Silent Conversations

A Reader’s Life

Anthony Rudolf

Silent Conversations
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Anthony Rudolf

Distributed for Seagull Books

748 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2013
Cloth $35.00 ISBN: 9780857420800 Published August 2013 World sales rights except India

For Anthony Rudolf, reading is a profoundly serious and intense activity, as well as a major source of pleasure and solace. At the same time, it is always interrupted by day jobs, friendships, politics and, paradoxically, by the act of writing. All of this comes together in Silent Conversations: A Reader’s Life, a canny and insightful memoir of Rudolf’s life in books.
 
A quest for hope in dark times, Silent Conversations captures Rudolf’s inimitable style and his own admitted tendency to digress—with invariably fascinating and revealing results. Among the threads that crisscross all the sections are fragmentary dialogues with a number of interlocutors—including Paula Rego and Yves Bonnefoy, whom Rudolf has been translating for nearly fifty years—that explore the essentials of the life of a thoughtful and committed individual in a troubled and frightening world. At once old fashioned and completely contemporary, Rudolf seeks in this work to share his reflections with others through story and image.In this network of voices, a labyrinth of collage and quotation come to life, doing the work of analysis and critique (of self and others), and following threads of interest through and across its pages. With a deft lyricism, a light touch, and a sharp wit, Rudolf provides a detailed account of his passions and obsessions: memory and mortality, painting and music, the fate of the earth, and many other things that touch on his life as a reader and as a writer.
 
Silent Conversations is characterized by Rudolf’s witty and tender approach to life and literature. Notwithstanding his lifelong need for mentors, including Octavio Paz, George Oppen and Primo Levi, Rudolf is very much his own man.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preliminary Note

Preface

 

Introduction

 

France and French Literature

      Introduction

      Twentieth-Century French Prose

      French Poetry

      A Visit to Paris

Jewish Worlds

      Introduction

      Writings of the Disaster

      Politics

      History

      Religion and Theology

      Folklore and Humour

      Literature

      Memoirs/Fiction

      Poetry/Film

Poetry

      Introduction (1)

      Introduction (2)

      Introduction (3)

      British Poets: Inscriptions and Other Memories

      American Poets

      Anthologies

      Small Presses

      Ireland and Scotland

      Poetry Translation

Russian Literature

      Introduction

      Nineteenth-Century Classics

      Twentieth-Century Writing

(Auto)biographies, Letters, Journals and Memoirs

      Introductory Note

      Autobiographies

      Letters

      Diaries/Journals

      Memoirs

      Biographies

Literary Criticism, Reading and Translation, Essays, Etc.

      Introductory Note

      Literary Criticism

      Reading and Translation

      Essays, etc.

Fiction

      Introduction

      Writers I Have Neglected

      Shorter Fiction

      Americans

      Europeans (Extending to Persia)

      Europe: British Writers

      Friends

      Fiction I Don’t Read

School Books, Reference Books, Proof Copies and Such

      Introductory Note

      Children’s Books

       ‘A’-Level Set Texts and Other School Books

      Education

      Reference Books

      Proof Copies, Review Copies and Rare Books

Painting and Other Arts

      Introductory Note

      Painters, Their Work and Their Writers

      Architecture

      Photography

      Language

       History

      Travel Books

      Politics

      Science and Medicine

 

Afterword

Bibliography

 

For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Biography and Letters

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