The Nothing That Is and the Nothing That Is Not is the final volume in a trilogy on interpretations of otherness in the postmodern era. The first two volumes are A Do-It-Yourself Dystopia: The Americanization of Big Brother (University Press of America, 2002) and Leopards in the Temple: Selected Essays 1990-2000 (University Press of America, 2001).
What is the role of the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of otherness in a secularized, high-tech society such as our own? In a world governed by the extensions of man--television, the telephone, the automobile, and the Internet--what happens to cultural values once held to be spiritual? In Leopards in the Temple: Selected Essays 1990-2000, Steven Carter explores the myriad ways in which technology and its "muses"--media entertainment and advertising, the so-called culture of electronics plus capitalism--are in the process of recycling metaphysical values in postmodern American life.
Howard Hughes embodied the American dream: envied by powerful men, desired by beautiful women, Hughes lived his life larger than all who surrounded him and yet died an emaciated recluse. This makes him the perfect subject for red-hot biographer Alton Reece. Riding high on the wave of previous astonishing success, Reece sees Hughes as more than simply a name worth the seven-figure advance he's demanding from his publisher. He finds in Hughes a kindred spirit of greatness, a man misunderstood and beaten down by jealous inferiors. But even as Reece struggles to 'know' his subject, his own rapidly unravelling life keeps finding unexpected ways to intrude. With a deft comic touch and an astounding narrative style, Steven Carter's novel creates a picture of a Hughes who might have been, a biographer who can't separate his subject from his own visions of grandeur, and a public that demands its heroes be larger than life - if only so they can be more easily torn down.
The third installment of Steven Carter's multi-volume series 222: Aphorisms & Reflections features 222 additional entries, including a generous sampling of "meetings of the minds"--dialogues between the author and aphorists and thinkers of the past.
This book reveals a man who has been given a dangerously free pass by historians, but who in reality is not only a failed ex-president, but as vindictive as he is egotitical, and a self-righteous busybody who leaves diaster in his wake.
This book is the sixth volume in a sequence which began with 222: Aphorisms & Reflections, featuring more than 450 entries, some autobiographical. Like its predecessors, New Aphorisms & Reflections includes a sampling of "meetings of the minds"-dialogues between the author and aphorists and thinkers of the past.
The essence of life in an oligarchy like George Orwell presents in '1984' is that freedom of choice is virtually non-existent. But what happens when so many trivial and meaningless choices inundate a culture such as our own and freedom itself becomes devalued? In 'A Do-It-Yourself Dystopia', through a variety of essays, Steven Carter addresses this and other issues in a wide-ranging search for hidden oligarchies of the American self.
Steven Carter¿s best work has been done in the haibun genre, so it¿s a pleasure to see him returning to it in this new volume. He explores, as is his wont, the ramifications of memory and its loss, with the usual examples taken from his own interesting life.
A genre-bending romp that is at once reminiscent of Raymond Carver and Carl Hiaasen. Steven Carter, who has been called "madly inventive" (Kirkus Reviews) and "darkly comic" (Village Voice), has a genius for letting his characters speak for themselves, and here they do so quite literally. Famous Writers School is composed of three aspiring authors' letters and stories sent to a correspondence course by that grandiose name, and the self-serving "lessons" that Wendell Newton, their endearingly obtuse instructor, doles out in response. Wendell's oddball collection of students includes Rio, an alluring blues singer on whom he quickly develops a crush; Linda Trane, an unhinged housewife who may be stalking him; and Dan, a truly talented author of hard-boiled detective fiction. As Dan's gritty mystery arrives piece by piece, Wendell gets hooked on the story--and decides to dress it up in his own style in order to pass it off as his creation.
This volume features well over 200 fresh and original oxymorons with commentaries-all with a satirical twist. As a satire, Little House of Oxymorons complements Steven Carter's The New Devil's Dictionary, a two-volume "sequel" to Ambrose Bierce's notorious The Devil's Dictionary of a century ago.
New Aphorisms & Reflections: Fourth Series, the seventh volume in a sequence which began with 222: Aphorisms & Reflections, features more than 450 entries, some of which are autobiographical. Like its predecessors, New Aphorisms & Reflections includes a sampling of "meetings of the minds"-dialogues between the author and aphorists and thinkers of the past.
James Jones's spiritual beliefs were central to his great World War II trilogy From Here to Eternity. The Thin Red Line, and Whistle, as well as to the rest of his fiction. In this first book-length exploration of the subject, Steven Carter argues that Jones's ideas about reincarnation, karma, and spiritual evolution were heavily influenced by transcendentalism, theosophy, and Oriental religions. The author places Jones in what he identifies as a tradition of American literary Orientalism that includes Emerson, Thoreau, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and others. Carter bases his argument on extensive research into American literature and criticism coupled with visits and personal correspondence with Jones.
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