International Fiction Review back issues from January 2005:
Nikos Kazantzakis, Nietzsche, and the myth of the hero.
Jan 01, 2005; ... In practicality the same circumstances under which Christ was born, his dark brother, the Antichrist, would be born, and he would work very much the same miracles but in order to seduce mankind. (1) C. G. Jung's statement, given during his five-year-long seminar on Zarathustra, ...
The spectator's pleasure: Yeats's "Long-legged Fly".
Jan 01, 2005; ... This paper proposes an analysis of Yeats's poem "Long-legged Fly" based on the idea that the self is a space wherein imagination's drives inscribe ideographic realities of desire. I will argue that the re-presentation of such inscriptions in the presence of signs and symbols masks the ...
Haunted fiction: modern Chinese literature and the supernatural.
Jan 01, 2005; ... Since the early 1980s a considerable number of self-consciously experimental, modernist, or postmodernist mainland Chinese writers have been describing weird and abnormal phenomena as part of their fictional universe. This emergence, or reemergence, of a modern Chinese literature of the ...
Willa Cather's use of inner light.
Jan 01, 2005; ... A noteworthy technique that the American writer Willa Cather (1873-1947) uses for effecting characterization is by having the character contain light within; light becomes a vital force, the elan vital, the essential spirit operating within. This becomes apparent to the sensitive observer ...
Alternatives to modernism in contemporary Egyptian fiction: Ibrahim Abdel-Maguid's No One Sleeps in Alexandria.
Jan 01, 2005; ... It is not by mere chance that fictional writing in Egypt took a new turn at the beginning of the twentieth century. Innovations in literary forms were partly inspired by new waves of cultural productions that came along with modernism. However, modernism was at times strongly connected ...
Is there a work in this classroom? Interpretations, textual readings, and American fiction.
Jan 01, 2005; ... If you suggest some fresh and more ingenious reason for doubting that the author meant what he said, or that what he said had any truth content of the remotest kind, you win ten points by the rules of the modern critical game; you lose ten points if you suggest he said it because he meant ...
Misrecognizing history: complicitous genres in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.
Jan 01, 2005; ... The theme of guilt looms large in Kazuo Ishiguro's fiction. A locus classicus for Ishiguro criticism is an explicit observation concerning the dramatization of regret: "What I'm interested in is not the actual fact that my characters have done things they later regret .... I'm interested in ...
A little nostalgia: the detective novels of Alexandra Marinina.
Jan 01, 2005; ... Old Songs about the Main Things. In December 2002, Russkoe Radio-2, a station that broadcasts songs of the Soviet era, celebrated the year of its work with a party advertised as "Our Motherland is the USSR!" Appetizers served featured such hits of "Soviet cuisine" as Olivie salad, salami, ...
Stephen Harris: The Fiction of Gore Vidal and E.L. Doctorow: Writing the Historical Self.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Stephen Harris The Fiction of Gore Vidal and E. L. Doctorow: Writing the Historical Self New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Pp. 304. $43.95 The historical novel has a long tradition in international literature. Almost as long is the tradition of examining this genre. Gyorgi Lukacs's ...
Raymond Federman: The Voice in the Closet/La Voix dans le cabinet de debarras.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Raymond Federman The Voice in the Closet/La Voix dans le cabinet de debarras Buffalo: Starcherone, 2001. Pp. 76. $15.00 Raymond Federman calls his novels "pre-texts," because, in their telling of a story, they always necessarily remain unfinished. They postpone the story they ...
Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary: A Reference Guide.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary: A Reference Guide Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Pp. 182 + xlii. $54.95 To the Greenwood Guides to Fiction has been added a guide to Madame Bovary by Laurence Porter and Eugene Gray, and now the ...
Mary Lawson: Crow Lake.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Mary Lawson Crow Lake Vintage Canada, 2003. Pp. 291. $21.00 Mary Lawson, a Canadian living in England, has struck a chord with her first novel, Crow Lake. Childhood can be understood only by adults, and Lawson's narrator, twenty-eight-year-old Kate Morrison, looks back on her ...
Mary Gallagher: Soundings in French Caribbean Writing since 1950, the Shock of Space and Time.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Mary Gallagher Soundings in French Caribbean Writing since 1950, The Shock of Space and Time Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 304. 45.00 [pounds sterling] Mary Gallagher examines the issue of collective memory in novels from the French departments of Martinique and ...
Gloria Sawai: A Song for Nettie Johnson.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Gloria Sawai A Song for Nettie Johnson Regina: Coteau Books, 2002. Pp. 308. $17.95 A Song for Nettie Johnson put Coteau Books on the map when it beat out Carol Shields's Unless for the Governor General's Award in 2002, as bookstores scurried to restock their shelves. A Song for ...
David Lucking: The Serpent's Part: Narrating the Self in Canadian Literature.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... David Lucking The Serpent's Part: Narrating the Self in Canadian Literature New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Pp. 211. $39.95 "Canada is a country in which the problem of defining identity has always been a dominant concern" (25). Everybody who has taken some time to study concepts of ...
Omar Basabe, ed. Memoriales a pura tripa (Memories Straight from the Gut).(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Omar Basabe, ed. Memoriales a pura tripa (Memories Straight from the Gut) Buenos Aires: Catalogos, 2003. Pp. 192. US $14.45 In his widely read and accepted study Literature and Exile, Paul Ilie examined the literature of the Spanish Civil War from an unusual point of view ....
Stefan Mattessich: Lines of Flight: Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Stefan Mattessich Lines of Flight: Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. 291. $64.95. $21.95 Thomas Pynchon is, arguably, the most interestingly complex, the most critically celebrated American writer of ...
Trudier Harris-Lopez: South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Trudier Harris-Lopez South of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. Pp. 230. $24.95 African American literature has by now become a well-established feature of international literary studies. Dozens of books and articles are ...
Diane Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller, eds. Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Diane Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller, eds. Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003. Pp. 320. $19.75 The last few decades have seen a remarkable revival in Gothic studies. From books on ...
Elyane Dezon-Jones and Inge Crosman Wimmers, eds. Proust's Fiction and Criticism.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Elyane Dezon-Jones and Inge Crosman Wimmers, eds. Proust's Fiction and Criticism New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003. Pp. xvii+184. $37.50 $19.75 Like Constance Garnett's now superseded translations of Russian novelists, C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation of ...
John P. Rooney: Bottling it Up.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... John P. Rooney Bottling it Up Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2003. Pp. 252. $14.95 John P. Rooney's novel Bottling it Up is a comic narrative that lightly skirts more serious issues, both universal (fear of aging) and local (paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland). Although this ...
John Krapp: An Aesthetics of Morality: Pedagogic Voice and Moral Dialogue in Mann, Camus, Conrad and Dostoevsky.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... John Krapp An Aesthetics of Morality: Pedagogic Voice and Moral Dialogue in Mann, Camus, Conrad and Dostoevsky Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. Pp. 234. $34.95 With this book, John Krapp enters the field of ethical literary criticism; an arena which, if not ...
Caryl Phillips: A Distant Shore.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Caryl Phillips A Distant Shore New York: Random House, 2003. Pp. 274. $23.95 The novel's title invites different readings: for example, that one is cast up on a far and strange shore, alienated and lonely; that peace and happiness are located beyond reach and realization; or ...
Julian Rathbone: The Indispensable Julian Rathbone.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Julian Rathbone The Indispensable Julian Rathbone London: The Do-Not Press / Dufour Editions, 2004. Pp. 460. $36.95 $19.95 The volume makes available for readers a selection of writings by Julian Rathbone (b. 1935), who has published more than thirty books since 1967. While ...
Miriam Zolin: Tristessa and Lucido.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Miriam Zolin Tristessa & Lucido St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2003. Pp. 268. US $20.00 The most discomforting aspect of this misconceived work is its extensive use of the second person. Miriam Zolin, whose first novel was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel ...
Diane Johnson: L'Affaire.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Diane Johnson L'Affaire New York: Dutton, 2003. Pp. 340. CAN $37.50 If you have not yet read the first two novels in Diane Johnson's AngloFrench trilogy, Le Divorce (1997) and Le Mariage (2000), do so at your earliest opportunity. But you need not read them before you read her ...
Carol Shields: Jane Austen: A Penguin Life.(Book Review)
Jan 01, 2005; ... Carol Shields Jane Austen: A Penguin Life New York: Viking, 2001. Pp. 185. $19.95 We would naturally expect that Carol Shields, being a novelist, rather than a biographer, would write a rather different biography of Jane Austen than other writers that have essayed this topic ...