We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think : Selected Essays.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (245 pages)
Intro -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Shirley Hazzard-Author, Amateur, Intellectual, by Brigitta Olubas -- Part I. Through Literature Itself -- We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think -- The Lonely Word -- Part II. The Expressive Word -- A Mind Like a Blade: Review of Muriel Spark, Collected Stories I and The Public Image -- Review of Jean Rhys, Quartet -- The Lasting Sickness of Naples: Review of Matilde Serao, Il Ventre di Napoli -- The New Novel by the New Nobel Prize Winner: Review of Patrick White, The Eye of the Storm -- Ordinary People: Review of Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn and Excellent Women -- Translating Proust -- Introduction to Geoffrey Scott's The Portrait of Zélide -- Introduction to Iris Origo's Leopardi: A Study in Solitude -- William Maxwell -- Part III. Public Themes -- The Patron Saint of the UN is Pontius Pilate -- "Gulag" and the Men of Peace -- The United Nations: Where Governments Go to Church -- The League of Frightened Men: Why the UN is So Useless -- UNhelpful: Waldheim's Latest Debacle -- A Writer's Reflections on the Nuclear Age -- Part IV. The Great Occasion -- Canton More Far -- Papyrology at Naples -- The Tuscan in Each of Us -- Part V. Last Words -- 2003 National Book Award Acceptance -- The New York Society Library Discussion, September 2012 -- Notes -- Index.
This collection of Shirley Hazzard's nonfiction works spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s confirms her influence on world literature and her place among writers, artists, and intellectuals who believe in the ongoing power of literature to console, inspire, and direct human life, despite-or maybe because of-the world's disheartening realities.