Lost Suitcase
«Delbanco has a fine intellect and a sharp pen, and he wields both with precision... The essays contain gems of wisdom and lovely turns of phrase. -- Helen Fremont Harvard Review #21, Fall 2001 Engaging... [The Lost Suitcaseis] distinguished by its technical virtuosity, self-reflexive perspective and an improvisational modus operandi. -- Andy Brumer The New York Times Book Review The lesson in the multiplying possibilities of fiction and the endless process of producing drafts is a useful one. Publisher's Weekly»
We work, each one of us, in the deep dark with no notion of what lasts. With this phrase Nicholas Delbanco reveals one of his urgent concerns: Why does a writer write? How much of his work will seem meaningful to others? In The Lost Suitcase Delbanco ruminates on the life of the writer and the significance of language as art. Les mer
From the pleasure of travel writing to the travails of historical fiction, from the question of artistic judgment to that question put to the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon ("Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?")-Delbanco ranges far and wide through the literary landscape. By turns descriptive and prescriptive, he explores how literary virtuosity is achieved, how the writing of fiction can be taught, and the way literature functions for writer and reader equally. He reflects on his own history, his family, the standards of judgment and progress, and the ways we remember and revise what has happened to us. "Fiction is a web of lies that attempts to entangle the truth. And autobiography may well be the reverse: data tricked up and rearranged to invent a fictive self." In both form and content, The Lost Suitcase is a tradition-steeped meditation on literary art and an original foray into the world of words.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Columbia University Press
- Innbinding
- Paperback
- Språk
- Engelsk
- ISBN
- 9780231115438
- Utgivelsesår
- 2001
- Format
- 23 x 13 cm
Anmeldelser
«Delbanco has a fine intellect and a sharp pen, and he wields both with precision... The essays contain gems of wisdom and lovely turns of phrase. -- Helen Fremont Harvard Review #21, Fall 2001 Engaging... [The Lost Suitcaseis] distinguished by its technical virtuosity, self-reflexive perspective and an improvisational modus operandi. -- Andy Brumer The New York Times Book Review The lesson in the multiplying possibilities of fiction and the endless process of producing drafts is a useful one. Publisher's Weekly»