Durrell Re-read

Reviews / Votes

In reading James Clawson's dense and widely-researched "re-read" of Durrell's major works, I was taken into Durrell from a direction that opened up new insights and gave me reasons to reread the books myself. . . . for the Durrell aficionado, the effort is well worth investing in. Clawson's eye for detail and his rigorous exploration of his theme of liminality is a rich contribution to scholarship on the work of Lawrence Durrell. * Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal * Several Durrell studies sought "the whole," but Clawson reveals something new: what produces the wholeness of Durrell's "opus." Durrell described Alexandria as "a hybrid, a joint," which tells us more of Durrell than Egypt. The wholeness of Durrell's works comes from this liminality, the joints that connect difference in a general arthrology. Clawson's conclusion is inescapable and important to modern British literature widely conceived: that Durrell's coherence lies not in continuity but in the contiguity of liminal moments of transition. -- James Gifford, Professor of English, Fairleigh Dickinson University James Clawson's incisive, comprehensive analyses offer a whole range of innovative understandings of Durrell's oeuvre - of its diversities as well as overarching unities - and a clear, enabling perspective on the complex mid-twentieth century literary allegiances shaping its unique vision. -- Randall Stevenson, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, University of Edinburgh This new book claims for Lawrence Durrell his rightful position at the heart of twentieth-century literature in English. Creatively rereading the disparate major fictions as a unified "opus," James Clawson establishes a lucid framework for apprehending the instabilities of time and space, life and death, art and reality that mark Durrell's liminal world. -- Anne R. Zahlan, Professor Emerita, Eastern Illinois University