The Literature Book

L’HOMME RAPAILLÉ

(1970), GASTON MIRON

The masterwork of Gaston Miron

(1928–96)—writer, poet, publisher,

and luminary of Quebec literature—

L’homme rapaillé (“The Man Made

Whole”) is a major selection of the

author’s poems. Lyric love poetry

sits side by side with explorations of

the political and social predicament

of the French-speaking Québecois

population in Canada—Miron called

for separatism, and his poems are

a celebration of Quebec’s language,

history, and people. He also saw

poetry as an endless process of

self-discovery, hence his refusal

to authorize a definitive collection.

FEAR AND LOATHING

IN LAS VEGAS

(1972), HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Mixing autobiographical elements

and surreal invention, this influential

work, subtitled A Savage Journey to

the Heart of the American Dream,

describes journalist Raoul Duke’s

long weekend with his Samoan

attorney Dr. Gonzo to report on a

motorcycle race, along with a visit

to a narcotics officers’ convention.

American writer Thompson (1937–

2005)—for whom Raoul Duke was

an author surrogate, a character

based on and speaking for the

author—used this narrative

framework to critique the failure

of 1960s’ counterculture, such as

the reliance on drugs. The trip

turns into a psychedelic odyssey

of excess, comic yet brutal, with

coexistence between humans

and machines in a high-tech future

world. People use technology and

technology, in a sense, uses people,

to the point that machines become

an intermediary in human relations.

HISTORY

(1974), ELSA MORANTE

Morante (1912–85) and her husband

Alberto Moravia, both half-Jewish

Italians, hid from persecution during

World War II in the mountains south

of Rome. Her experiences were

reflected 30 years later in her most

famous novel, History, which traces

the impact of politics and conflict on

local farming communities around

Rome. The central character is Ida

Mancuso, a widowed teacher whose

prime concern is the survival of her

son, the offspring of a rape. A major

theme is the extra challenges war

brings to the poor, already familiar

with hardship even in peacetime.

FURTHER READING

drugs consumed in such quantities

that at one point people appear as

giant reptiles. Thompson blends

fact and fiction using the journalistic

mode he pioneered, which came to

be known as “Gonzo journalism”

after the book’s fictional attorney.

CRASH

(1973), J. G. BALLARD

Depicting the dark side of our

fascination with speed, Crash is

a controversial novel about car-

crash sexual fetishism and

“symphorophilia” (being aroused

by disasters or accidents); its shock

value is typical of science-fiction

writer Ballard. The protagonist is Dr.

Robert Vaughan, a TV scientist and

“nightmare angel of the highways,”

whose fantasy is to die in a collision

with movie star Elizabeth Taylor.

Unflinching in showing a fusion of

sex and death, the text paints a

dystopian picture of the close

332

J. G. Ballard

An exponent of the New Wave

of science fiction, J. G. Ballard

specialized in depicting futuristic

dystopias, although one of his

most popular novels, Empire of

the Sun, is more conventional.

Ballard was born in 1930 in

Shanghai, China. As a teenager

he spent two years of the war

interned by the Japanese. He

studied medicine (at King’s

College, Cambridge), with the

goal of training as a psychiatrist,

but in 1951, during the second

year of his studies, he won a

short-story competition. He

moved to London to study

literature later the same year.

His first fiction was influenced

by psychoanalysis and surrealist

art. Working as a copywriter

and encyclopedia salesman

before joining the Royal Air

Force, he became a full-time

writer from 1962. Ballard died

in 2009, at 78, in London.

Key works

1971 Vermilion Sands

1973 Crash (see above)

1991 The Kindness of Women

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