Word: fictions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...kinds of things that are brought together in this volume nearly as much as I like writing other kinds of things." She then goes on to describe approach-avoidance reactions and procrastination worthy of any reading-period squeeze. In all fairness, the essays suggest that her preference for writing fiction and poetry is well-founded. The value of the book reviews included (analyses of Kate Millett's autobiography Flying Marge Pwrey's Woman on the Edge of Time, and the works of Adrienne Rich, E.L. Doctorow and Tillie Olsen) lies not so much in their sparkling insight; rather, they reveal...
...more comprehensive feeling for Atwood's philosophy, one needs to examine the series of novels that have made her famous and have cast her--sometimes unwillingly--as a significant voice of the women's movement: Surfacing, The Edible Woman, Lady Oracle, Life Before Man, Bodily Harm. Set free with fiction, Atwood's remarkable ability to tease the significance out of individual situations and words succeeds most effectively...
...paradoxes of modern thought that all of the advances that have made internal states more describable...have at the same time cast doubt on the concept of an essential self, and even on its usefulness as a legal fiction...
...whose The Horse's Mouth he writes: "Depicting low life, it blazes with an image of the highest life of all-that of the creative imagination." At other times he elevates a merely unfashionable craftsman like Budd Schulberg, for whose The Disenchanted he makes the dubious claim: "No fiction has ever done better at presenting the inner torments of a writer in decline...
...charming but a little disturbing, suggesting a weariness with the task of being different. He even includes a sentence that implicitly questions the wisdom of remaining in hiding: "Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is nearly the direct opposite." This might be taken to mean that Pynchon could pop up on TV at any moment, explaining himself to Donahue or Barbara Walters. But the best bet is that he will continue to let his books do all the talking...