{"id":4154,"date":"2018-06-24T12:52:09","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T19:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i81.a52.mywebsitetransfer.com\/?p=4154"},"modified":"2018-06-24T12:52:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T19:52:09","slug":"latest-from-dactyl-review-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dactylfoundation.org\/?p=4154","title":{"rendered":"Latest from Dactyl Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>A Decent Woman by Eleanor Parker\u00a0Sapia<\/strong><\/p>\n

In The Age of Insight,<\/em> Eric Kandel writes about the role of the observer in art: \u201cNot only does the viewer collaborate with the artist in transforming a two dimensional likeness on canvas into a three-dimensional depiction of the visual world, the viewer interprets what he or she sees on the canvas in personal terms, thereby adding meaning to the picture. Riegel called this phenomenon the \u201cbeholder\u2019s involvement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kris\u2019s study of ambiguity in visual perception led him to elaborate on Riegel\u2019s insight that the viewer completes a work of art. As a neuroscientist, Kandel focuses on the plastic arts, but his discussion brings us to the question of writing and specifically to the question of the \u201chistorical novel\u201d. What does historical writing demand from the reader in order to \u201ccomplete a work of art\u201d?<\/p>\n

There are three dimensions involved: Time, the writer\u2019s mind, and the reader\u2019s perception.<\/p>\n

We know that writers filter reality, compress time, squeeze events, introduce \u2018fictional\u2019 aspects to such an extent that often the historical novel masquerades as a \u201cquasi-memoir\u201d splicing together documentation from time past with the writer\u2019s art and craft of invention.<\/p>\n

In other words, how much of an historical novel is history and how much is literary fiction? And, really, does it matter? And what has Eleanor Sapia Parker done in A Decent Woman<\/em><\/a> (Booktrope, 265 pages)? Continue reading \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Citadel by Jack\u00a0Remick<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Citadel<\/a><\/em> (Global, 372 pages) is a much needed, unforgiving and unapologetic evisceration of the idea of female inferiority we have so primitively accepted today and throughout history. Remick shows tremendous skill in the way he attacks such a heated and complicated subject. He never shies away from the atrocious acts of violence against women, but neither does he lose the magic of his whirlwind storytelling in favor of lecture. Citadel is an honest, sometimes savage look at the relationship between men and women, and what the world could be like if women were in control.<\/p>\n

Trisha de Tours is an editor at Pinnacle Books and has been directed by her boss to find a bestseller. When she finds out the new resident in her condos, Daiva Izokaitis, has a manuscript called Citadel<\/em>, she agrees to read it. Trisha soon finds out Daiva is a literary rebel, refusing to adhere to the fundamentals of writing and later refusing to participate in the editing process, yet she has created a revolutionary novel that overcomes Trisha so completely we see her drown in the story, and reemerging a different woman. Continue reading \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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On Writing Fiction: The Case of Philip Roth\u00a0(1933-2018)<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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\u201cWe must read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then what are we reading it for? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.\u201d\u00a0 \u2026Franz Kafka<\/p>\n

Some of the best writers in world literature\u2014Kafka in German, say, Isaac Babel in Russian, Philip Roth in English\u2014are the kind of writers who love to inflict blows to the head of the reader. In so doing they must, however, be ever aware that someone smacked upside the head will yell, and yell loudly.<\/p>\n

Nathaniel Rich discusses this issue in regard to Roth (NYRB<\/em>, March 8, 2018).<\/p>\n

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Philip Roth had \u201cto defend himself and to explain himself to the paranoid assimilationists of his father\u2019s generation who berated him for \u2018informing the goyim that some Jews might not be paragons of virtue and might even possess human qualities.\u2019\u201d Roth told his detractors, \u201cFiction is not written to affirm the principles and beliefs that everybody seems to hold.\u201d This was in response to the reaction to his story, \u201cDefender of the Faith,\u201d published in The New Yorker<\/em> in 1959. Continue reading \u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n