Resistant Essays

by Jesse Bier

These selected essays are a broad demonstration of "new critical" techniques that otherwise have been muted in today's criticism. In an attempt to re-establish formal and contextual "perspectivism" in the face of today's reigning relativism and nihilism, the author reaffirms and vindicates techniques which grasp the objective text and meaning.
Stendhal's The Red and the Existential Psychology in a World Class Novel; A Century of War and Gone, Gone with the Wind; The Bravest Volcano and Under the The Two Lowrys'; A Lost Canadian James Benson Nablo's The Longest November ; The Higher Criticismóor Flash Gordon Revisited; The Masterpieces in Science Power or Parody? Cobb and Author and " Auteur " ( Paths of Glory as Novel and Film); Writers Don't Know It All; The Sense of Sound; Poe's "The Raven": The Values of Negative Teaching; In Defense of Roth; O'Hara's Appointment of His First and Only Real Novel; Jake Barnes, Cockroaches, the Trout in The Sun Also Rises ; "Bless You, Chile": Fiedler and "Huck Honey" A Generation Later; Henry James' "The Jolly Corner": The Writer's Fable and the Deeper Matter; Melville's "The Fiddler" Reconsidered; Lapsarians on The Cooper's Novel; Weberism, Franklin, and Transcendental Style; Benjamin Guilt and TransformationóThe Man Behind the Myth.

228 pages, Hardcover

First published November 29, 1993

About the author

Jesse Bier was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and later served in the infantry during World War II. In the Fall of 2012, he published his fourth novel "Transatlantic Lives" (Inverted A Press), which is a fictional retelling of his experiences as an infantry squad leader in France, where he met his wife. He is also the author of the novels, "The Cannibal," "Trial At Bannock," and "Year Of The Cougar," and has published a collection of short stories, "A Hole In The Lead Apron," as well as a book of nonfiction, "The Rise and Fall of American Humor." His short stories have appeared in Esquire, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review and others. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Montana.