Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai

Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai PDF

Author: Robert Nichols

Publisher: Verbivoraciouspress

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 9789811160349

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In this remarkable tetralogy of short novels, Nichols envisions the nature of our communal, yet highly individualized society in which decentralized democracy, ecological sensibility, bioregional principles, and liberatory technologies are integrated into a traditional culture. It is a vision of utopia emerging out of the rich particularity of history and lived experience. First published in five separate volumes in the late 1970s, Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai has never gained the recognition it deserves. It is an extraordinary contribution to both literary and theoretical utopianism and should be recognized both for its radical ideology and for the fecundity of the imagination that informs it at all moments. It is a beguiling and inventive mixture of hallucinogenic prose and poetry that has demonstrates a fiercely independent mind and talent at its pinnacle. This reissue includes the full series, Red Shift (with illustrations from Peter Schumann), Arrival, Gahr City, The Harditts in Sawna, and Exile. "As those lucky enough to have read Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai know, Robert Nichols is one of our most profoundly original writers, his political passion, and acuteness transfigured by a visionary gleam." --Ursula K. Le Guin

The Harditts in Sawna

The Harditts in Sawna PDF

Author: Robert Nichols

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780811206846

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The third volume of Robert Nichols’s utopian tetralogy, Daily Lives in Nghsi-Altai. In the previous books (Arrival and Garh City), we were treated to tantalizing glimpses of the imaginary central Asian country of Nghsi-Altai seen through the eyes of three travelers from the West, followed by an investigation of the city in a technologically advanced society which yet maintains an elaborate, "primitive" kinship system. We now turn to six narratives of village life, focusing on members of the Harditt family. Maddi, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl; Dhillon, a farm apprentice; his married older brother, Srikant -- these are the Harditt children of earlier volumes. "Women in Middle Age" tells of Sathan, their mother, and Nanda, their aunt, and the workings of the matriarchy in Sawna. An account is then given of the death of the grandfather, Old Harditt, and his translation into the family’s Ancestor Society. And finally, we see Venu, Sathan’s husband, as an elected official of the Wind Brotherhood of solar engineers. These are not, however, tales of individuals in the usual sense but probes in the web of relationships that constitutes a communal society, the widening circle of clan, tribe, and phratry. Each story, moreover, reveals an aspect of a delicate political-industrial balance -- for the world of Nghsi-Altai is modern, indeed a paradigm of an alternate society.

The Character of Truth

The Character of Truth PDF

Author: Naomi Jacobs

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780809316076

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Can the novel survive in an age when tales of historical figures and contemporary personalities dominate the reading lists of the book-buying public? Naomi Jacobs addresses this question in a study of writers such as William Styron, E. L. Doctorow, and Robert Coover, who challenge the dominance of nonfiction by populating their fictions with real people, living and dead. Jacobs explores the genesis, varieties, and implications of this trend in a prose as lively as that of the writers she critiques. Using as a case study Robert Coover’s portrait of Richard Nixon in The Public Burning, Jacobs addresses the important legal and ethical questions raised by this trend and applies contemporary libel law to the fictionalization of living people, such as Richard Nixon. She closes her study by speculating on the future of this device and of the novel.

So the Story Goes

So the Story Goes PDF

Author: John T. Irwin

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2005-05-13

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780801881770

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Writing about a wide variety of subjects and in a multitude of styles, the twenty writers collected here share a mastery of language and an extraordinary ability to entertain. Ellen Akins from World Like a Knife, Her BookSteve Barthelme from And He Tells the Little Horse the Whole Story, ZorroGlenn Blake from Drowned Moon, MarshJennifer Finney Boylan from Remind Me to Murder You Later, Thirty-six Miracles of Lyndon JohnsonRichard Burgin from Fear of Blue Skies, BodysurfingAvery Chenoweth from Wingtips, PowermanGuy Davenport from Da Vinci's Bicycle, A Field of Snow on a Slope of the RosenbergTristan Davies from Cake, CounterfactualsStephen Dixon from Time to Go, Time to GoJudith Grossman from How Aliens Think, RoveraJosephine Jacobsen from What Goes without Saying, On the IslandGreg Johnson from I Am Dangerous, Hemingway's CatsJerry Klinkowitz from Basepaths, BasepathsMichael Martone from Safety Patrol, Safety PatrolJack Matthews from Crazy Women, Haunted by Name Our Ignorant LipsJean McGarry from Dream Date, The Last TimeRobert Nichols from In the Air, Six Ways of Looking at FarmingJoe Ashby Porter from Lithuania, West BaltimoreFrances Sherwood from Everything You've Heard Is True, HistoryRobley Wilson from The Book of Lost Fathers, Hard Times

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