What Is What Was

By: Richard Stern

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Paperback | 15 October 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
328 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.16 x 1.49 x 0.19

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What Is What Was, Richard Stern's fifth "orderly miscellany," is the first to meaningfully combine his fiction and nonfiction. Stories, such as the already well-known "My Ex, the Moral Philosopher," appear among portraits (of the sort Hugh Kenner praised as "almost the invention of a new genre"): Auden, Pound, Ellison, Terkel, W. C. Fields, Bertrand Russell, Walter Benjamin (in both essay and story), Jung and Freud, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.

In the book's seven sections are analyses of the Wimbledon tennis tournament as an Anglification machine, of Silicon Valley at its shaky peak, of James and Dante as travel writers, a Lucretian look at today's cosmology, American fiction in detail and depth, a "thought experiment" for Clarence Thomas, a salvation scheme for Ross Perot, a semi-confession of the writer.

The book contains but isn't philosophy, criticism, opinion, reportage, or autobiography (although the author says it is as much of this as he plans to write). There is a recurrent theme, the ways in which actuality is made and remade in description, argument and narration, fictional and nonfictional, but above all, What Is What Was is a provocative entertainment by a writer who, as Philip Roth once said, "knows as much as anyone writing American prose about family mischief, intellectual shenanigans, love blunders-and about writing American prose."

Industry Reviews

"Stern's skill gives vitality to everything he treats." - Edmund White, Los Angeles Times "Stern is incapable of writing an unconsidered, lazy, or hackneyed line." - Peter Straub, New Statesman "His control is extraordinary, his fastball is devastating, nobody walks, nobody steals a base." - Saul Bellow "Stern is a fine novelist and more than a little bit of the classical model of the American crackpot. In his essays he is doing all kinds of interesting things, often most seriously when he is most off the wall. And best of all, he knows what he's doing, and if you will listen, he will tell you, too.... You would be right to read him as you read Montaigne." - George Garrett, Sewanee Review

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Literature, Poetry & Plays Anthologies (non-poetry)Non-Fiction Prose Literary Essays History & Criticism of Literature Miscellaneous Items Language & Linguistics Reference, Dictionaries & Guides

Preface
Others Seen through Me With Auden Remembering Pound Ralph Ellison Studs: WFMT, April 7, 1995
A Very Few Memories of Don Justice
The Venetian Sculptress Ray West and the Iowa Writers' Workshop
My Ex, the Moral Philosopher
Places Where the Chips Fall Wimbledon, 1992
James, the Traveler Going and Coming: On Celati's Adventures in Africa
An Indiana Library My Chicago
The Chicago Writer's City Books and Chicago, Chicago and Books
A Glance at Bellow in Chicago, 1993
Chicago, in the Depths of Feeling
The Is of Was Over the Hill On Atlas on Bellow Bertrand Russell Misunderstanding Carnap W. C. Fields Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger Jung The Outsider Inside Benjamin's Way Almonds
Miscellaneous Commentaries and Opinions Warriors of the Open, 1996
Tears, Idle Tears, I Now Know
What They Mean King of a Rainy Country
Logging Expiation Montaigne in Illinois Ozick on Kafka, Frank, and Ozick Jane Jacobs's Ideas
Our Regenstein Chipping at the Schools
From Van Meegeren to Van Blederen Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and the Waves of Genesis
Eliminating the National Debt His Good Name Letter to the Editor, New York Times
To Go with an Old Necklace...
Statement for the Meeting of the University of Chicago Senate on April 29, 1986
A Few Words from Someone Who's Written a Few Too Many
On Fiction A Few Things
American Fiction Says Malamud's Stories
His Other Life Austin Wright Vidal in Conclusion
Updike's Brushstroke Fictionally
De-Cubaed Rupert Thompson Call It Recall Killing Chic
On Friends, Here and Gone For John Wallace
The Ones Who Do Things for Us (Alane Rollings)
Edward Levi Arthur Heiserman Imre Horner
Misremembering Montale Words about Hugh
For Ernest Sirluck For Leon Forrest
On Myself An Old Writer Looks at Himself Monologue
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

What Is What Was

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