Encounters with American Culture: Volume 1, 1963-1972

by Prescott,Peter

• ISBN13: 9781412804967
• ISBN10: 1412804965
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-10-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This collection of essays discusses some of the important books, authors, and literary trends of a volatile era in American and world literature whose cultural repercussions are still being felt. Peter S. Prescott was one of the most penetrating, knowledgeable, and sensitive critics to write for a general audience in the tradition of Edmund Wilson. In this volume of Encounters with American Culture, readers will discover not only Prescott’s acute and subtle comments on the enduring and/or representative books of the time, but also his humor and style, his way with an anecdote or aphorism, his talent for parody, and his ability to laugh at himself, as well as at the authors he sometimes skewers.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition	xiii
Preface	9	(8)
ONE
Shall Saul Reign over Us?
Saul Bellow	17	(2)
"...And You Don't Know What It Is, Do You, Mr. Jones?"
James Jones	19	(3)
The Last Gentle Novel
Walker Percy	22	(1)
The Fire Last Time
James Baldwin, Reynolds Price	23	(3)
My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is
Robert Coover, Brian Moore	26	(2)
The Worst of Bruce Jay Friedman	28	(3)
Three Concerti for Symbols and Allegory (Ma non troppo)
William H. Gass, Hans Erich Nossack, Lane Kauffmann	31	(3)
The Case of the Calcified Novelist
James Gould Cozzens	34	(2)
Going Downward, Toward the Dark
Joyce Carol Oates	36	(4)
Candide Without Voltaire
Mary McCarthy	40	(2)
How to Be a Loser: Three Novelists Reveal the Secret
Richard Condon, James Kennaway, Leonard Gardner	42	(3)
The Most Offensive Novel of the Year
Marguerite Young	45	(2)
Den of Irony
E.L. Doctorow	47	(2)
Sex and the Serious Novelist
John Updike, Philip Roth	49	(9)
Here Comes Gore Vidal with Charley's Aunt in Modern Drag
Gore Vidal, Edmund P. Murray	58	(3)
Ham on the Range: Two More Excesses of the American Dream
Kurt Vonnegut, John Redgate	61	(2)
A Genuinely Dreadful Novel
John Briley	63	(2)
The Crap Game of Life
Joan Didion	65	(1)
Dark Laughter
Peter de Vries	66	(2)
Disarrangement
Elia Kazan	68	(1)
The Novel as Old News
Vance Bourjaily, Robert Shaw	69	(3)
Wrong Turn
John O'Hara	72	(1)
Morality Novel
Alan Harrington	72	(2)
Hemingway: The Last Wheeze	74	(2)
John Hersey: Another Parable	76	(1)
Donleavy Declining	77	(3)
The Edge of Fantasy
Bernard Malamud, John Cheever	80	(11)
TWO
Journey into the Interior
Doris Lessing	91	(4)
Irrational Man: The Nineteenth Century as a Mirror of Our Own
John Fowles	95	(2)
Another Snow Job
C.P. Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson	97	(4)
Wodehouse Preferred	101	(2)
Suffering Fools Gladly
Max Beerbohm	103	(1)
How Much Shape Does a Novel Need?
Thomas Williams, Nicholas Mosley	104	(4)
A Perishable Pyramid
William Golding	108	(1)
Amis Cold...	109	(1)
And Amis Hot	110	(1)
A Lean and Hungry Novel
Richard E. Kim	111	(2)
"What Is Our Innocence, What Is Our Guilt?"
John Le Carré, Richard E. Kim	113	(3)
Muriel Spark: Short Takes	116	(1)
A Wanting Novel
Anthony Burgess	117	(2)
The Ancient Greece of Mary Renault	119	(2)
Crossing the Water
Brian Burland	121	(1)
A Woman's Novel
Shirley Hazzard	122	(1)
Is Graham Greene a Burnt-Out Case?	123	(10)
THREE
Here There Be Dragons
Jorge Luis Borges	133	(4)
Radical Innocence
Gabriel Garcia Márquez	137	(2)
The Artist as Moral Hero
André Malraux, Albert Camus	139	(3)
An Overcooked Novel
Françoise Mallet-Joris	142	(2)
A Dreamer's Novel
Michel Bernanos	144	(1)
Italo Calvino: Cosmicomics	145	(1)
An Early Modern Master
Knut Hamsun	146	(2)
Africa of the Mind
Yambo Ouologuem	148	(1)
"Oh, My Lolita, I Have Only Words to Play With."
Vladimir Nabokov	149	(4)
Russian Realism: The Prison World of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	153	(8)
FOUR
The Theater of Neurosis Presents: "Let It All Hang Out"
Martin Shepard	161	(3)
Even Dr. Freud Was Stumped: "What Does a Woman Want?"
Kate Millett	164	(3)
Our Other War: A Progress Report
John W. Aldridge, Julius Horwitz, Jim Haskins	167	(4)
The New Journalism: Early Phases
Hunter S. Thompson, John Sack	171	(2)
Norman Mailer, Boy Reporter	173	(6)
1. Mailer as Vergil: A Conducted Tour Through the New Inferno	173	(3)
2. Mailer as Whitman: I Sing the Body Electronic	176	(3)
The "Times" That Tries Men's Souls
Gay Talese	179	(3)
Skimming over America
Bill Moyers	182	(2)
The American Way of Mayhem
John Hersey	184	(2)
Culinary Metaphysics
Robert Farrar Capon	186	(2)
Art & Action: Books to Read While Waiting for the Revolution
John Berger, Martin Oppenheimer	188	(3)
Distemper from the Docks
Eric Hoffer	191	(3)
"In a Free Society You Have to Take Some Risks."
Richard Harris	194	(2)
Two More American Tragedies
Eric F. Goldman, Eldridge Cleaver	196	(4)
Up Against the Wall, Please, So You Can Hear Me Better
Columbia Daily Spectator	200	(3)
An Imitation of Excess
Philip Roth	203	(6)
FIVE
A Sense of Who and Where You Are
Laurie Lee, Ronald Blythe	209	(3)
"What Is All This Juice and All This Joy?"
Christy Brown, Richard E. Kim	212	(3)
Setting One's Life in Order
Harding Lemay	215	(2)
Mon Dieu, We Frenchmen Are Romantic!
Henri Charrière	217	(2)
Ill at Ease in America
Michael J. Arlen, Jerry Rubin	219	(3)
Meretricious Books
Mark Harris, Norman Podhoretz	222	(5)
Narcissism and Negotiation: An Interview
Jules Feiffer	227	(5)
Being with It
Rachel MacKenzie	232	(1)
New Notes from the Underground
George Jackson	232	(3)
The Black Experience: Life vs. Rhetoric
Nikki Giovanni, Donald Reeves, Albert Murray	235	(4)
After the Curtain
William Redfield	239	(2)
Hemingway: The Whole Truth and Nothing But
Carlos Baker	241	(6)
SIX
Aggressive Anthropology: Lo, the Poor Indian!
Peter Farb	247	(3)
How to Make a Good Indian
J.P. Dunn, Jr., Dee Brown	250	(3)
Opening the Earth
Geoffrey Bibby	253	(2)
The Search for an Accurate Past
Britannica, Arna Bontemps	255	(3)
After Ulysses
Alan Moorehead	258	(2)
How Shall We Save Us from Ourselves?
Robert Bigelow, Jessica Mitford	260	(7)
SEVEN
An Eye for Celebration
Pablo Picasso	267	(2)
In Search of "The Sum of Human Knowledge"
Britannica	269	(3)
Taking Crime Seriously
Roderick Thorp, Ross Macdonald, Helen MacInnes	272	(5)
How to Write a Spy Novel
John Le Carré, Len Deighton, Frederick Ayer, Jr., Adam Hall	277	(2)
A Handful of Air (Ghost stories)
George Lanning	279	(2)
You're Putting Me On, I Hope
Michael Crichton, Robert Merle, Kate Wilhelm, William Hjortsberg, Ursula K. Le Guin	281	(5)
Paper Reveries
Les Daniels, Maurice Horn	286	(2)
Family Reading: Books Rated "AA" Acceptable to Adults
Maurice Sendak, Blair Lent, Harve Zemach, I.B. Singer, Roald Dahl, E.B. White, Leonard de Vries, Denise and Alain Trez	288	(5)
Another Book to Save. Us from Ourselves
Genevieve Dariaux	293	(1)
Thorns from the Rose
Rose Franzblau	294	(2)
Pornography as Art and Rhetoric
Peter Michelson, "M", "Mr. and Mrs. K"	296	(7)
EIGHT
Food for Second Thoughts: The French Attack
Christian Millau and Henri Gault, Gael Greene	303	(5)
The Novel Glut	308	(3)
The Treasure of Your Company	311	(2)
The Book People's Thing (National Book Awards)	313	(3)
Being Frightened in the Theater (the Living Theater)	316	(5)
Index	321