Synopses & Reviews
Have the terrorist attacks of September 11 shifted the moral coordinates of contemporary fiction? And how might such a shift, reflected in narrative strategies and forms, relate to other themes and trends emerging with the globalization of literature? This book pursues these questions through works written in the wake of 9/11 and examines the complex intersection of ethics and narrative that has defined a significant portion of British and American fiction over the past decade.
Don DeLillo, Pat Barker, Aleksandar Hemon, Lorraine Adams, Michael Cunningham, and Patrick McGrath are among the authors Georgiana Banita considers. Their work illustrates how post-9/11 literature expresses an ethics of equivocation—in formal elements of narrative, in a complex scrutiny of justice, and in tense dialogues linking this fiction with the larger political landscape of the era. Through a broad historical and cultural lens, Plotting Justice reveals links between the narrative ethics of post-9/11 fiction and events preceding and following the terrorist attacks—events that defined the last half of the twentieth century, from the Holocaust to the Balkan War, and those that 9/11 precipitated, from war in Afghanistan to the Abu Ghraib scandal. Challenging the rhetoric of the war on terror, the book honors the capacity of literature to articulate ambiguous forms of resistance in ways that reconfigure the imperatives and responsibilities of narrative for the twenty-first century.
Review
"A much needed concise, clear and readable account." - The Independent
"An exceptional study." -- Times Higher Education Supplement
"Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds."-- Sunday Times
Review
"Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life."-Publishers Weekly
"A much needed concise, clear and readable account." - The Independent
"An exceptional study." -- Times Higher Education Supplement
"Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds."-- Sunday Times
Review
"Fun to read."--The New Yorker
"Excellent biography of the criticWu's splendidly detailed portrait could scarcely be more timely."--arper's
"Wu's finely attuned to his subject's qualities and sympathetic to the many personal, professional, and religious struggles that so complicated Hazlitt's tumultuous life."--The Atlantic
"A broad, persuasive argument, an astonishingly detailed account of Hazlitt's life...We sink into Hazlitt's world itself."-Saul Rosenberg, The Wall Street Journal
"A distinctly eye-opening biography."-Washingtonpost.com
"This book is written in an entertaining style, with liberal quotations from Hazlitt's essays, criticism, and lettersWu's effort benefits from newly discovered documents and his passionate defense of his subject. This should be the standard by which all future biographies will be judged."-Library Journal
"Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life."-Publishers Weekly
"A much needed concise, clear and readable account." - The Independent
"An eminently clear, readable and altogether available account of Hazlitt's life, based on staggeringly impressive research. Read it, by all means."--The Wordsworth Circle
"An exceptional study." -- Times Higher Education Supplement
"Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds."-- Sunday Times
Review
"Fun to read."--The New Yorker
"Excellent biography of the criticWu's splendidly detailed portrait could scarcely be more timely."--arper's
"Wu's finely attuned to his subject's qualities and sympathetic to the many personal, professional, and religious struggles that so complicated Hazlitt's tumultuous life."--The Atlantic
"A broad, persuasive argument, an astonishingly detailed account of Hazlitt's life...We sink into Hazlitt's world itself."-Saul Rosenberg, The Wall Street Journal
"A distinctly eye-opening biography."-Washingtonpost.com
"This book is written in an entertaining style, with liberal quotations from Hazlitt's essays, criticism, and lettersWu's effort benefits from newly discovered documents and his passionate defense of his subject. This should be the standard by which all future biographies will be judged."-Library Journal
"Wu admirably reveals his subject's faults and virtues at every point of a crowded life."-Publishers Weekly
"A much needed concise, clear and readable account." - The Independent
"An eminently clear, readable and altogether available account of Hazlitt's life, based on staggeringly impressive research. Read it, by all means."--The Wordsworth Circle
"An exceptional study." -- Times Higher Education Supplement
"Wu's biography is, like its subject, passionately partisan, and throws objectivity to the winds."-- Sunday Times
Review
"Part narrative theory, part ethical analysis, this book offers a well-written conceptual examination of the juncture between fiction and morality in the literature written in the wake of 9/11."—E. T. Mason, CHOICE
Review
"Banita's book makes an important contribution to scholarship on post-9/11 literature."—Clemens Spahr, NOVEL
Review
"With great breadth and power, Banita's Plotting Justice will be of interest to scholars concerned with discussion of narrative ethics, but also to scholars interested in the specific narrative strategies and themes that emerge in post-9/11 fiction."—James Gifford, The Year's Work in English Studies
Synopsis
Romanticism is where the modern age begins, and Hazlitt was its most articulate spokesman. No one else had the ability to see it whole; no one else knew so many of its politicians, poets, and philosophers. In this first full biography, Duncan Wu draws upon over a decade of archival research to explore all aspects of Hazlitt's life, from his early aspirations to become a painter, his engagement with revolutionary politics, his rise to prominence as one of England's greatest literary critics, and the disillusionment and poverty of his final years. Along the way, Wu reveals countless new details concerning Hazlitt's relationships with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, William Godwin, J. M. W. Turner, and other important figures of the Romantic era. But Wu sees Hazlitt as an essentially modern writer who took political sketch-writing to a new level, invented sports commentary as we know it, and created the essay-form as it is practiced in our own time. Painstakingly researched and filled with original insight, this biography benefits also from Wu's New Writings of William Hazlitt, many of which make their appearance here, illuminating obscure passages of Hazlitt's life.
Synopsis
Duncan Wu's portrait of William Hazlitt - covering Hazlitt's entire life - reveals one of the greatest journalists in the language, and the principal spokesman of the Romantic age, interacting with every major writer and many other movers and shakers of the era.
About the Author
Georgiana Banita is an assistant professor of North American literature and media at the University of Bamberg and Honorary Research Fellow at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney.