The raven and the writing desk

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Jonathan P. Davis

Few can argue with the unprecedented success author Stephen King has established in the two decades following the publication of his first novel, Carrie. He has built a reputation as the world's premier storyteller, and his name has become commonplace within the home. American publishers, producers, and fans have all capitalized on his unquestionable ability to entertain. But it is this same success that has often overshadowed the elements of his fiction that contribute to the canvas of literature established in the twentieth century by authors such as William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Flannery O'Connor. All have lasting reputations as masters of the American literary tradition. Stephen King's America aims to heighten awareness of the numerous American issues that resonate throughout King's fiction, issues that bear universal application to the evolution of the human condition. Within his stories can be found a diverse study of all that makes life in America, land of the free, unique: the struggle for moral health; leaving the splendor of childhood at the corruption of innocence; an advanced technology that often exceeds its understood potentials; the rewards and sacrifices within a free-market society; the delicate balance between autonomy and collective social harmony; and the simple solution to survival in an adverse world. Take a closer look at these subtexts and discover a new dimension in the reading of Stephen King's fiction. By focusing on these issues, and by presenting four rich interviews with men close to the work of Stephen King, Stephen King's America lifts the veil that is the surface of his stories, shining a pleasantly distinct light on the sources that are both his subliminal and apparent strengths as a modern author.

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Laura Rattray

"During her lifetime, Edith Wharton was one of America's most popular and prolific writers, publishing over forty books and winning the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. But after her death her work slipped out of favour, and it is only in the last thirty years that her reputation as a literary heavyweight and a great writer has recovered." "Bringing together twelve leading Wharton scholars from Europe and North America, this volume offers the first ever collection of essays on Wharton's 1913 text, The Custom of the Country. Described as 'her greatest book' by Hermione Lee in her 2007 biography of the writer, and listed by Wharton herself at the end of a long and prolific career as one of her own favorite works, The Custom of the Country arguably remains the author's most complex and controversial novel. The contributions to this collection demonstrate the continuing evolution of Wharton scholarship within modern critical approaches." --Book Jacket.

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Christopher Fox and Brenda Tooley

Walking Naboth's Vineyard brings together nine prominent scholars to present new and valuable perspectives on the work of Jonathan Swift. In recent years Swift has been increasingly reconsidered and recast as a distinctly Irish writer, and there is little doubt that his artistic career was shaped by Ireland's troubled political life. Literary critics and scholars, as well as scholars of Irish literature, will find this collection unique in that it explores Swift's life and writing in a distinctively Irish context and considers how Swift was influenced as a member of a population that was divided against itself, colonized by a neighboring kingdom, and politically and culturally marginalized. These essays demonstrate how, despite Swift's ambivalence about his Irish nationality, he found Ireland's worldly position a close parallel to his own complex position in the political and cultural worlds in which he lived.

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Edith Futscher

Die Filme Marguerite Duras? sind eigentümlich verstörend ? karg in der Bildsprache, mitunter beharrlich in der Artikulationsweise. Ihre ästhetischen Antworten auf soziale und politische Fragen des 20. Jahrhunderts sind heillos. ?Was restlos übrigbleibt? ist eine umfassende Werkmonografie, die dieser Verzahnung Rechnung trägt. In Kontakt mit Fragmenten von Maurice Blanchot wird in deskriptiven Analysen das dichte Geflecht an Filmen und literarischen Texten vorgestellt. Es wird hinsichtlich der Möglichkeiten diskutiert, mit Stille, Leere, Langsamkeit, mit dem Einsatz von Barrieren, Klüften oder Entfärbung von Dingen zu sprechen, die sich nicht zeigen oder zeigen lassen, die wir dennoch sehen können. Mit weitgehend neutralen Bildern, Bildern, die weder hervorstechen noch zuordenbar sein wollen, gelang es Duras, sowohl Übersehenes in den Blick zu rücken als auch extreme Erfahrung zu thematisieren.