Playing the Hand We Are Dealt

The Counterpoint of Fate and Freewill in Literature and Life

Michael Jackson (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

288 Seiten

2024
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80539-704-5 (ISBN)

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The relationship between literature and life can be construed as a counterpoint of fate and freewill. Rather than equating fate to the ‘hand we are dealt’ which is reducible to the social or familial environments into which we are born, this book explores the idea of fate through the books that shape our lives and under whose influence we write. Writing in this sense is seen as beyond its utility of making meaning. It is a way of recovering agency in the face of overwhelming experiences. In juxtaposing factuality and fiction, the author makes a case for a radically empirical approach to human experience.

Michael Jackson is Senior Research Fellow in World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of over forty books of poetry, ethnography, fiction and memoir, including The Politics of Storytelling (2002), The Genealogical Imagination (2021), Coincidences (2021) andFriendship (2023)

Prologue

Part I: Precursors: Reflections from a Literary Life

Preface

Chapter 1. Constellations

Chapter 2. They Were Alive and They Spoke to Me

Chapter 3. Aftereffects

Chapter 4. Of Time and the River

Chapter 5. Down and out in Paris and London

Chapter 6. ‘The Being I Refer to as Me’

Chapter 7. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

Chapter 8. Utopias

Chapter 9. In Limbo

Chapter 10. Down the Mine

Chapter 11. Wheels Within Wheels

Chapter 12. 'Something Tremendous Has Happened'

Chapter 13. Illuminations

Chapter 14. 'Like Somebody Else Was Once'

Chapter 15. The Limits of Logos

Chapter 16. The House of the Dead

Chapter 17. The Shadow

Chapter 18. Knights Errant

Chapter 19. In the Footsteps of Hans Christian Andersen

Chapter 20. Neither/Nor

Chapter 21. Anecdote of the I-Beam

Chapter 22. The Homeless Mind

Chapter 23. Quicksand

Chapter 24. Only Connect

Chapter 25. Watermarks

Chapter 26. Cat's Cradle

Part II: Passages

Preface

Chapter 27. Side by Side

Chapter 28. La Forza Del Destino

Chapter 29. Save Me

Chapter 30. Kind of Blue

Chapter 31. Havanaise

Chapter 32. The Story of the Man with Three Braids

Chapter 33. The Remorseful Day

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	10.09.2024
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
ISBN-10	1-80539-704-4 / 1805397044
ISBN-13	978-1-80539-704-5 / 9781805397045
Zustand	Neuware