This compulsively readable collection of profiles and essays by James Campbell, tied together by a beguiling autobiographical thread, proffers unique observations on writers and writing in the post-1950s period. Campbell considers writers associated with the "New Yorker" magazine, including John Updike, William Maxwell, Truman Capote, and Jonathan Franzen. Continuing his longterm engagement with African American authors, he offers an account of his legal battle with the FBI over James Baldwin's file and a new profile of Amiri Baraka. He also focuses on the Beat poets Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, as well as writers such as Edmund White and Thom Gunn. Campbell's concluding essay on his childhood in Scotland gracefully connects the book's autobiographical dots.
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A collection of profiles and essays, which proffers observations on writers and writing in the post-1950s period. It considers writers associated with the "New Yorker" magazine, including John Updike, William Maxwell, Truman Capote, and Jonathan Franzen.
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Preface Acknowledgments PART I NEW YORK NEW YORKERS 1. Sunshine and Shadows: AProfile of John Updike 2. Updike's Village Sex 3. William Maxwell's Lives 4. Notes from a Small Island: AProfile of Shirley Hazzard 5. Love, Truman: Capote's Letters and Stories 6. Franzen, Oprah, and High Art 7. Drawing Pains: A Profile of Art Spiegelman 8. Listening in the Dark: AProfile of William Styron PART II THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE 9. I Heard It through the Grapevine: James Baldwin and the FBI 10. The Island Affair: Richard Wright's Unpublished Last Novel 11. The Man Who Cried: John A. Williams 12. All That Jive: Stanley Crouch 13. Love Lost: Toni Morrison 14. The Rhetoric of Rage: AProfile of Amiri Baraka PART III SYNCOPATIONS 15. High Peak Haikus: AProfile of Gary Snyder 16. Between Moving Air and Moving Ocean: Thom Gunn and Gary Snyder 17. Was That a Real Poem?: Robert Creeley 18. Fifty Years of "Howl" 19. Personal/Political: AProfile of Edmund White 20. To Beat the Bible: AProfile of J. P. Donleavy 21. The Making of a Monster: Alexander Trocchi 22. Travels with RLS Coda: Boswell and Mrs. Miller; A Memoir of Two Tongues
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"At a time when much literary criticism remains deliberately abstruse and unduly professionalized, this book, at once anecdotal and quietly argumentative, feels like nothing so much as a fine collection of short stories about the most fascinating people you never met."—Morris Dickstein, author of A Mirror in the Roadway"To read this book is to watch the workings of a brilliant mind—sharp, quirky, always ready to reimagine texts we thought we knew well and to shed light on others we might have passed over. Campbell fits into no theoretical camp: he is simply one of the rare critics on whom, to cite Henry James, 'nothing is lost.'"—Marjorie Perloff, author of Wittgenstein's Ladder"Rises above the usual divisions in American literature. James Campbell is one of the most eloquent and consistently challenging writers on the British literary scene."—Caryl Phillips, author of Dancing in the Dark
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"'Syncopations' should interest any observer of postwar American letters." -- Sam Munson New York Times Book Review "[Campbell's] best pieces deftly and economically capture the essence of their subjects, measuring the particular 'syncopations' that distinguish their work." -- Bharat Tandon Times Literary Supplement (TLS) "The object is neither to titillate nor to shock - though certain of Mr. Campbell's profiles do both - but to illumine. And this they accomplish splendidly." -- Eric Ormsby New York Sun
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780520252370
Publisert
2008-07-07
Utgiver
Vendor
University of California Press
Vekt
363 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Dybde
15 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

James Campbell writes a weekly column for the Times Literary Supplement and is the author of This Is The Beat Generation, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin, and Exiled in Paris. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review.