Word: books
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...prove even more complete--Jailbird is not just another of the current rash of "life after Harvard" novels. Instead, it clearly portrays the vast dichotomy between the way the world views Harvard graduates and the way Harvard graduates view themselves. "Harvard," as Vonnegut says plainly, "is all through this book...
...book is no political tract, no sterile self-righteous condemnation of oppression. Rather, Burger's Daughter is an intensely personal vision of political commitment--and its costs. Through the character of Rosa Burger we sense the emotional toll of living in a country with epic conflicts, a frontier where every action must be extreme: either gutless capitulation or heedless defiance. There is no middle ground in a country where there are still heroes...
...moves from the overripe living room of an apartheid apologist to the stinking hut in a black township, from the lucid vigor of South Africa to the luxury of the Rivieva. Her prose mimics the near-cryptic, emotionally loaded economy of poetry, with all its symbolic richness. Reading this book is almost like plowing through about 400 pages of poetry, too-as difficult and rewarding. Gordimer's structure demands ingenuity and patience. It's choppy--long descriptions interspersed with telegraphic bits of interior monologue and haphazard conversation. She switches perspectives to let Rosa explain how she sees herself...
Gordimer's compassion and outrage color one of the central images of the book--the beating of a donkey...
Barth knows. No novel has displayed such an elaborate Maginot Line of prepared defenses since Joyce had Stuart Gilbert write a whole book under his "supervision" to explicate Ulysses. Barth demands that Joycean parallel. You could spend a month, a year, maybe a life detecting patterns within patterns in Ulysses; at the end you might look back and wonder why you bothered, but at least you'd have met thousands of smart people along the way. You can spend the same time with Letters and find equally pleasing patterns, but then look over your shoulder and your only company...