Synopses & Reviews
"The novel, Brink argues, is not about representation but the self-conscious play of language. From its inception, he suggests, the genre has been about the act of writing and self-reflection. This thesis is not new but is part of the currency of postmodern literary theory. Brink, himself a noted South African novelist, the author of some 12 books, including
A Dry White Season (1984), and a university professor, brings the insight of an insider. He surveys 15 celebrated novels, historically arranged from
Don Quixote and
La Princesse de Cleves to A.S. Byatt's
Possession and Italo Calvino's
If on a Winter Night a Traveller examining each in terms of its play with writing and language. His discussions are marked by clarity, insight, and comprehension. A valuable book."
--Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal
"What a treat to explore the novel as a genre through the lucid eyes of André Brink, himself one of the world's foremost novelists! I particularly enjoyed the way in which the most traditional novels were revealed as contemporary and entirely relevant."
--Ariel Dorfman
The postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and wide-ranging new study, André Brink argues that this self-consciousness has been a defining characteristic of the novel since its inception. Taking as his starting point "the propensity for story" embedded in all language, he demonstrates that the old familiar novels may be the more startlingly modern, while postmodernist texts remain more firmly rooted in convention.
From the beginnings of the genre with Don Quixote, through "classic" novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and modern and postmodern texts of the twentieth, Brink performs a sweeping analysis of 500 years of the novel, including Moll Flanders, Emma, Madame Bovary, The Trial, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Possession. As an internationally recognized novelist, he brings a unique critical eye and enthusiasm to his exploration of the genre, offering the reader a refreshing and rewarding introduction to the novel and narrative theory.
Review
"An excellent starting place for the national discussion about race we so desperately need."-The Washington Post Book World,
Review
"A novel in which two 'intellectuals of color'the narrator, a middle-aged law professor, and his protege, Rodrigo Crenshawsit down and hash out the issues of our time. . . Intellectually exuberant"-Los Angeles Times,
Review
"A probing, thoughtful explication of the unexamined myths and assumptions that condition so many current U.S. public policy debates."-Booklist,
Review
"Richard Delgado is a triple pioneer. He was the first to question free speech ideology; he and a few others invented Critical Race Theory, and he is both a theorist and an exemplar of the importance of story-telling to the workings of the law. This volume brings all of Delgado's strengths together in a stunning performance."-Stanley Fish,author of There's No Such Thing as Free Speech; and It's a Good Thing, Too
Synopsis
Richard Delgado is one of the most evocative and forceful voices writing on the subject of race and law in America today.
The New York Times has described him as a pioneer of critical race theory, the bold and provocative movement that, according to the
Times "will be influencing the practice of law for years to come. "
In The Rodrigo Chronicles, Delgado, adopting his trademark storytelling approach, casts aside the dense, dry language so commonly associated with legal writing and offers up a series of incisive and compelling conversations about race in America. Rodrigo, a brash and brilliant African-American law graduate has been living in Italy and has just arrived in the office of a professor when we meet him. Through the course of the book, the professor and he discuss the American racial scene, touching on such issues as the role of minorities in an age of global markets and competition, the black left, the rise of the black right, black crime, feminism, law reform, and the economics of racial discrimination.
Expanding on one of the central themes of the critical race movement, namely that the law has an overwhelmingly white voice, Delgado here presents a radical and stunning thesis: it is not black, but white, crime that poses the most significant problem in modern American life.
About the Author
AndrBrink is a South African writer and educator. He was born on May 29, 1935 in Vrede, South Africa. Brink studied at Potchefstroom in South Africa and later in Paris. Brink became a part of a group of writers known as the Sixtiers upon returning to South Africa in the 1960s. The group aimed to broaden Afrikaner fiction by writing about sexual and moral matters and the failings of the traditional political system. Two of Brink's books, Looking on Darkness and A Dry White Season, were banned in South Africa. Brink became a professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at Rhodes University and professor of English at the University of Cape Town. He has received the 1980 Martin Luther King Prize, the 1980 French Prix Medicis Etranger, and the 1982 Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. Brink has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice and nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature on several occasions.