While there have been fine films that explore aspects of the existential in cinema without relying on the illegal, there are numerous others that see in the existential the criminal, the notion that being for oneself in the world often manifests itself as being opposed to that world so fundamentally the lives of others are insignificant next to one’s own. In what we will call the malign form…
“In the case of novels and films which are explicitly political,” Jack Zips says, “the necessity to begin with a specific social reality as the basis for comprehending the narrative techniques and thematic conceptions developed in the works is obvious. Two good examples are Heinrich Boll's novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum and [Margarethe von Trotta and] Volker Schlondor…
Perhaps I should have said something sooner. My partner and I had been together for over two years and with my landlord keen to sell the flat, and she, staying in an apartment with a settee she suspected had tics in it, and cupboards with mice droppings, was keen to escape hers, even if the rent was cheaper than most in the area in which she was living. Let the landlord offer the rent at the prese…
Of course, US literature is rich, a pun playing on the idea that the country is prosperous and the literature is manifold. But we offer it not only as a pun but as a causal relation. The literature is rich partly because the country happens to be also. Few would be likely to claim that 19th century American literature could be seen as so significant as English, French or Russian fiction, but in th…