Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction"Lately I've been possessed of a singularly unhappy idea: the greatest influence on American fiction for the last twenty years may have been Richard Nixon." What happens to American fiction in a time when villains are deprived of their villainy; when our consumer culture insists on happy endings? Did Richard Nixon start a trend of dysfunctional narration that is now rife throughout fiction? In Burning Down the House, Baxter delves into the social and political circumstances that influence today's "urgent issues of storytelling." Baxter invites unexpected connections: between gossip and characterization; between Puritanism, consumerism, and epiphanies; between violence and data processing. By asking readers to "explore the imagination's grip on daily life and how one lives in the pressure of that grip," Baxter offers a unique perspective into the reading and writing of contemporary fiction.--Front cover flap. |
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Aksinya American argue Barthelme Barthelme's beautiful become called century characters Chekhov claim contemporary counterpoint culture dead desire Donald Barthelme dramatic dysfunctional Ellen Bryant Voigt emotional epiphanies essay everything father feeling fiction Gabriel Gatsby Gertrude Stein give Gretta happens Hell human imagination innocence insight interesting kind literary lives look lyric Marilynne Robinson Mary Gaitskill meaning melo melodrama memory metaphor Michael Furey Misfit moral move narrative narrator ness never novel objects obsession Oxenhope pathetic fallacy Peter Brooks pleasure poems poetry poets prose writers protagonist reader rhyming action Rilke Ruskin scene seems sense sentences Shklovsky short stories silence social someone sometimes sort sound spirit storytelling Sylvia Townsend Warner talk tell there's things thought tion truth turn understand usually Viktor Shklovsky violence voice Walter Benjamin William woman wonder word writing Zeppo