Twentieth-Century Attitudes: Literary Powers in Uncertain Times [Hardcover]

Brooke Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2, 2003

In eighteen enlightening essays, the critic Brooke Allen explores the lives and work of some of the last century's most brilliant and eccentric literary talents. It was a century that apotheosized ideology and frequently demanded evidence of political engagement from its artists and intellectuals. Some of the writers considered in Twentieth-Century Attitudes found a spiritual home in the left (George Bernard Shaw, Christopher Isherwood, Sylvia Townsend Warner); others, like Evelyn Waugh, in the right; still others maneuvered the shifting ideological sands with a more measured skepticism. It was also a century during which the dictates of fashion, both social and intellectual, changed with unprecedented rapidity. A few of the writers Ms. Allen considers, like James Baldwin and Saul Bellow, struggled honorably but not always with success to reconcile their artistic intentions with intellectual fashion; others, like Colette and H. G. Wells, took an avid role in the drama of their historical moment and triumphantly communicated that sense of drama to their descendants. Really good writers, as Ms. Allen shows, do not write well in spite of the foibles, prejudices, and fallacies of their times; instead they crystallize these oddities into something universal. The writers in Twentieth-Century Attitudes embody in their very different ways the various attitudes of their contentious century and the success or failure of attempts to transcend these attitudes. Ms. Allen's essays, which combine extensive biographical information with new critical insights, richly illustrate the tenuous and often bizarre links between character and talent, between historical circumstances and individual vision.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Allen has all the academic credentials a literary critic can possess, yet she eschews an excessively text-oriented approach and writes out of passion and with panache (her opening lines are to die for). Although she is keenly conversant in the writings of the seminal twentieth-century figures she profiles, she is more concerned with writers' lives than with close readings of their work, saving her pinpoint analysis for literary biographies. Allen performs this uncommon and invaluable critical feat in her bracing and cobweb-eradicating portraits of Colette, "perhaps the first truly twentieth-century writer," and Virginia Woolf, adamantly dismantling the "cult of St. Virginia." Allen also writes discerningly about the concealed rivalries between detached and cerebral George Bernard Shaw and the highly emotional H. G. Wells, and Edith Wharton and Henry James. She is bitingly hilarious on the subject of Carson McCullers, and revelatory in her unique takes on Sylvia Townsend Warner, James Baldwin, and Grace Paley, creating a forthright and energetic collection of literary essays that will even delight readers who usually avoid them like the plague. Donna Seaman
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Review

She fills her writing with intelligence and equanimity, making her boldness seem really not so wild after all, but the logical conclusion of good sense and an orderly mind. (David Skinner Weekly Standard )

One of the most valuable critics.... Her reviews of novels and novelists are invariably on the mark and written with grace. (William H. Pritchard )

Lucid and incisive, fair-minded and fair-spoken...wonderful.... A lively enemy of pomp and cant, conformity and confusion. (Brad Leithauser )

Allen's byline is a guarantee of crisp, clear common sense.... What a pleasure to read a bookful of her best essays. (Terry Teachout )

One of the country's finest literary essayists—scrupulous, discerning, utterly direct and at the same time always surprising. (Jane Kramer )

Smart, witty, remarkably literate, and a talented cultural historian.... Allen offers us new critical insights. (David Nasaw )

Engrossing...fair-minded essays...nicely edged, combining the right amount of literary criticism with biographical insight and social history.... Unique and enlightening.... Recommended. (Library Journal )

A satisfying collection of essays...memorable...accomplishes what all good criticism should. (New York Sun )

Readers may feel they have not just read about these authors, but met them for the first time in a long, long while. (John Freeman Wall Street Journal )

A critic in whom sense decidedly predominates.... Filled with the most high-level, erudite gossip imaginable. (Evelyn Toynton New York Times Book Review )

Enlightening, fun, eminently readable, and wonderfully, woefully politically correct. (Meghan Keane National Review )

Allen has taken a novel approach. (John Linsenmeyer Greenwich Times )

An agreeable mix of biographical background and astute literary judgement with a dash of gossip.... Brooke Allen offers wide-ranging, frequently provocative reflections on literature and the art of writing. (Lorna Williams The Washington Times )

[A] delightful series of essays. (James Panero Armavirumque )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (July 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566635209
• ISBN-13: 978-1566635202
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,356,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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