Off the Books: On Literature and Culture

by J. Peder Zane

Overview

Head Off the Books in this collection of newspaper columns, where J. Peder Zane uses classic and contemporary literature to explore American culture and politics. The book review editor for the Raleigh, North Carolina News&Observer from 1996 to 2009, Zane demonstrates that good books are essential for understanding ourselves and the world around us. The one hundred and thirty columns gathered in Off the Books find that sweet spot where literature's eternal values meet the day's current events. Together they offer a literary overview of the ideas, issues, and events shaping our culture—from 9/11 and the struggle for gay rights to the decline of high culture and the rise of sensationalism and solipsism. As they plumb and draw from the work of leading writers—from William Faulkner, Knut Hamsun, and Eudora Welty to Don DeLillo, Lydia Millet, and Philip Roth—these columns make an argument not just about the pleasure of books, but about their very necessity in our lives and culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611175097
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/06/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	434 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

J. Peder Zane was the book review editor and books columnist for the News&Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, for thirteen years. His writing has won numerous national honors, including the Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Before joining the News&Observer, Zane worked at the New York Times. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle and current chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at St. Augustine's University in Raleigh, Zane is the editor of and has contributed to Remarkable Reads:34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading, and The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books and is coauthor of Design in Nature.

What People are Saying About This

H. W. Brands

The book review is an endangered genre in journalism, a particular victim of the travails of the industry as a whole. Peder Zane's collection of reviews and commentary reminds us what a smart, sympathetic, insightful reviewer can do by way of engaging us with the best of current and classic literature. A delightful read on its own, and a gateway to the great world of books beyond.

Philip Gerard

Off the Books belongs on the arm of your favorite reading chair by the winter fire or the deck chair of your beach getaway. Peder Zane celebrates reading and writers, in the clean conversational prose of an unabashed lover of books—and makes the reader love them with equal adventuring joy.

Clyde Edgerton

When zippers were invented, Peder Zane would have written about buttons. Same with pencils when ball point pens arrived. In Off the Books, Peder writes with deep love about books, authors, characters, and the art of reading, all the while teaching us about ourselves and our culture. This book is inspiring, warm, and funny.

Editorial Reviews

Off the Books belongs on the arm of your favorite reading chair by the winter fire or the deck chair of your beach getaway. Peder Zane celebrates reading and writers, in the clean conversational prose of an unabashed lover of books and makes the reader love them with equal adventuring joy. Philip Gerard, author of The Patron Saint of Dreams

From the Publisher

2015-01-28
A miscellany of literary musings.Journalist and critic Zane (Journalism and Mass Communication/St. Augustine's Univ.; co-author: Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization, 2012, etc.) has gathered over 100 columns he wrote between 1997 and 2009, when he was review editor and books columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer. Organized into a dozen thematic sections—contemporary fiction, Southern writers, book culture and sensationalism, etc.—the book, writes the author, offers "an overview of a period of dazzling, and sometimes lamentable change…marked by the rise of the Internet and the confessional memoir as well as the decline of the independent bookstore and the continued marginalization of serious literature and ideas." Although serious ideas fuel some of the essays, Zane's breezy tone is closer to Dave Barry than Sven Birkerts or Peter Gay, whom he lists among many writers who inspire him. In a piece about Andrea Dworkin, Zane admits that he came to her memoir with the image of a "foul-mouthed, fat feminist who favored overalls" in his mind and was surprised to find that she had "a provocative mind" that "challenged convention." The memoir, he writes, "reminded me to resist the urge to stereotype and marginalize strong women." In "What's Up with the Muslims?" he concludes that "the overwhelming majority…pose no danger," and "the relatively small number of hard-core ideologues...are driven by political goals, not religion." In a column on the environment, he writes, "my idea of roughing it is hiking to the store, hunting for bargains or fishing for something to wear." Nevertheless, he agrees with Bill McKibben that "to save Mother Earth, we must also get to know her better." Turning to Southern writers, Zane's pieces on Faulkner, Welty and Sedaris are appreciative rather than analytical. An intermittently entertaining but sometimes banal collection.

Kirkus Reviews