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vol. 2

Open Form and the Feminine Imagination: The Politics of Reading in Twentieth Century Innovative Writing

Stephen-Paul Martin

Library of Congress Catalog Number PS228.P6M37

233 pages

publication date Sept. 1, 1988

Library binding $26.95 ISBN 0-944624-02-2 or ISN-13 9780944624029

Paperback $12.95 ISBN 0-944624-02-0 or ISBN-13 9780944624043

          Martin begins with predictions that western civilization underwent a paradigm shift in the 20^th century. Older forms of rationality are patriarchal; artistic forms are closed conventions and fulfill norms of logic and causality. The emerging forms of thought are feminine, open, and incomplete—requiring nurture and creative participation of the reader for meaning to exist.

Stephen-Paul Martin is the author of nineteen books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, including The Gothic Twilight, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 1993. Between 1980 and 1996, he edited Central Park magazine in New York City. He now lives in San Diego, California.

          “Martin has accomplished the major task of not just giving Sukenick, Howe, Major, Silliman, Cha, and Harryman an intelligent reading, but has also revised our understanding of Stein, Crane, Stevens, and Barnes so that the bridge from modernism to what comes after becomes a true opening to the future rather than an irritable dead end.”

— Jerome Klinkowitz, American Book Review.

          “One great strength of Martin’s book is his ability to link up intelligently ‘post-rational science and post-modern writing.’ The goal he achieves, which others could strive for, is a multiculturalism within a consideration of innovative writing.”

— Hank Lazer, American Literary Review.

 

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