A strong, pleasing work that is as much about living as about reading and writing.
How unlived lives permeate our literature and our psyches.
The examples begin with “The Road Not Taken,” “the classic poem of unled lives,” but Miller, a professor of English at Johns Hopkins, extends that theme all the way through It’s a Wonderful Life and Jenny Offill’s contemporary novel Dept. of Speculation. The author also ponders the possibilities of those alternate lives in his own mind, inviting readers to do the same. He describes how the early stages of a life (or novel or story) have expansive possibilities, how critical choices narrow those possibilities—through marriage, geography, vocation, etc.—and how the resulting narrow road leaves us pondering those roads that led in different directions. Miller shows how this recognition of unled lives informs fiction, how characters define their lives in contrast to those not led, how novelists acknowledge that their artistic choices don’t preclude reflection on others they might have chosen, and how plotlines that seem inevitable might have taken different turns. “Regret and relief are the emotions we’ve seen most often in these stories, and regret much more often than relief,” he writes. “Either may be overwhelming, but neither is obscure. Their sources are usually clear.” However, the way in which characters realize that they could have been this or could have done that isn’t limited to the page; the process invites empathy from readers, who may realize that their own identities have been circumscribed by the lives not lived and choices not made. “Regret and relief may be the most familiar signs of our unled lives, but this heartbreaking beauty is the most moving to me,” writes Miller. “It’s the freedom and loneliness of middle age.” The author proceeds from close readings of Dickens, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf to a particularly incisive examination of the narrative strategy in Ian McEwan’s Atonement.
A strong, pleasing work that is as much about living as about reading and writing.Pub Date: June 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-674-23808-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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