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129th out of 255 books
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Clark Gifford's Body (New York Review Books Classics)
Back in Print After Fifty Years
Clark Gifford? A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom—a ...more
Clark Gifford? A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom—a ...more
Paperback, 288 pages
Published
October 17th 2006
by NYRB Classics
(first published 1937)
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The prosody is pulp, the structure and concerns (the construction of history, for one) are Modernist, and the act of reading it is, in retrospect, Borgesian. Borgesian in the sense expressed in the foreword to The Garden of Forking Paths: beside its own synopses and commentaries, the book itself is unnecessary. I loved the back cover.
Fearing, Kenneth. CLARK GIFFORD’S BODY. (1942). ****. Fearing (1902-1961) is primarily known for his crime novel, “The Big Clock,” but also published an impressive amount of fiction for pulp magazines – and, supposedly, a great deal of soft porn to make his living early on. In the 1920s and 1930s he was a regular contributor to “The New Yorker,” and helped found “The Partisan Review.” He was also a respected poet, with much of that work still in print. This novel might best be described a...more
The premise and the structure were interesting and the satire of political and revolutionary movements is still relevant. Clark Gifford's Body is the story of how a failed revolutionary act is co-opted and manipulated by various political groups whose agendas (Clark Gifford's included) seem to be based on plattitudes so amorphous and ambiguous as to make their differences almost meaningless and interchangable - making it easy enough for the characters themselves to change sides as they detect w...more
Oh my goodness! this came out of left field. Written in the late 40s... I'm not really sure how to describe this, but it's noir-y fiction (particularly in the descriptions and in the dialogue) with multiple points of view (a la Rashomon), it has complex world building (but it's not sci-fi), centered around an insurrectionary attack on a radio station, and written by communist. But also totally readable and fun. It was great!
Clark Gifford's Body - Kenneth Fearing
This has some major flaws, but still does some pretty amazing things. Fearing is not one to follow the crowd. Suppose you switch radio with the internet?
This has some major flaws, but still does some pretty amazing things. Fearing is not one to follow the crowd. Suppose you switch radio with the internet?
Strangely compelling and still 69 years after its initial publication, timely. A country (or is it the entire world?) is at war and the novel jumps back and forth in time before and after "the attack" that sets off the latest round of fighting. Different characters from each side are describe their involvement with restrained detachment. There are no good guys, no bad guys. Just people in a war.
A book seemingly ahead of its time for its fake-news-account and jumbled chronological telling and for its political thematics about a mass mediated politics, it's a book I liked a little more in theory than in practice. But there are some evocative moments, particularly in its reflection on tourism and historical memory.
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