America and the Patterns of Chivalry by John Fraser

America and the Patterns of Chivalry by John Fraser

John Fraser explores a paradox about the USA: that a country dedicated to rationality, progress, equality and success has always had a strong attachment to the medieval ideas of nobility and chivalry and the high toned violence that goes with them. The strange consequences of this attachment spread deep into US history and politics: They were at the heart of the Civil War but also give a flavour to domestic politics, especially industrial relations. They also sound a special note in American fiction, from Twain to The Great Gatsby and beyond and in the whole of popular culture, especially the movies. This aspect of the American spirit is one of the many admirable things about this country and Fraser has written a book that will move its readers as well as instruct, enlighten and amuse them.

John Fraser is a novelist and poet. He has lived in Rome since 1980. Previously, he worked in England and Canada. For more information on John Fraser, please visit www.johnfraserfiction.com or email info@aesopbooks.com. The distinguished poet, novelist, Whitbread Award winner and Booker Prize nominee John Fuller has written of Fraser's fiction: One of the most extraordinary publishing events of the past few years has been the rapid, indeed insistent, appearance of the novels of John Fraser. There are few parallels in literary history to this almost simultaneous and largely belated appearance of a mature oeuvre, sprung like Athena from Zeus's forehead; and the novels in themselves are extraordinary. I can think of nothing much like them in fiction. Fraser maintains a masterfully ironic distance from the extreme conditions in which his characters find themselves. There are strikingly beautiful descriptions, veiled allusions to rooted traditions, unlikely events half-glimpsed, abrupted narratives, surreal but somehow apposite social customs. Fraser's work is conceived on a heroic scale in terms both of its ideas and its situational metaphors. If he were to be filmed, it would need the combined talents of a Bunuel, a Gilliam, a Cameron. Like Thomas Pynchon, whom in some ways he resembles, Fraser is a deep and serious fantasist, wildly inventive. The reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection the author bestows upon them. They move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly-detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll. Of Fraser's Animal Tales, Fuller wrote: It convinces me that he is the most original novelist of our time. His work has become an internal dialogue of intuitions and counter-intuitions that just happens to take the form of conversations between his inscrutable characters. But really it is a rich texture of poetic perceptions, frequently reaching for the aphoristic, but rooted in sidelong debate and weird analogies. The full text of John Fuller's article on Fraser is at www.johnfuller-poet.com/johnfraser.htm.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780521110099
ISBN 10	0521110092
Title	America and the Patterns of Chivalry
Author	John Fraser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2009-04-30
Number of pages	312
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.