Off the Books
Description
An exploration of American culture and politics through the literary lens of a book review editor
Head Off the Books in this collection of newspaper columns, where J. Peder Zane uses classic and contemporary literature to explore American culture and politics. The book review editor for the Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer from 1996 to 2009, Zane demonstrates that good books are essential for understanding ourselves and the world around us. The one hundred and thirty columns gathered in Off the Books find that sweet spot where literature's eternal values meet the day's current events. Together they offer a literary overview of the ideas, issues, and events shaping our culture-from 9/11 and the struggle for gay rights to the decline of high culture and the rise of sensationalism and solipsism. As they plumb and draw from the work of leading writers-from William Faulkner, Knut Hamsun, and Eudora Welty to Don DeLillo, Lydia Millet, and Philip Roth-these columns make an argument not just about the pleasure of books, but about their very necessity in our lives and culture.
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J. Peder Zane was the book review editor and books columnist for the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, for thirteen years. His writing has won numerous national honors, including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Before joining the News & Observer, Zane worked at the New York Times. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle and current chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, Zane is the editor of and has contributed to Remarkable Reads:34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading, and The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books and is coauthor of Design in Nature.
Content
- Cover
- OFF THE BOOKS
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Between the Covers: Classic Fiction
- Eudora Welty: The Writers' Writer
- John Fante: What the Boys Read
- Knut Hamsun: Risking a Literary Friendship
- Georges Simenon: Rediscovering a Literary Phenomenon
- Walter Brooks: The World According to Freddy the Pig
- Robert Penn Warren-A King Restored: Round Two for an American Classic
- Thomas/Tom Wolfe: The Man Who Cried Wolfe
- Ralph Ellison: Popeye vs. The Invisible Man
- Nadezhda Mandelstam: Spanish Wine and Oranges
- Beyond the Covers: Contemporary Fiction
- E. L. Doctorow: The Civil War in All Its Raging Glory
- Richard Slotkin: 11 Openings to Abe Lincoln
- Dan Brown: I've Cracked the Code of 'Da Vinci Code' Hypomania
- Haruki Murakami: A Writer Who Takes on the World
- Lydia Millet: A Daring Tale of a Lonely Heart
- Nicholson Baker: Bomb-Throwing Book Against Bush Fizzles
- Don DeLillo's Sound And Fury
- Tom Wolfe: Far from Empty, Not Quite Full
- Thomas Pynchon: Another Monument in Pynchonland
- Norman Mailer Celebrates Himself, Again
- Philip Roth for MVP
- Southern Writing Lives
- David Sedaris: Him Write Pretty
- Jonathan Miles: Author Keeps the Tales Pouring
- Jonathan Williams: Nosing Out Talent
- Reynolds Price: Rooted in His Native Soil
- Eudora Welty's Passing: A Death in the Family
- William Faulkner's Literary Legacy
- Fellowship of Southern Writers Seeks Future As Bright As Its Past
- Just the Facts? Nonfiction Reviews
- They Had Their Troubles
- We Have Ours
- Quick, Fast, in a Hurry
- Our Machines, Our Selves
- How to Idle in the Fast Lane
- Our Children, Ourselves
- Adventures in Literature's Gray Area
- Self-Service Happiness
- A Feminist in Bold Relief
- A Poor Excuse for Compassion
- Thinking Outside the Penalty Box
- The Heartbreak Behind the Buzz
- Ink-Stained History
- Crunching Numbers, Finding Us
- Paradox and Poetry of Chernobyl
- Only an Empty Memory?
- Taking Cover: The Assault on the Book Business
- A Room with a Low Ceiling
- America the Literate
- If You're Hip Say Golly Gee Whillikers
- Ban the Book! Really!
- The Words That Sell the Words
- Oprah's Little Golden Books
- High Art, High Dudgeon
- Bound by Time
- Nothing to Be Ashamed Of
- Binding Devotion: Book Culture
- The Book on Wilt Chamberlain
- The Book on the 20th Century
- The Real Power of Books
- Where Books Lead We Follow
- A Simple Plan
- The Best Gift Reveals Yourself
- Cure for the Blues Is a Click Away
- Novels Found in Translation
- Know-How for the New Millennium: Fire and the Art of Library Maintenance
- Critics Need More Than a Thumb
- The New American Dream
- Having a Baby by the Book
- Anything Goes: New Standards, Shifting Boundaries
- Lack of Curiosity Is Curious
- Reading Loses in This War
- So Long Moby, Hello Aquaman
- We're Servants of the Overload
- Daily Nuggets of Wisdom
- Idiot's Delight: The Age of the Moron
- Really?: Truth and Truthiness
- Truth, Facts, and CBS
- New Media: Too Much of a Good Thing?
- No Lie, We Live in An Age of Truth
- We Know It, but We Can't Prove It
- Psst, I've Got a Secret
- Sensationalism: Nothing More Than Feelings
- News As Spectacle (March 13, 2005)
- Media Sell the Sizzle of Small-Minded Stories
- Littleton: Madness Magnified
- Secondhand Emotions: When TV Filters Our Feelings, They Become Pale Imitations of Life
- In Search of Amazement
- Letting It All Hang Out: The Rise of Raunch
- Though Our Goodness Grows, a Culture of Cruelty Thrives
- Paranoids Return! But Exhibitionists Seize the Day
- No More Plain Brown Wrappers
- When Culture Goes Raunchy
- Taking Aim at Graphic Concerns
- Identity: Race, Gay Rights, and 9/11
- The History We Choose to Forget
- A White Man's View of Blacks
- A Black Woman's View of Whites
- Imus's Sin Stains Many
- A Hard Look at the Slaveholding Fathers of Our Country
- Still the Same Old Same Old
- For Men, "Straight" Label Is Inflexible
- Marriage of Our Hearts and Minds
- The Beginning of Dialogue
- The Age of the Fear of Terror
- What's Up with the Muslims?
- Assimilation and Its Discontents
- No-Brainers Meet the Brainwashed
- New Directions in a Changing Landscape
- The Perils of the Luckiest Generation
- Friendly, from Afar
- Feeling All Righteous
- Hiding from the Silence of the Mind
- Parents Give Traditional Names Creative Twists
- An Old-Fashioned Icon in a Fragmented Culture
- If Mother Superior Speaks, Listen
- You Are at Your Service
- Nowadays, It's Easy to Hear Women Roar
- Men Peek Out from the Cave
- My Children's Bookshelf Is a Battleground
- Peter Pan Literature Takes Flight
- Happy Days in a Grumble-Free Land
- When Our Lives Become iMovies
