William Deresiewicz – författare

This elegant and thoughtful work offers an important new way of understanding Jane Austen by defining the fundamental impact and influence of British Romanticism on her later novels. In comparing the earlier and later phases of Austen''s career, Deresiewicz addresses an important yet neglected issue regarding her work: the longstanding critical consensus that Austen''s last three novels (Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) represent far greater artistic achievements than do her first three (Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice). Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets offers a rich account of the differences between the two phases of Austen''s career. In doing so, it contextualizes her later novels within the British Romantic movement and the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Byron. Through close readings of Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, Deresiewicz reveals the importance of Romantic ideas in Austen''s later work, considering the ways in which the novels investigate hidden mechanisms of psychic and affective life, including "substitution," "ambiguous relationships," and "widowhood." Deresiewicz''s innovative approach and its emphasis on Romanticism opens up new perspectives on Austen''s later novels by exploring their patterns of imagery, narrative logics, and social and historical dimensions.

A passionate, probing collection gathering nearly thirty years of groundbreaking reflection on culture and society alongside four new essays, by one of our most respected essayists and critics.What is the internet doing to us? What is college for? What are the myths and metaphors we live by? These are the questions that William Deresiewicz has been pursuing over the course of his award-winning career. The End of Solitude brings together more than forty of his finest essays, including four that are published here for the first time. Ranging widely across the culture, they take up subjects as diverse as Mad Men and Harold Bloom, the significance of the hipster, and the purpose of art. Drawing on the past, they ask how we got where we are. Scrutinizing the present, they seek to understand how we can live more mindfully and freely, and they pose two fundamental questions: What does it mean to be an individual, and how can we sustain our individuality in an age of networks and groups?

A deeply researched warning about how the digital economy threatens artists'' lives and work—the music, writing, and visual art that sustain our souls and societies—from an award-winning essayist and criticThere are two stories you hear about earning a living as an artist in the digital age. One comes from Silicon Valley. There''s never been a better time to be an artist, it goes. If you''ve got a laptop, you''ve got a recording studio. If you''ve got an iPhone, you''ve got a movie camera. And if production is cheap, distribution is free: it''s called the Internet. Everyone''s an artist; just tap your creativity and put your stuff out there.The other comes from artists themselves. Sure, it goes, you can put your stuff out there, but who''s going to pay you for it? Everyone is not an artist. Making art takes years of dedication, and that requires a means of support. If things don''t change, a lot of art will cease to be sustainable.So which account is true? Since people are still making a living as artists today, how are they managing to do it? William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the nineteenth century, and professionals in the twentieth, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society. A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company