Unsent Letters

by Malcolm Bradbury

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"The postbag of Malcolm Bradbury - academic, author, lecturer, thinker - is crammed with requests for help and advice. 'Please help me with my thesis on the campus novel', 'Please come and talk to my faculty in remote area of the Scottish Highlands', 'Please adapt a classic novel for television', and so on." "In reply, Malcolm Bradbury has prepared a book of imaginary letters to cover any request he may receive. There is a letter of thanks for his invitation to talk to three hostile students show more in a stuffy room and pass the night in a barn; a reply to the European student who wishes to know if he is the same person as David Lodge and which of the two stole his supervisor's umbrella; a letter describing the experience of being the academic who has cycled to L'Escargot for television production meetings; and scathingly funny letters on structuralism, the cuts in education and a great deal more. Above all, they may spare the author from having to write an autobiography."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved show less

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Author Information

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66+ Works 5,685 Members
A professor of English literature and American studies who has published numerous critical works, Malcolm Bradbury is also a novelist whose protagonists are academics who make muddles of their personal and professional lives. He maintains that his main concern is to explore problems and dilemmas of liberalism and issues of moral responsibility. show more The targets of Bradbury's satires include intellectual pretension, cultural myopia, and official smugness. His protagonists are largely sympathetic, if comic, failures at mastering their own fates in a world of absurd rules and regulations. His major novels include Eating People Is Wrong (1959), Stepping Westward (1965), and The History Man (1975). This last, a novel of intellectual and political conflict at an English university in the late 1960s, was made into a successful television minidrama. More recent novels include Rates of Exchange (1983) and Cuts (1987). (Bowker Author Biography) Malcolm Bradbury is a novelist, critic, television dramatist, & satirist. His many books include "Rates of Exchange", which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, & "The Modern American Novel". (Publisher Provided) show less

Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1988
Dedication
To Chris and Pam Bigsby
First words
One of the letters I regularly receive in my large daily post is something I have come to call the Wissenschaft letter.
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)After all, there might be a book in it for one or the other of us, whoever is the smarter.

Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
DDC/MDS
826.914Literature & rhetoricEnglish & Old English literaturesEnglish lettersModern Period
LCC
PR6052 .R246 .U57Language and LiteratureEnglishEnglish Literature1961-2000
BISAC

Statistics

Members
85
Popularity
368,544
Rating
½ (3.33)
Languages
English
Media
Paper
ISBNs
4
ASINs
2