Book

Shattuck, Roger, author.

Candor and perversion : literature, education, and the arts / Roger Shattuck.

First edition.

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [1999]

©1999.

viii, 415 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

This volume offers an array of provocative ideas to reaffirm literature as a central field of study and personal reward. With analysis, the author elucidates the nature of intellectual craftsmanship, defends art's moral component, and laments our culture's drift toward both anti-intellectualism and philistine pretension. Whether commenting on Flaubert, Foucault, or Pulp Fiction, this work presents a stirring, humane synthesis of the principles and values by which we can live together as a nation finally at peace with its diversity. The author also considers subjects as diverse as the writings of Michel Foucault, the "Beulah Quintet" novels of Mary Lee Settle, the accomplishments of Sarah Bernhardt, and the collaborative efforts of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Much of the book is devoted to the intellectual life of 19th- and 20th-century France, with Shattuck focusing on impressionism, symbolism, surrealism, and other avant-garde movements in art and literature. He also includes several essays on the current state of higher education.

Literature -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.

American literature -- History and criticism.

French literature -- History and criticism.

Education, Higher -- United States.

Arts -- Study and teaching.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nineteen theses on literature -- Perplexing lessons : is there a core tradition in the humanities? -- American education against itself -- Education : higher and lower -- How to read a book -- The spiritual in art -- How we think at the movies -- Life before language : Nathalie Sarraute -- Second thoughts on a wooden horse : Michel Foucault -- Art at first sight -- Radical skepticism and how we got here -- From the Swiss Family Robinson to Narratus Interruptus -- Teaching the unteachable : Kipling, Proust, Nietzsche & co -- The alibi of art -- The social institutions of modern art -- Manet, the missing link -- Unlikely pen pals : George Sand and Gustave Flaubert -- Sara Bernhardt, the sacred monster -- Yuppies along the Seine : the impressionists -- Living by words : Mallarme -- The present place of futurism -- Early Picasso : Mailer's version -- Captions or illustrations? : Braque's handbook -- The story of Hans/Jean/Kaspar Arp -- Cocteau, native son of Paris -- Confidence man : Marcel Duchamp -- The last cause (an experimental play) -- From aestheticism to fascism -- An American Roman-Fleuve : the Beulah Quintet -- "The great American thing" : O'Keeffe and Stieglitz -- Candor and perversion : Man Ray -- Born-again African : Leopold Senghor -- A masterpiece from Senegal -- Blank and white : illuminating Octavio Paz -- Arthur Miller's account of himself -- Naipaul on the American South -- A poet's stories : W.S. Merwin -- Quantum tales : Renata Adler -- Scandal and stereotypes on Broadway : the new Puritanism.

Table of contents

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