Bøger af Robert Murray Davis

Levels of Incompetence is a rollicking reminiscence through eight decades of a life well-spent. Bob Davis is a skilled raconteur whose tales are spiced by the remembered pleasures of academic life, peripatetic travels, and endearing family profiles, and his wit and lively style are on full display.

In Born Again Skeptic & Other Valedictions, University of Oklahoma emeritus professor and peripatetic knowledge-seeker Robert Murray Davis tackles the big questions: about origins, identity, emotional and intellectual rootlessness; the little questions: why some small towns call to us and others don't, how academia works, or doesn't; and third-rail questions: about sex, relationships, women, men, religion, and aesthetics. The essays are witty and provocative, and Davis's writing style is both erudite and conversational.

Robert Murray Davis examines the Western hero - a principal image of American manhood since the publication of "The Virginian" - as portrayed by a variety of post-World War II novelists and film-makers. He shows that the Western is primarily about escape or violence.

Based on interviews with authors, editors, and publishers in four countries, this book examines the economic, social, and literary effect of the end of communist domination and accompanying cultural subsidies in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. It shows that the end of the communist regime has made the position of writer less lucrative.

In eighteenth-century England, some wealthy people built ruins on their estates, hired hermits to inhabit them, and took guests to view the pictures que results. While no one hires ornamental hermits anymore, society as a whole supports people like Thoreau or Edward Abbey who step aside to comment on ordinary life as critics or would-be prophets.