LEADER 03909nam 2200661Ia 450 001 9910812160203321 005 20240418003905.0 010 $a1-282-43760-7 010 $a9786612437601 010 $a0-300-14560-8 024 7 $a10.12987/9780300145601 035 $a(CKB)2520000000006622 035 $a(StDuBDS)BDZ0022171532 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000334485 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11253594 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000334485 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10271052 035 $a(PQKB)11428984 035 $a(StDuBDS)EDZ0000165568 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3420620 035 $a(DE-B1597)484796 035 $a(OCoLC)748209329 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780300145601 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3420620 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10351581 035 $a(OCoLC)923595182 035 $a(EXLCZ)992520000000006622 100 $a20020201d2002 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aAgitations $eessays on life and literature /$fArthur Krystal 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aNew Haven, Conn. $cYale University Press$dc2002 215 $a1 online resource (1 online resource (xv, 189 p.)) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-300-09216-4 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tContents -- $tAuthor's Note -- $t1. Closing the Books: A Devoted Reader Arrives at the End of the Story -- $t2. H. C. Witwer and Me: The Making of a Reader -- $t3. Stop the Presses: A Petition for Less Writing -- $t4. What Do You Know? What Don't You Know? -- $t5. Death, It's What Ails You -- $t6. Why Smart People Believe in God -- $t7. Taste, Too, Is an Art -- $t8. The Rule of Temperament -- $t9. Art and Craft -- $t10. Certitudes -- $t11. What Happened? The Rise and Fall of Theory -- $t12. How We Write When We Write About Writing -- $t13. Looking for a Good Argument: Argument and the Novel -- $t14. Just Imagine: Three Hundred Years of the Creative Imagination -- $t15. Going, Going, Gone: The Place of Poetry in American Letters -- $t16. The Writing Life -- $tCredits 330 $aWe disagree. From small questions of taste to large questions concerning the nature of existence, intellectual debate takes up much of our time. In this book the respected literary critic Arthur Krystal examines what most commentators ignore: the role of temperament and taste in the forming of aesthetic and ideological opinions. In provocative essays about reading and writing, about the relation between life and literature, about knowledge and certainty, about God and death, and about his own gradual disaffection with the literary scene, Krystal demonstrates that opposing points of view are based more on innate predilections than on disinterested thought or analysis.Not beholden to any fashionable theory or political agenda, Krystal interrogates the usual suspects in the cultural wars from an independent, though not impartial, vantage point. Clearly personal and unabashedly belletrist, his essays ask important questions. What makes culture one thing and not another? What inspires aesthetic values? What drives us to make comparisons? And how does a bias for one kind of evidence as opposed to another contribute to the form and content of intellectual argument? 606 $aBooks and reading 606 $aCivilization, Modern$y20th century$xPhilosophy 606 $aLearning and scholarship 606 $aLiterature and society 615 0$aBooks and reading. 615 0$aCivilization, Modern$xPhilosophy. 615 0$aLearning and scholarship. 615 0$aLiterature and society. 676 $a028/.9 700 $aKrystal$b Arthur$01628559 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910812160203321 996 $aAgitations$93965745 997 $aUNINA