Living in Language: The Literary Word at Work in the World

In Living in Language, David Bosworth makes a compelling case for the power and relevance of the literary imagination throughout history. In a series of essays both lyrical and analytical, he examines how certain works have engaged the most pressing problems of their authors’ ages even as they illuminate challenges that still haunt the world. The topics addressed are rich and various: the evolutionary significance of metaphorical reasoning; how Hitler’s infatuation with an opera’s plot predicted the arc of his horrific reign, even as his victims employed the power of narrative to endure his crimes; the ways in which Melville’s late fiction foresaw the sources driving America’s current cultural crisis; and how, in probing his era’s political turmoil, Shakespeare’s plays supply clues to resolving the current era’s. From the spiritual quest of a musical prose to the cinematic craft of amending America’s foundational story; from the myth of the Fall to novels that probe the Internet’s impact on our lives today, Bosworth reveals how the literary imagination honors the ＂＂living＂＂ prescribed by the human predicament, evoking its beauty while never stinting on its uncertainties, cruelties, and pain.

David Bosworth is the author most recently of The Demise of Virtue in Virtual America (2014)and Conscientious Thinking (2020). The recipient of N.E.A and Ingram Merrill fellowships, as well as the Drue Heniz Prize and a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation for his fiction writing, he is a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Washington.