In times of great uncertainty, the urgency of the artist's task is only surpassed by its difficulty. Ours is such a time, and rising to the challenge, novelist and poet Fanny Howe suggests new and fruitful ways of thinking about both the artist's role and the condition of doubt. In these original meditations on bewilderment, motherhood, imagination, and art-making, Howe takes on conventional systems of belief and argues for another, brave way of proceeding. In the essays "Immanence" and "Work and Love" and those on writers such as Carmelite nun Edith Stein, French mystic Simone Weil, Thomas Hardy, and Ilona Karmel-who were particularly affected by political, philosophical, and existential events in the twentieth century- she directly engages questions of race, gender, religion, faith, language, and political thought and, in doing so, expands the field of the literary essay. A richly evocative memoir, "Seeing Is Believing," situates Howe's own domestic and political life in Boston in the late '60s and early '70s within the broader movement for survival and social justice in the face of that city's racism.
Whether discussing Weil, Stein, Meister Eckhart, Saint Teresa, Samuel Beckett, or Lady Wilde, Howe writes with consummate authority and grace, turning bewilderment into a lens and a light for finding our way.
"This is,without exaggeration, an extraordinary book.The essays have the concentration and obliquity and suggestiveness of prose poems.The sentences are characteristically short and direct, grammatically simple and seemingly to the point. But so much thinking and responding and feeling have been distilled into these deceptively straightforward statements that they often have the tantalizing and paradoxical witchery of runes.There is no one else like Fanny Howe on the contemporary literary scene."
-Albert Gelpi, Stanford University
"The Wedding Dress is an important book for anyone interested in contemporary literature and the role of the artist in the present.These essays on the art enact a vital intervention with race, gender, faith,motherhood, and poetry. Fanny Howe uses Doubt to smash conventional systems of belief and Bewilderment to investigate political injustice and to shape a humane response, displaying an embodied wisdom that is both brilliantly articulate and precariously lived."
-Peter Gizzi, author of Artificial Heart
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.
Whether discussing Weil, Stein, Meister Eckhart, Saint Teresa, Samuel Beckett, or Lady Wilde, Howe writes with consummate authority and grace, turning bewilderment into a lens and a light for finding our way.
"This is,without exaggeration, an extraordinary book.The essays have the concentration and obliquity and suggestiveness of prose poems.The sentences are characteristically short and direct, grammatically simple and seemingly to the point. But so much thinking and responding and feeling have been distilled into these deceptively straightforward statements that they often have the tantalizing and paradoxical witchery of runes.There is no one else like Fanny Howe on the contemporary literary scene."
-Albert Gelpi, Stanford University
"The Wedding Dress is an important book for anyone interested in contemporary literature and the role of the artist in the present.These essays on the art enact a vital intervention with race, gender, faith,motherhood, and poetry. Fanny Howe uses Doubt to smash conventional systems of belief and Bewilderment to investigate political injustice and to shape a humane response, displaying an embodied wisdom that is both brilliantly articulate and precariously lived."
-Peter Gizzi, author of Artificial Heart
Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.