LEADER 05026nam 2200637 450 001 9910815612303321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-231-51007-1 024 7 $a10.7312/boye13674 035 $a(CKB)1000000000460196 035 $a(MH)009818910-7 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000070999 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12006437 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000070999 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10070411 035 $a(PQKB)10356085 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC908444 035 $a(DE-B1597)458674 035 $a(OCoLC)64274652 035 $a(OCoLC)979626319 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780231510073 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL908444 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr11086509 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000460196 100 $a20150825h20052005 uy 1 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe dictator's dictation $ethe politics of novels and novelists /$fRobert Boyers ; designed by Lisa Hamm 210 1$aNew York, [New York] :$cColumbia University Press,$d2005. 210 4$d©2005 215 $a1 online resource (218 p. ) 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-231-13674-9 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references. 327 $tFrontmatter -- $tCONTENTS -- $tINTRODUCTION: THINKING ABOUT POLITICS AND THE NOVEL -- $t1. THE INDIGENOUS BERSERK: PHILIP ROTH -- $t2. IDENTITY AND DIFFIDENCE: SEAMUS DEANE -- $t3. A GENEROUS MIND: NATALIA GINZBURG -- $t4. CLEAR LIGHT AND SHADOW: ANITA DESAI -- $t5. BULLETS OF MILK: JOHN UPDIKE -- $t7. IN EXILE FROM EXILE: NORMAN MANEA -- $t8. THE NORMALITY BLUES: PETER SCHNEIDER -- $t9. DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: FLEUR JAEGGY -- $t10. PRIMACIES AND POLITICS: NADINE GORDIMER -- $t11. THINKING ABOUT EVIL: KAFKA, NAIPAUL, COETZEE -- $t12. PATHOS AND RESIGNATION: PAT BARKER -- $t13. STIFLINGS: LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI -- $t14. THE DICTATOR'S DICTATION: AUGUSTO ROA BASTOS -- $t15. MANY TYPES OF AMBIGUITY: INGEBORG BACHMANN -- $t16. RUBBLE AND ICE: W. G. SEBALD -- $tSELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 330 $aIn these elegant essays, many of them originally written for The New Republic and Harper's, Robert Boyers examines the role of the political imagination in shaping the works of such important contemporary writers as W. G. Sebald and Philip Roth, Nadine Gordimer and Mario Vargas Llosa, Natalia Ginzburg and Pat Barker, J. M. Coetzee and John Updike, V. S. Naipaul and Anita Desai. Occasionally he finds that politics actually figures very little in works that only pretend to be interested in politics. Elsewhere he discovers that certain writers are not equal to the political issues they take on or that their work is fatally compromised by complacency or wishful thinking.In the main, though, Boyers writes as a lover of great literature who wishes to understand how the best writers do justice to their own political obsessions without suggesting that everything is reducible to politics. Resisting the notion that novels can be effectively translated into ideas or positions, he resists as well the notion that art and politics must be held apart, lest works of fiction somehow be contaminated by their association with "real life" or public issues. The essays offer a combination of close reading, argument, and assessment.What, Boyers asks, is the relationship between form and substance in a work whose formal properties are particularly striking? Is it reasonable to think of a particular writer as "reactionary" merely because he presents an unflattering portrait of revolutionary activists or because he is less than optimistic about the future of newly independent societies? What is the status of private life in works set in politically tumultuous times? Can the novelist be "responsible" if he consistently refuses to engage the conditions that affect even the intimate lives of his characters?Such questions inform these essays, which strive to be true to the essential spirit of the works they discuss and to interrogate, as sympathetically as possible, the imagination of writers who negotiate the unstable relationships between society and the individual, art and ideas. 606 $aFiction$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aPolitics and literature$xHistory$y20th century 606 $aPolitics in literature 615 0$aFiction$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aPolitics and literature$xHistory 615 0$aPolitics in literature. 676 $a809/.39358/0904 700 $aBoyers$b Robert$0458348 702 $aHamm$b Lisa 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910815612303321 996 $aThe dictator's dictation$94080452 997 $aUNINA 999 $aThis Record contains information from the Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset, which is provided by the Harvard Library under its Bibliographic Dataset Use Terms and includes data made available by, among others the Library of Congress