Reviews for Melville "among the Nations": Proceedings of an International Conference, Volos, Greece, July 2-6, 1997

The average rating for Melville "among the Nations": Proceedings of an International Conference, Volos, Greece, July 2-6, 1997 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-19 00:00:00 Vickie Brinkman Brian Evenson's Understanding Robert Coover is an excellent instance of a critical exegetical interpretative introductory text. All of Coover's major works up to and including Lucky Pierre are treated here in detail with a sympathetic hand. It reads easily, clearly and noncondescendingly. And is to be highly recommended for the newbie Cooverite trying to sort out what exactly it is that Coover is up to, as well as for the old=hand Cooverite who would like to revisit the territory and gain a gull's eye=view. Published in 2003 it does not cover Noir, The Brunist Day of Wrath, Stepmother, or A Child Again. In the opinion of this metafictionist reader, Coover counts along with John Barth simply as one of the masters of the art of fiction about fiction. While Barth's metafiction is largely an expression of his deep and undying love of story story story and the writing and reading thereof and the magic thereof, Coover's metafiction functions more in the tradition of a hermeneutics of suspicion, of demythologization, of Ideologiekritik, unmasking the forces of meaning and myth which bind us, but which simultaneously demand that we reshape and reconstruct the narratives by which we live. For the more advanced reader of Coover, I cannot fail to recommend highly enough the recent study by Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, Robert Coover and the Generosity of the Page.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-11 00:00:00 Jerry Mcintyre You learn a lot about Alice H.G. James from reading this book. You learn as much about William James, and their five children, as well. I don't know another source that has as much information about the children of this couple. Their relationship reminds me of the relationship of Karl Marx and Jenny, detailed in their co-biography. Alice James had a lot to do with William James' work, supporting him emotionally and intellectually. It makes it harder to keep her characteristics straight in your mind, since Alice James, W.J.'s sister, shares the name. According to the author, Alice H.G. James wore black every day after her husband died. How many of the people covered in this book dealt with "depression" is interesting. I use quotation marks because I'm not sure how their use of the term compares with our current use of the term. It is also interesting to me how much effort these folks put into getting messages from relatives that had died. There are pictures in this book of the four W.J. and A.H.G.J. children who reached adulthood, as well as of some of their spouses. For you Henry James (the novelist) fans, there is also a nice story about his relationship to A.H.G.J.. I'm glad I read this (in less than 24 hrs.!); it took me another few hours to gear up to write this; I wish I could write like almost all of the people in this book could.