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What Is the Present?
A provocative new look at concepts of the present, their connection to ideas about time, and their effect on literature, art, and culture
The problem of the present―what it is and what it means―is one that has vexed generations of thinkers and artists. Because modernity places so much value on the present, many critics argue that people today spend far too much time in the here and now―but how can we tell without first knowing what the here and now actually is? What Is the Present? takes a provocative new look at this moment in time that remains a mystery even though it is always with us.
Michael North tackles puzzles that have preoccupied philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, history, and aesthetic theory and examines the complex role of the present in painting, fiction, and film. He engages with a range of thinkers, from Aristotle and Augustine to William James and Henri Bergson. He draws illuminating examples from artists such as Fra Angelico and Richard McGuire, filmmakers like D. W. Griffith and Christopher Nolan, and novelists such as Elizabeth Bowen and Willa Cather. North offers a critical analysis of previous models of the present, from the experiential present to the historical period we call the contemporary. He argues that the present is not a cosmological or experiential fact but a metaphor, a figurative relationship with the whole of time.
Presenting an entirely new conception of the temporal mystery Georg Lukács called the "unexplained instant," What Is the Present? explores how the arts have traditionally represented the present―and also how artists have offered radical alternatives to that tradition.
The problem of the present―what it is and what it means―is one that has vexed generations of thinkers and artists. Because modernity places so much value on the present, many critics argue that people today spend far too much time in the here and now―but how can we tell without first knowing what the here and now actually is? What Is the Present? takes a provocative new look at this moment in time that remains a mystery even though it is always with us.
Michael North tackles puzzles that have preoccupied philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, history, and aesthetic theory and examines the complex role of the present in painting, fiction, and film. He engages with a range of thinkers, from Aristotle and Augustine to William James and Henri Bergson. He draws illuminating examples from artists such as Fra Angelico and Richard McGuire, filmmakers like D. W. Griffith and Christopher Nolan, and novelists such as Elizabeth Bowen and Willa Cather. North offers a critical analysis of previous models of the present, from the experiential present to the historical period we call the contemporary. He argues that the present is not a cosmological or experiential fact but a metaphor, a figurative relationship with the whole of time.
Presenting an entirely new conception of the temporal mystery Georg Lukács called the "unexplained instant," What Is the Present? explores how the arts have traditionally represented the present―and also how artists have offered radical alternatives to that tradition.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published June 5, 2018
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About the author
Michael North
79 books9 followersMichael North is a Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Language, and Twentieth-Century Literature, The Final Sculpture: Public Monuments and Modern Poets, Reading 1922: A Return to the Scene of the Modern, The Political Aesthetic of Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, and Henry Green and the Writing of His Generation, as well as many articles on various aspects of twentieth-century literature.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 21, 2025
menurut saya,
buku ini menggugat cara orang modern mengorientasikan diri ke depan yang imajinatif.
imajinasi progresif ini mengandaikan adanya kesalahan atau kekurangan atau kebosanan pada masa kini yang harus diperbaiki atau ditinggalkan.
akibat dari pandangan kaum modernis yang progresif ini masa kini yang konkret lalu merosot nilainya.
apa jadinya bila masa kini itu dinilai "boring" dan "insufficient"?
orang jadi mengabaikan hal yang konkret dan mengejar yang imajiner!
buku yang bagi saya mencerahkan, membuat saya siuman.
buku ini menggugat cara orang modern mengorientasikan diri ke depan yang imajinatif.
imajinasi progresif ini mengandaikan adanya kesalahan atau kekurangan atau kebosanan pada masa kini yang harus diperbaiki atau ditinggalkan.
akibat dari pandangan kaum modernis yang progresif ini masa kini yang konkret lalu merosot nilainya.
apa jadinya bila masa kini itu dinilai "boring" dan "insufficient"?
orang jadi mengabaikan hal yang konkret dan mengejar yang imajiner!
buku yang bagi saya mencerahkan, membuat saya siuman.
Displaying 1 of 1 review