Gilbert Adair (1944–2011)
Teoksen The Holy Innocents tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Gilbert Adair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on December 29, 1944. He wrote numerous books during his lifetime including A Night at the Pictures, Myths and Memories, Hollywood's Vietnam, Flickers, and Surfing the Zeitgeist. His novels, Love and Death on Long Island and The Dreamers, were adapted näytä lisää into films, the later by Adair himself. He also helped write the screenplays The Territory, Klimt, and A Closed Book. He won the Author's Club First Novel Award for The Holy Innocents in 1988 and the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for his book A Void in 1995. During the 1990s, he wrote a regular column for the Sunday Times. He died in early December 2011 at the age of 66. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
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- Kanoninen nimi
- Adair, Gilbert
- Virallinen nimi
- Adair, Gilbert
- Syntymäaika
- 1944-12-29
- Kuolinaika
- 2011-12-08
- Sukupuoli
- male
- Kansalaisuus
- Scotland
UK - Maa (karttaa varten)
- UK
- Syntymäpaikka
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Kuolinpaikka
- London, England, UK
- Asuinpaikat
- London, England, UK
Paris, France - Ammatit
- novelist
poet
film critic
journalist
literary theorist
translator - Palkinnot ja kunnianosoitukset
- The Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize (1995)
- Lyhyt elämäkerta
- Gilbert Adair was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic and journalist. Born in Edinburgh, he lived in Paris from 1968 through 1980. He is most famous for such novels as Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and The Dreamers (2003), both of which were made into films, although he is also noted as the translator of Georges Perec's postmodern novel A Void, in which the letter e is not used. Adair won the 1995 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for this work.
In 1998 and 1999 Adair was the chief film critic for The Independent on Sunday, where in 1999 he also wrote a year-long column called "The Guillotine." In addition to the films made from his own works, Adair worked on the screenplays for a number of Raúl Ruiz films. Although he rarely spoke of his sexual orientation in public, not wishing to be labelled, he acknowledge in an interview that there were many gay themes in his work. He died from a brain hemorrhage in 2011.
(source: Wikipedia)
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So I bought this book on a whim in first year at University, after hearing about the Roland Barthes theory with the same name. I’m fascinated by Barthes and thought this would be a book that looks at that theory from a literary point of view. I read the blurb, realized it was better than that, and bought it. In third year at University, I was given the opportunity to write an assignment about the book (and several other books too) for a class about Contemporary British Fiction. Naturally, being the kind of person that I am, I jumped at the chance.
Have you heard of Paul de Man? He was a literary scholar in the United States who, after his death, was found to be an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer in his youth, and had published various popular articles about his views under a pseudonym. This caused a huge outrage in the scholarly community at the time.
This book takes inspiration from the real life events surrounding de Man’s death, and the author – speaking in first person the entire way through – is going through a similar situation. When he was younger, living in France during World War II and the Nazi occupation of Paris, the young aspiring writer was approached by the Nazis to use his skill with a pen to write articles for their newspapers. He did not necessarily believe most of what he was writing, but he reasoned that he could either do that, or get himself punished for not obeying orders from the people in charge at the time. In order to save his own skin, the author writes the articles. Years later, when he has finally moved to America and become a literary scholar of his own regard, the author finds that his past has come back to haunt him in the form of a student of his and her aggressive boyfriend.
This novel is absolutely wonderful and a brisk short read. It has a brilliant amount of drama in it that isn’t too much, and really keeps the story going all the way through. It also gives you insight into the possible situation in the de Man scandal. Because his articles were discovered after his death, nobody can ever confirm that he ever really was a Nazi sympathizer. Through this novel, Adair gives us the chance to explore the perspective that maybe he wasn’t a terrible person; just somebody who wanted to save himself from one of the worst situations he could have been in.
Final rating: 4/5. I just wish this book had been longer, but it’s length is also a part of this charm.… (lisätietoja)