The Nonconformists : American and Czech Writers across the Iron Curtain / Brian K. Goodman.
Goodman, Brian K., author.
2023
PG5002.5.A4 N66 2023
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Title The Nonconformists : American and Czech Writers across the Iron Curtain / Brian K. Goodman.
Author Goodman, Brian K., author.
ISBN 9780674292956
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674292956
Published Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2023]
Copyright ©2023
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (352 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674292956 doi
Call Number PG5002.5.A4 N66 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification 813/.6
Summary How risky encounters between American and Czech writers behind the Iron Curtain shaped the art and politics of the Cold War and helped define an era of dissent."In some indescribable way, we are each other's continuation," Arthur Miller wrote of the imprisoned Czech playwright Václav Havel. After a Soviet-led invasion ended the Prague Spring, many US-based writers experienced a similar shock of solidarity. Brian Goodman examines the surprising and consequential connections between American and Czech literary cultures during the Cold War-connections that influenced art and politics on both sides of the Iron Curtain.American writers had long been attracted to Prague, a city they associated with the spectral figure of Franz Kafka. Goodman reconstructs the Czech journeys of Allen Ginsberg, Philip Roth, and John Updike, as well as their friendships with nonconformists like Havel, Josef Škvorecký, Ivan Klíma, and Milan Kundera. Czechoslovakia, meanwhile, was home to a literary counterculture shaped by years of engagement with American sources, from Moby-Dick and the Beats to Dixieland jazz and rock 'n' roll. Czechs eagerly followed cultural trends in the United States, creatively appropriating works by authors like Langston Hughes and Ernest Hemingway, sometimes at considerable risk to themselves.The Nonconformists tells the story of a group of writers who crossed boundaries of language and politics, rearranging them in the process. The transnational circulation of literature played an important role in the formation of new subcultures and reading publics, reshaping political imaginations and transforming the city of Kafka into a global capital of dissent. From the postwar dream of a "Czechoslovak road to socialism" to the neoconservative embrace of Eastern bloc dissidence on the eve of the Velvet Revolution, history was changed by a collision of literary cultures.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Aug 2023)
In EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023
EBOOK PACKAGE History 2023 English
EBOOK PACKAGE History 2023
Harvard University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
Available in Other Form print 9780674983373
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Frontmatter
Contents
Prologue. Ginsberg's File
Introduction. A Novel Fusion
1. The Man Who Disappeared
2. Behind the Gold Curtain
3. The Cowards' Guide to World Literature
4. The Kingdom of May
5. The Tourist
6. Across the Gray Zone
Epilogue. Everything Goes
Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

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