Literature 2010

Literature 2010 press.princeton.edu 20 Poetry 2 Writers on Writers 22 Facing Pages 3 American Literature & Studies 24 Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation 6 20/21 25 W. H. Auden 8 British Literature 26 Film 11 Oddly Modern Fairytales 27 Biography 12 Comparative Literature 28 Of Related Interest 14 Søren Kierkegaard 31 Music 16 Translation/Transnation 33 Index/Order Form 18 Asian Studies Contents Forthcoming Great Books, Bad Arguments Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto W. G. Runciman “Why have Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto retained their enduring appeal, despite their often wildly implausible assumptions about human motivation and political action? No one is more qualified to answer this question than Britain’s most eminent sociologist cum philosopher and historian, Gary Runciman. Great Books, Bad Arguments is not only lucid, but like the best detective fiction, keeps the reader guessing until the very end.” —Gareth Stedman Jones, King’s College, University of Cambridge Plato’s Republic, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Marx’s Communist Manifesto are universally acknowledged classics of Western political thought. But how strong are the core arguments on which they base their visions of the good society that they want to bring into being? In this lively and provocative book, W. G. Runciman shows where and why they fail, even after due allow- ance has been made for the different historical contexts in which they wrote. Plato, Hobbes, and Marx were all passionately convinced that justice, peace, and order could be established if only their teach- ings were implemented and the right people put into power. But Runciman makes a powerful case to the effect that all three were irredeemably naive in their assumptions about how human societies function and evolve and how human behavior could be changed. Yet despite this, Runciman insists that Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto remain great books. Born of righteous anger and frustration, they are masterfully eloquent pleas for better worlds—worlds that Plato, Hobbes, and Marx cannot bring themselves to admit to be unattainable. W. G. Runciman is a fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. March 2010. 138 pages. Cl: 978-0-691-14476-4 $19.95 | £13.95 Front cover illustration: Engraving by Evert A. Duyckinck, Harriet Martineau (detail), 1873. Based on original painting by Alonzo Chappel. Source: Portraits of Eminent Men and Women of Europe and America (Johnson, Wilson, & Co., 1873). Forthcoming Pen of Iron American Prose and the King James Bible Robert Alter “Alter’s remarkable book breathes new life into a long-neglected topic, the study of style. With the finesse that is his trademark, Alter shows the importance of all that is lost in translation. As it delineates the surprising ways in which the King James Bible has shaped American prose, Pen of Iron redirects current literary criticism and theory.” —Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded Ameri- can culture from the beginning—and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists— from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy—have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canoni- cal English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Robert Alter has taught Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1967. In 2009, Alter received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters. April 2010. 208 pages. Cl: 978-0-691-12881-8 $19.95 | £13.95 New The Posthuman Dada Guide tzara and lenin play chess Andrei Codrescu “A dictionary, a history of art movements, a manifesto, and a joke book; [The Posthuman Dada Guide] traverses high and low, seeking answers to our most persistent confusions about art, culture, and identity.” —D. Scot Miller, San Francisco Bay Guardian The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world—all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich’s Café de la Terrasse—a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution—lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are play- ing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada—and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Andrei Codrescu is the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University. The Public Square 2009. 248 pages. Pa: 978-0-691-13778-0 $16.95 | £11.95 press.princeton.edu 1 Writers on Writers is a new series of brief, personal, and creative books in which leading contemporary writers take the measure of other important writers (present or past) who have inspired, influenced, fascinated, or troubled them in significant ways. These books illuminate the complex and sometimes fraught relationships between writers, while also revealing the close ties between creative and critical writing. Forthcoming New On Whitman Notes on Sontag C. K. Williams Phillip Lopate “This is the exuberant, “This is just what we true book of a poet, of need: a book on Susan two poets: a personal, Sontag by a writer illuminating, and allergic to hype and beautiful demonstra- genuinely fascinated tion of the truest by Sontag’s ideas and reading.” the implications of —Robert Pinsky her cultural presence. Lopate is exacting in In this book, Pulitzer his estimates—able Prize–winning poet to praise and criticize C. K. Williams sets aside with equal sureness. the mass of biography He speaks straight, and literary criticism that have accumulated from eye-level, as a literary colleague: he knew around the work and person of Walt Whitman, Sontag and has heard all the stories. More and attempts to go back to Leaves of Grass as he important, he knows the work and its subjects— first encountered it, to explore why Whitman’s the novels, films, and debates—deeply. Notes epic “continues to inspire and sometimes daunt” on Sontag is a portrait of the author; it is also a him. The result is a personal reassessment and ap- portrait of an era in American intellectual life.” preciation of one master poet by another, as well —Sven Birkerts, author of Reading Life: Books for as an unconventional and brilliant introduction— the Ages or reintroduction—to Whitman. Notes on Sontag is a frank, witty, and entertaining Beautifully written and rich with insight, this is a reflection on the work, influence, and personality book that refreshes our ability to see Whitman in of one of the “foremost interpreters of . our re- all his power. cent contemporary moment.” Adopting Sontag’s favorite form, a set of brief essays or notes that C. K. Williams’s books of poetry have won the circle around a topic from different perspectives, Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the renowned essayist Phillip Lopate considers the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Ruth achievements and limitations of his tantalizing, Lilly Lifetime Achievement Award. He teaches daunting subject through what is fundamentally creative writing and translation at Princeton a conversation between two writers. University, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Phillip Lopate teaches writing at Columbia May 2010. 248 pages. University. Cl: 978-0-691-14472-6 $19.95 | £13.95 2009. 256 pages. Cl: 978-0-691-13570-0 $19.95 | £13.95 To receive notices about new books, subscribe for email at: press.princeton.edu/subscribe 2 • Writers on Writers New Lincoln on Race and Slavery Edited and introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Coedited by Donald Yacovone “Gates dispenses his lessons respectably. For the most part, he places Lincoln correctly in these different groups and along these different measures, even though it requires conceding that Lincoln fell far short of our own conceptions of justice and humanity. Amid the current bicenten- nial emoting, it is refreshing to read an evaluation of Lincoln that refuses, as Gates writes, to ‘romanticize him as the first American president completely to transcend race and racism.’ ” —Sean Wilentz, New Republic At turns inspiring and disturbing, Lincoln on Race and Slavery is indispens- able for understanding what Lincoln’s views meant for his generation— and what they mean for our own. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Donald Yacovone has written and edited a number of books. 2009. 416 pages. 35 halftones. Cl: 978-0-691-14234-0 $24.95 | £16.95 New Forthcoming Paperback 2009 Honor Book, New Jersey Council for the The Paris Letters of Thomas Humanities Eakins Worshipping Walt Edited by William Innes Homer The Whitman Disciples “Long awaited, this Michael Robertson valuable collection “Thoroughly re- of letters presents searched, gracefully Thomas Eakins in written, Worshipping his own words at a Walt represents liter- formative stage of ary scholarship at its his career, offering best.” a fascinating record —Frank Wilson, of triumphs and Philadelphia Inquirer struggles as well as a lively display of the Michael Robertson is skills, interests, con- professor of English fident opinions, and at the College of complex personality of a great American artist.” New Jersey.

Load more