| Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction Contributor(s): Peck, Dale (Author) |
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ISBN: 1595580271 ISBN-13: 9781595580276 Publisher: New Press OUR PRICE: $13.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: November 2005 Annotation: Rife with textual analysis, historical context, and insights about the power of fiction, Peck hacks away literature's deadwood to discover the vital heart of the contemporary novel. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Books & Reading - Literary Criticism | American - General |
| Dewey: 810.900 |
| Physical Information: 0.7" H x 4.9" W x 7.3" (0.54 lbs) 228 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Since the initial publication of Hatchet Jobs, the groves of literary criticism have echoed with the clatter of steel on wood. From heated panels at Book Expo in Chicago to contretemps at writers' watering holes in New York, voices--even fists--have been raised. Peck's bracing philippic proposes that contemporary literature is at a dead end. Novelists have forfeited a wider audience, succumbing to identity politicking and self-reflexive postmodernism. In the torrent of responses to this fulguration, opinions were not so much divided as cleaved in two with, for example, Carlin Romano contending that Peck's judgments are worse than nasty--they are hysterical and Benjamin Schwarz retorting that in his meticulous attention to diction, his savage wit, his exact and rollicking prose and his disdain for pseudointellectual flatulence, Dale Peck is Mencken's heir. Hatchet Jobs includes swinging critiques of the work of, among others, Sven Birkerts, Julian Barnes, Philip Roth, Colson Whitehead, Jim Crace, Stanley Crouch, and Rick Moody. |