At the end of the 1950s, a debonair and well-dressed Malcolm Bradbury returned from a year in the United States, slightly shattered but not quite broken, to a Britain that had thoroughly changed. Commercial television had started, the bee-hive hairdo was in, and there were supermarkets instead of grocer's shops.In this piece of vintage Bradbury, the author of The History Man takes on Consumer Society and the British character as only he can.'H...
Acknowledgements.- General Editor's Preface.- Introduction.- PART 1: COMPOSITION: 1912-24.- PART 2: CONTEMPORARY RECEPTION: 1924.- PART 3: MORE RECENT STUDIES.- Select Bibliography.- Notes on Contributors.- Index.
Take a Valium. Have a party. Go on a demo. Shoot a soldier. Make a bang. Bed a friend. That’s your problem-solving system . . . But haven’t we tried all that?Howard Kirk, product of the Swinging Sixties, radical university lecturer, and one half of a very modern marriage, is throwing a party. The night will have all sorts of repercussions: for Henry Beamish, Howard’s desperate and easily neglected friend, and for Howard’s wife Barbara, promisc...
This first volume of Bradbury's collected critical writings concentrates on British fiction since 1945. It is written from the center of the field it surveys: Bradbury is a writer who is also a critic, a critic who is also a writer. He often feels a conflict between the two roles, but writes in a personal, lucid, and amusing style, alert to modern critical theory yet at the same time deeply involved as a creative novelist.
Malcolm Bradbury was a novelist, critic, television dramatist and professor of American studies and creative writing. He was awarded the CBE in 1991 for his services to Literature and was knighted in the 2000 New Year's Honours List. He died in 2000.
Slaka! Land of lake and forest, of beetroot and tractor. Slaka! Land whose borders are sometimes here, often further north, and sometimes not at all!
Dr Petworth is on a cultural exchange to the small (and fictional) Eastern European country of Slaka. Pallid and middle-aged, Dr Petworth might appear stuffy, but during his short stay he manages to embroil himself in the thorny thickets of sexual intrigue and love, while still finding time to s...
At the height of the 1960s, a British writer accepts an academic post in America for a year that he'll never forget
English author James Walker has three books to his name, each greeted with middling success and then promptly forgotten. But his résumé is significant enough to earn him a yearlong appointment at Benedict Arnold University as the American college's writer in residence.
At Benedict Arnold, Walker is something of a celebrity-a...
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: In this comedic novel, an English professor collides with disaster at the peak of the Cold War
Shortly after his plane first grazes the tarmac in the eastern European nation of Slaka, Dr. Angus Petworth is beset by a cavalcade of misadventures. A university lecturer and seasoned international traveler, Petworth is nevertheless unprepared for the oddities of culture and circumstance that await him on the...
A headstrong young journalist goes on the adventure of a lifetime, traveling through Europe to find the world's most enigmatic philosopher
Bazlo Criminale is one of Europe's most legendary living men. A mysterious novelist and thinker known for his extreme elusiveness, the beloved Criminale is a cultural icon of the highest order. Seeking to find the man behind the myth, a London television-news station hires Francis Jay, an enterprising you...
A monumental critical history that sums up the American literary achievement from Henry James to Thomas Pynchon. Beginning with the 1890s and the seminal novels of Henry James and Theodore Dreiser, this highly acclaimed volume charts the flowering of the American narrative tradition. It takes in Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, the emergence of Jewish and African-American literatures, and the works of Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, and Kurt ...
