Synopsis
A collection of essays by noted writers about the important question of progress at the close of the twentieth century
Reviews
Seventeen eminent (e.g., Ishmael Reed, Bill McKibben, Alan Lightman, Alan Cheuse) and less-well-known writers ponder the elusive goal of social, global and personal progress in this mixed bag of essays. In a cogent plea for ecological sanity, Kirkpatrick Sale critiques a high-tech, expansionist global economy that gobbles up resources and creates unabating pollution while increasing the inequalities between the wealthy few and the billions of poor. Annie Dillard, in a wrenching examination of our emotional numbness to large-scale human tragedies, sketches a cosmic perspective on the cycle of life and death, with the aim of restoring a sense of each individual's importance. Nicholas Delbanco claims that the ethos of America is inextricably linked to the idea of forward motion and to ideals of self-improvement and self-reliance. But, he argues, "sideways motion equally may represent advance." Other contributors take a much more personal tack, defining progress so vaguely that the essays lose coherence. Poet Susan Wood tells how psychoanalysis helped her overcome recurrent nightmares, sleepwalking and writer's block; John Barth serves up a mannered karmic fable about stumbling upon a dead cat; novelist Shawn Wong reflects on his Chinese American heritage and envisages a tolerant multicultural society. Although the Shreves seem to have meant technological progress, the writers delivered much more personal definitions of what progress is. With such a broad, amorphous subject, it's perhaps inevitable that the result is a conversation with people talking largely to themselves. FYI: This is the Shreves' second book in a series of original essays on a single subject. The first, Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice in America, was published by Beacon in 1997.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
This is the second in an earnest series of anthologies edited by the Shreves. (The first was Outside the Law: Narratives on Justice, LJ 7/15/97.) The idea behind this series is to have narrative writers, i.e., storytellers, address issues that are usually left to academics?an interesting idea but one that results in a mixed bag. The problem, perhaps inherent from the outset, is that the most engaging narratives (e.g., John Barth's) bear only the most tangential relationship to the topic. Nevertheless, there are some thought-provoking essays here from writers as diverse as Nicholas Delbanco, Annie Dillard, Deborah Tannen, Janna Malamud Smith, Bill McKibben, and Ishmael Reed. Recommended where demand warrants.?Mary Paumier Jones, Westminster P. L., Lafayette, CO
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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