In Search of the Washington Novel

2010. november 29. 12:07

Can one imagine a Dickens without London or a Zola or Flaubert without Paris?

2010. november 29. 12:07
„Fiction about the nation’s capital is a growth that flourishes only on the lower slopes of Parnassus. Think of the flower of our novelists—Updike, Mailer, Roth, Cheever, Bellow—and see if you can call to mind a single scene that is set on the banks of the Potomac. Mailer did a famous nonfiction account of the march on the Pentagon (The Armies of the Night), and Updike briefly created a lifelike President Buchanan, but that second exception proves a more general rule, exemplified by Gore Vidal’s canon: historical reconstruction is the form in which our novelists prefer to approach the matter.

Can one imagine a Dickens without London or a Zola or Flaubert without Paris? The radix malorum can probably be found in the famous bargain between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, made when New York was still the capital of these United States. In exchange for an agreement to build the constitutionally mandated new Federal City on the border of Jefferson’s beloved Virginia, Hamilton could have his coveted national bank. Thus, and allowing for certain Philadelphian interludes, it was decided early on that the cultural capital of America would be separated from its political one. Other countries that have made similar two-headed arrangements include Australia, Brazil, Burma, and Canada: we yet await the Brasilia or Canberra novel.

I’m among the few who consider Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost a triumph, but to the extent that it is a novel of Washington rather than of the Cold War, it’s part of a formula on which too many authors have relied: the political thriller.”
az eredeti, teljes írást itt olvashatja el Navigálás

Összesen 0 komment

A kommentek nem szerkesztett tartalmak, tartalmuk a szerzőjük álláspontját tükrözi. Mielőtt hozzászólna, kérjük, olvassa el a kommentszabályzatot.
Sorrend:
Jelenleg csak a hozzászólások egy kis részét látja. Hozzászóláshoz és a további kommentek megtekintéséhez lépjen be, vagy regisztráljon!