An enlightening challenge to readers curious about literary theory and its real-world applications.
A rigorous exploration of narrative, from its usage in classic literature to its misuse in contemporary discourse.
In 1984, Brooks published Reading for the Plot, in which he argued that we live in “an episodic, sometimes semiconscious, but virtually uninterrupted monologue” and have situated ourselves “at the intersection of several stories not yet completed.” Decades later, the author senses a problem that warrants this follow-up book: In our world of 24-hour media, narrativity has run amok. Weary of “the storification of reality,” Brooks seeks a way forward that recognizes facts and storytelling as two separate concepts. “The universe is not our stories about the universe,” he explains, “even if those stories are all we have. Swamped in story as we seem to be, we may lose the distinction between the two, asserting the dominion of our constructed realities over the real thing.” Now, he laments, “story…has entered the orbit of political cant and corporate branding.” To better understand this new engagement with storytelling, the author proposes an “analytic unpacking of the claims for narrative.” These whirlwind essays span centuries of literature, from Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747) to Paula Hawkins’ thriller The Girl on the Train (2015). Brooks extrapolates ideas of narrative veracity, character, speaker, and audience, all while conscientiously maintaining his collection’s accessibility. Even readers who are not yet familiar with Proust or Faulkner will find stable footing in these essays despite their many erudite digressions throughout the canon. In the final piece, the author shifts from novels to the legal world and chillingly recounts how the Supreme Court can disparately interpret its cases by widening or constricting the “narrative circle” of a particular situation. He closes with a plea: “We need, more than ever, the reflective knowledge that the humanities can provide, very much including analysis of the dominant stories of our economics, our ethics, our politics.”
An enlightening challenge to readers curious about literary theory and its real-world applications.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-68137-663-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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