
Clark Gifford's Body
Kenneth Fearing(Author)
NYRB Classics (Publisher)
Published on 17. October 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-59017-182-0 (ISBN)
Description
Back in Print After Fifty Years
Clark Gifford? A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom—a rebellion that is immediately put down by the government and whose motive will remain forever obscure. Even so, it leads to twenty years of war.
A paranoid tour de force of political noir, Clark Gifford's Body skips back and forth in time, interspersing newspaper clippings and court transcripts with the reactions and reminiscences of the politicians, generals, businessmen, journalists, waiters, and soldiers who double as the actors and the chorus in a drama over which, finally, they have no control. Who here is leading? Who is being led? Fearing's novel is a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog.
"I have not developed the habit of reading thrillers, but I have read enough of them to know that from now on Mr. Fearing is my man.”-The New Yorker
Clark Gifford? A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom—a rebellion that is immediately put down by the government and whose motive will remain forever obscure. Even so, it leads to twenty years of war.
A paranoid tour de force of political noir, Clark Gifford's Body skips back and forth in time, interspersing newspaper clippings and court transcripts with the reactions and reminiscences of the politicians, generals, businessmen, journalists, waiters, and soldiers who double as the actors and the chorus in a drama over which, finally, they have no control. Who here is leading? Who is being led? Fearing's novel is a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog.
"I have not developed the habit of reading thrillers, but I have read enough of them to know that from now on Mr. Fearing is my man.”-The New Yorker
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 202 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
313 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-59017-182-0 (9781590171820)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Kenneth Fearing; introduction by Robert Polito