HAWKES
A Guide to His Fictions
FREDERICK BUSCH
Abundantly praised, vigorously condemned, the work of the American
writer John Hawkes has been controversial from the publication of his
first novel in 1949. But, as is often the case with work that is "difficult,"
the fictions of John Hawkes have been more talked about than examined.
This first full-length study of his novels, short stories, and plays seeks to
remedy that situation.
Busch guides the reader through each
of
Hawkes's fiction from the
early novella
Charivari
and the novels
The Cannibal
and
The Beetle Leg
through the pieces in
The Goose on the Grave
to the better-known
Lime
Twig
and
Second Skin,
the plays of
The Innocent Party,
and the most
recent and celebrated,
The Blood Oranges.
A novelist himself, Busch is an
able guide to Hawkes's complex, fascinating worlds, intriguing the un–
familiar reader and at the same time developing in those who know them
well a richer, finer sense of Hawkes's novels.
As Paul West says of this book: "Hawkes's abiding concerns emerge in
all their subtlety (the special use of animals, for instance), Busch's own
subtlety being a match for Hawkes's own. In short, this book evinces a
singular matching of critic to novelist. This is a distinguished work of
appreciative criticism."
THE WEAK KING DILEMMA
in
the Shakespearean History Play
MICHAEL MANHEIM
$8.95
The eternal dilemma of political leadership is the focus here - whether the
only way to be a successful king (or leader) is to conceal one's human
limitations behind an image of more than human strength and certainty,
no matter how devious or ruthless the means by which the image is achieved.
The play-going public of Elizabethan England came to accept this
Machiavellian solution; it has been viewed as political truth ever since.
Professor Manheim explores the dilemma of the weak king in depth
as he examines the history plays of that period - the anonymous
Wood–
stock,
Marlowe's
Edward
11, and Shakespeare's
Richard
11,
Henry VI,
King John, Henry IV and Henry V.
As he points out, only in the later
plays, notably in
Henry V,
does the king learn to use the devious tactics that
establish the illusion of kingly invulnerability.
Manheim demonstrates the ways in which audience attitudes toward
the king are manipulated in these plays; and in so doing makes clear his
awareness that they "have as much impact upon our own feelings about
political problems and events as they did upon the feelings of audiences in
their own time."
At your bookseller
or
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Syracuse, New York 13210
$9.50
