'After Paradise: Essays on the Fate of American Writing' lays bare the richness of classic American texts and their fraught relationship with what Jon Thompson sees as a culture of violence and war. Focusing on William Bradford's 'Of Plymouth Plantation', Herman Melville's 'Bartleby the Scrivener', Walt Whitman's 'Specimen Days', Emily Dickinson's 'Letters' and Michael Herr's 'Dispatches', 'After Paradise' offers a series of moving, interconnected reflections upon what Thompson calls "the fate of American writing." Part cultural reflection, part lyrical criticism, part idiosyncratic literary history, After Paradise attempts to restore a sense of the original strangeness of American literature and culture by pushing the boundaries of the essay form.
- ISBN10 1848610416
- ISBN13 9781848610415
- Publish Date 15 April 2009
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Shearsman Books
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 136
- Language English