#literary

Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates intellectual values, even in the universities. (The Anatomy of Influence) ↗

— Harold Bloom

#nature

...the values ascribed to the Indian will depend on what the white writer feels about Nature, and America has always had mixed feelings about that. At one end of the spectrum is Thoreau, wishing to immerse himself in swamps for the positive vibrations; at the other end is Benjamin Franklin, who didn't like Nature. [p.91] ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#native-americans #nature #nature

The setting, concerns, and mood of The Woodlanders are consonant with the Wessex of the earlier novels. There is an element of nostalgia in Hardy’s treatment of the woodlands of Little Hintock. Although such rural economies were very much alive in Hardy’s day, he strikes an elegiac note in his evocation of a world that will inevitably pass away. However, the woodlands do not form the backdrop to an idyllic pastoral of humanity living in tranquil harmony with nature. The trees, which are such a dominant presence in the novel, compete with each other for nourishment and light, are vulnerable to disease and damage, and are frightening in their moaning under the lash of the storm. The woodlands represent the Darwinian struggle for existence that Hardy sees as extending not only to the inhabitants of this little world but also beyond ... ↗

— Geoffrey Harvey

#nature

Nobody ever wanted to go to war, but if a war came your way, it might as well be the right war, about the most important things in the world, and you might as well, if you were going to fight it, be called "Rushdie," and stand where your father had placed you, in the tradition of the grand Aristotelian, Averroës, Abul Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#history-religion-terrorism #literary #memoir #religion

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap. ↗

— China Miéville

#genres #literary-criticism #pulp #criticism

What the hell is 'novelistic' sweep? Real people don't use words like that. 'Today's sukiyaki was lacking in beefistic sweep.' (from Honey Pie) ↗

— huruki murakami

#writing #literary-criticism

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#writing #literary-criticism

I felt so conflicted about having fled the rez as a kid that I created a whole literary career that left me there. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#career #created #felt #fled #having

Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like filling your house with more and more beautiful wicker baskets. It's supposed to be cumulative - it believes in progress. ↗

— Elif Batuman

#beauty

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting. ↗

— David Antin

#centuries #circles #commonplace #like #literary