A marriage of opposites: Books

Readers respond to their "affect": to the representation of the stinking, bone-marrow cold of the starving London poor or to the descriptions of delicious aromas and warm firelight of a luscious feast. Or, in an outstanding final chapter on "The Historical Novel Today: Or, is it Possi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Times higher education supplement 2014-01 (2136), p.50
Main Author: Eaglestone, Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Burke, Kenneth
Dick, Philip K
Fiction
Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865)
Novels
Realism
Robinson, Kim Stanley
War
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Readers respond to their "affect": to the representation of the stinking, bone-marrow cold of the starving London poor or to the descriptions of delicious aromas and warm firelight of a luscious feast. Or, in an outstanding final chapter on "The Historical Novel Today: Or, is it Possible?" which ends with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Jameson offers as his answer (yes, it is possible!) a reading of science fiction novels as historical novels: appropriate for a book dedicated to the science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson. [...]they are often not the usual marxisant suspects: [...]the book is full of little gems: just when he seems only to focus on canonical greats, he turns to Gotz and Meyer, a wonderful and obscure novel by David Albahari, or to Philip K. Dick, or Robert Altman's film Short Cuts, or Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
ISSN:0049-3929