the news was outpacing the imagination of the novelist. Bonfire was so raw and truthful it was electrifying.Academic Writing is a unique introduction to the subject.
As the author puts it in her preface, “this book develops from a strong claim: namely, that style is meaningful.” In developing that theme, the author draws meaningfully on theory, especially genre theory, while remaining grounded in the particular.
Giltrow presents and discusses examples of actual. Academic Writing has been widely acclaimed in all its editions as a superb textbook-and an important contribution to the pedagogy of introducing students to the conventions of academic writing.
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CONFERENCES ON LANGUAGE AND LAW Janet Giltrow (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) and Dieter Stein (University of Düsseldorf) a variety of areas of law (civil, criminal, administrative, European/international), in academic, professional and institutional contexts.
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