A memoir and social history of small-town America in the early 1950s recalls the conflicting values that shaped the author's education but reveals how his progressive thinking family fostered his love for fiction and his desire to be unique.
In Born Again Skeptic & Other Valedictions, University of Oklahoma emeritus professor and peripatetic knowledge-seeker Robert Murray Davis tackles the big questions: about origins, identity, emotional and intellectual rootlessness; the little questions: why some small towns call to us and others don't, how academia works, or doesn't; and third-rail questions: about sex, relationships, women, men, religion, and aesthetics. The essays are witty and provocative, and Davis's writing style is both erudite and conversational.
In Playing Cowboys, Robert Murray Davis examines the Western hero-a principal image of American manhood since publication of The Virginian-as portrayed by a variety of post-World War II novelists and filmmakers. Innovative artists have used the Western to discuss issues of ethics and aesthetics, but its greatest impact may have been on popular cultural values. Davis shows that the Western is not primarily about escape or violence, but, at its best, is about development. The would-be hero adopts the existing role only to find it inadequate, and, forced to "reimagine" himself, he defines the Western hero anew. At the core of this process is strength-not power over others, but courage to go beyond the established boundaries. Although women do appear in the Western (often as proponents of "civilization"), it is fundamentally a man's world, offering an important view of male identity. Focusing on The Virginian, chapter 1 explores the origin of the Western hero and the source of the genre's major plots and issues. Chapter 2 evaluates history, myth, and the relative reality of the two in the works of Oakley Hall. Citing the novels of Richard Brautigan, E.L. Doctorow, John Hawkes, and Michael Ondaatje, chapter 3 compares the Western and the gothic novel, focusing on the concept of space. These works portray the West as a wasteland devoid of any vitality, but chapter 4 takes up science fiction Westerns (including works by John Jakes, John Boyd, and Robert Sheckley) that use the Western frontier to ironic and liberating effect. Chapter 5, on the motion picture Blazing Saddles and the postmodern Western novels of Ishmael Reed and Alvin Greenberg, examines the role playing by which identity is created. And in his Preface, Introduction, and Epilogue, Davis frames these discussions with personal observations on the West and its relation to the American masculine mystique. For those interested in Western movies or novels, popular culture, gender studies, or literary criticism, Playing Cowboys is a unique and indispensable guide to the territory from here to the sunset.
A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh is a collection of essays based on presentations at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference at Hertford College, Oxford in 2003. There are twelve different essays by authors from various countries, including Australia, Canada, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The title of the book, Davis explains, is a description, not a value judgment. Compared to a middle-class education, which is "supposed to help you maintain status so that you can understand what your family is saying", a lower-middle-class education is "supposed to improve your status so that your family will not understand what you are saying". When Davis left his hometown in rural Missouri and arrived in Kansas City to attend Rockhurst College, he had yet to see television or the New York Times or a foreign film. The college aimed to mold such impressionable young men into upstanding Catholic laymen, but Davis's increasing interests in girls, jazz, and writing took him down a path less traditional than the one the college had in mind. Davis's account show the real 1950s. Though now hailed as the era of staunch family values, this was a time when such values were starting to be challenged, when an increasing number of people sought alternative ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Called the Silent Generation because they did not openly rebel, many of these young people did not easily accept the values their parents and teachers espoused. The lessons Davis learns during his college years extend beyond those provided in the classroom. With increasing experience, he realizes what he cannot do or be: he cannot live at home again, and, despite a serious love interest, is not ready to marry or settle down. By the time of graduation he does know he wants to be a writer, but after a stint as a journalist for a small-town newspaper, he pursues a career as a professor, the role he finally knows will suit him best.
This is an engaging and unusual memoir that is also both cultural analysis and a history of ideas. Davis examines his personal experience of graduate literary studies, tenure and retirement, then offers astute analysis of social changes affecting the professional study of literature in the second half of the twentieth century. He concludes with an account of his own shift as a writer to creative nonfiction and cultural commentary."--Back cover.
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