The Big Question

by Lehman, David

• ISBN13: 9780472065837
• ISBN10: 0472065831
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr

Summary

David Lehman's second book in the Poets on Poetry series confirms his stature as one of our leading literary figures. He is also a literary critic with a rare ability to elucidate thorny ideas and controversial issues in a way that is both entertaining and instructive. The Big Questionleads off with a major essay explaining and exploring the concept of postmodernism. The next sections include pieces about poetry and fiction, lives and letters, and criticism and controversy. Other "big questions" addressed include political correctness, the genre of literary biography, academic life and deconstruction. There is a humorous piece on poetry "slams" and the whole "downtown" poetry scene, a feisty op-ed column (on the deconstruction of the Gettysburg Address), a pair of wickedly satirical poems, as well as a group of exceptional book reviews. The subjects covered range from Philip Larkin to Philip Roth- from the greatest poetry hoax of the twentieth century (which took place in Australia during World War II) to Charles Dickens's unfinished last novel- and from nineteenthth-century American poetry to the political career of Martin Heidegger. David Lehman is a poet and author ofSigns of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man. He is series editor of the celebratedBest American Poetryanthology.

Table of Contents

Preface
What Is It? The Question of Postmodernism	p. 3
Poetry and Fiction
Blank (Verse) Generation	p. 21
Our Poetic Grandparents	p. 29
Interrupted Visions	p. 34
Mark Strand's Dark Land	p. 40
Who Killed Edwin Drood?	p. 44
The Ern Malley Poetry Hoax	p. 48
Cynthia Ozick's Messiah	p. 54
Philip Roth's Double	p. 60
Lives and Letters
Janet Malcolm and the Problem of Biography	p. 67
Over Their Dead Bodies	p. 72
Literal Lives	p. 75
Philip Larkin's Letters	p. 76
Frank O'Hara's Life	p. 81
Old Man Rivers	p. 85
James Merrill: Another Life	p. 89
An Unsentimental Education	p. 93
The Case of Michel Foucault	p. 97
Criticism and Controversy
Deconstruction after the Fall	p. 103
Derridadaism	p. 123
From Disclosure to Closure	p. 124
The Heidegger Affair	p. 127
Gettysburg, Deconstructed	p. 131
Notes on Political Correctness	p. 135
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