Based on extensive interviews with authors, editors, and publishers in four countries, this book examines the economic, social, and literary effect of the end of communist domination and accompanying cultural subsidies in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. The end of the communist regime has made the position of writer less lucrative as well as less prestigious within these four countries. Likewise, the countries respective publishing markets are struggling to adjust to a new economy in which books are more expensive, Western competition is ever-increasing, and distribution systems...

In eighteenth-century England, some wealthy people built ruins on their estates, hired hermits to inhabit them, and took guests to view the picturesque results. While no one hires ornamental hermits anymore, society as a whole supports people like Thoreau or Edward Abbey who step aside to comment on ordinary life as critics or would-be prophets yet who still get to head into town for a slice of Mrs. Emerson s pie or a shot or three at a Moab saloon or, as in the case of Bob Davis, drive over the mountain for a Jemez Grande Burger and an internet link. Davis had the chance to look back at...

In Born Again Skeptic & Other Valedictions, University of Oklahoma emeritus professor and peripatetic knowledge-seeker Robert Murray Davis tackles the big questions: about origins, identity, emotional and intellectual rootlessness; the little questions: why some small towns call to us and others don't, how academia works, or doesn't; and third-rail questions: about sex, relationships, women, men, religion, and aesthetics. The essays are witty and provocative, and Davis's writing style is both erudite and conversational.