"The great virtue of McCormick's memoirs is their blunt honesty. He writes with a persuasive directness about what happened to him and what he believes..."--Arts and Letters The title of John McCormick's autobiographical book, may be taken both literally and symbolically. In a literal sense, going to sea was an early and powerful ambition, while seagoing is also a metaphor for the twists and turns in a rootless life, a long voyaging. This is not a conventional autobiography. It is personal only as necessary for continuity, and never confessional. The essays center upon...
"The great virtue of McCormick's memoirs is their blunt honesty. He writes with a persuasive directness about what happened to him and what he beli...
Critics of fiction have long been aware that the romantic movement in Europe and America gave a powerful impulse to the art of fiction. The exact nature of that impulse has resisted analysis like so much associated with romanticism. In Fiction as Knowledge John McCormick reaches for precision, proposing that much of the vitality of modern fiction derives from romantic conceptions of history which made available to fiction not merely historical subject matter, but new perceptions of reality, present and past, that pervade the work of many of the greatest writers of the post-romantic...
Critics of fiction have long been aware that the romantic movement in Europe and America gave a powerful impulse to the art of fiction. The exact natu...
From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, George Santayana was a highly esteemed and widely read writer of philosophy, poetry, essays, memoirs, and even a best-selling novel, The Last Puritan. After a period of relative neglect, interest in his work has revived. A complete edited edition of his works is in progress and he has become the object of renewed scholarly activity. Contributing signifi cantly to the renewal was John McCormick's 1987 biography, the fi rst full-scale volume to treat an elusive fi gure's life and thought in the detail they deserve.
From the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, George Santayana was a highly esteemed and widely read writer of philosophy, poetry, ...
Western culture is composed of a subtle and complex mixture of influences: religious, philosophical, linguistic, political, social, and sociological. American culture is a particular strain, but unless European antecedents and contemporary leanings are duly noted, any resulting history is predestined to provincialism and distortion. In his account of American literature during the period 1919 to 1932, McCormick deals with the extraordinary work of artists who wrested imaginative order from a world in which the abyss was never out of sight.
McCormick's volume is intended as a...
Western culture is composed of a subtle and complex mixture of influences: religious, philosophical, linguistic, political, social, and sociologic...
Since World War II critics have been predicting the decline of the novel. This book argues that the novel is not dead. Looking at American and English fiction it claims that the novel can not only change the possibilities of art, but also contribute to awareness of life's possibilities.
Since World War II critics have been predicting the decline of the novel. This book argues that the novel is not dead. Looking at American and English...
