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Chargement... Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (2011)par John Sutherland
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  Iambookish | Dec 14, 2016 |   Don’t let these things stop you from reading this book. It has to be the most readable book about authors I’ve ever read. You are certain to find some of your favorites. (Caution: Don’t be surprised if you don’t find all your favorites, and if you see lots of authors included that aren’t familiar to you, though.) A worthy read. (  )1  debnance | Jan 18, 2015 |
 For Sutherland, an Englishman who lived and taught for many years in Southern California, America seems particularly rife in trauma, hence ripe for novels. Like many non-natives, he views this country as the land of Buffalo Bill (see the entry on Prentiss Ingraham) and Bonnie and Clyde (see Elmore Leonard). The appropriate vehicle for what he melodramatically calls “the ineradicable violence in the American soul,” a notion borrowed from D. H. Lawrence that Sutherland applies to Michael Crichton, of all writers, is the thriller in its various incarnations. “Lives of the Novelists” is much too whimsically selective to serve as a reliable reference, although the attentive reader will no longer confuse Alistair Maclean (“The Guns of Navarone”) with Alistair MacLeod (“No Great Mischief”). The book appears to be more a compendium of reviews, of writers “who have come my way over a long reading career,” than a rigorously conceived assessment of the rise of the novel from Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” (“about a man that left his family, it didn’t say why,” in Huck Finn’s summary) and Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” to its current shifting shapes at the hands of Salman Rushdie and Alice Sebold.
No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction--from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.009Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction By TypeClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (4.23)
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This is extremely readable and entertaining, and I plan on buying my own copy of this book so I can peruse it at my leisure, and highlight all the titles I must read! (