Joseph Brooker and Ray Ryan were somewhat surprising bedfellows. Brooker’s analysis of British literature during the 1980s is deliberately situated in the political and popular culture of the time, locating the great novels of the 1980s (Salinger, Amis, etc.) as products of a particular historical milieu. Ryan, on the other hand, is the editor of a new collection of essays called ‘The Good of the Novel’ which gives critics free reign to evaluate recent novels free from the constraints of usual academic practice based on the application of external facts. Reading a novel is an ‘act of forgetting’, stated Ryan, and it is this forgetfulness that stood as such a sharp contrast to Brooker’s deep cultural analysis of the 1980s.
Peppers Theatre, 20 Aug, 2.30pm (3.30pm), £10.00, eibfpp28.
[sj]
Sections: by Samuel Johnston - ED2011 Book Reviews | Tags: Edinburgh International Book Festival, Joseph Brooker, Ray Ryan
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