We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think
Selected Essays
Shirley Hazzard author Brigitta Olubas editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:20th Mar '18
Should be back in stock very soon
Shirley Hazzard's nonfiction works spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s contribute to a keener understanding of postwar letters, thought, and politics, supported by an introduction that situates Hazzard's writing within its historical context and emphasizes her influence on world literature. This collection confirms Hazzard's place within a network of writers, artists, and intellectuals who believe in the ongoing power of literature to console, inspire, and direct human life, despite-or maybe because of-the world's disheartening realities.
This collection of Shirley Hazzard's nonfiction works spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s confirms her influence on world literature and her place among writers, artists, and intellectuals who believe in the ongoing power of literature to console, inspire, and direct human life, despite—or maybe because of—the world's disheartening realities.Spanning the 1960s to the 2000s, these nonfiction writings showcase Shirley Hazzard's extensive thinking on global politics, international relations, the history and fraught present of Western literary culture, and postwar life in Europe and Asia. They add essential clarity to the themes that dominate her award-winning fiction and expand the intellectual registers in which her writings work. Hazzard writes about her employment at the United Nations and the institution's manifold failings. She shares her personal experience with the aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic bombing and the nature of life in late-1940s Hong Kong. She speaks to the decline of the hero as a public figure in Western literature and affirms the ongoing power of fiction to console, inspire, and direct human life, despite-or maybe because of-the world's disheartening realities. Cementing Hazzard's place as one of the twentieth century's sharpest and most versatile thinkers, this collection also encapsulates for readers the critical events defining postwar letters, thought, and politics.
This book shows that Hazzard is a fierce defender of the humanistic belief in the efficacy of literature (especially poetry) and art to illuminate the truth and to provide meaningful insight into the mystery of human existence. -- Michael Collier, author of An Individual History Hazzard's essays are full of crystalline turns of phrase and aphoristic expressions of her core humanist principles-as well as of revealing, often fascinating, political contradictions. Scholars and students of Hazzard will strike gold. -- Claire Seiler, Dickinson College A rich, urbane, insightful collection. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In these essays there is a lovely sense of witnessing a brilliant and judicious mind at work. Shirley Hazzard has a way of finding the right phrase, and capturing a tone and a rhythm, that offer a sort of sensuous pleasure to the reader. She cares passionately about writing, the life of the mind, and also the public realm. As in her novels, her essays display the quality of her sympathy, her ability to make distinctions as well as connections, and her acute analysis. She is an inspiring presence in our literary lives, and having these essays is both a gift and a revelation. -- Colm Toibin Hazzard employs language like a knife, with precision and incisiveness... What comes through most clearly is Hazzard's delight in the English language and its capacity for expression and communication. Publishers Weekly An elegant and cultured collection. -- Andy Miller The Spectator We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think manages the difficult task of making old-school, mid-century liberal humanism feel alive, urgent and necessary once again. -- Geordie Williamson The Australian Breathtaking and challenging. -- Sarah Murdoch The Toronto Star Absorbing... Illuminating... Throughout this brief, captivating collection, which also includes essays on literature, history, and travel, Hazzard is articulate and humane. -- Rona Cran Times Literary Supplement Her fiction, with its stylistic elegance and intellectual verve, is quite enough to warrant our admiration. Los Angeles Review of Books From We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think, Shirley Hazzard emerges, to paraphrase Olubas, as eloquent, thoughtful, civil, and intellectually generous. -- Brian Matthews Australian Book Review
ISBN: 9780231173278
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
248 pages