Richard Poirier (1925-2009) was an American literary critic. He co-founded the Library of America, and served as chairman of its board. He was the Marius Bewley Professor of American and English Literature at Rutgers University and the editor of Raritan, a literary quarterly, and of Partisan Review.
". . . Richard Poirier brings to this study of exemplary American
novelists some finely-honed equipment for textual analysis. . . .
For him, 'the most interesting American books are an image of the
creation of American itself, of the effort, in the words of
Emerson's Orphic poet, to "Build therefore your own world".' To the
metaphor of building Poirier adds that of an expansion of
consciousness, the creation of a visionary world unfettered by
environment, by the 'real' demands of economics, society, history
or biology."--The New Republic
"Mr. Poirier has written a brilliant book. . . . It is continuously
exciting, filled with . . . imaginative analyses of the stylistic
problems faced by the seminal American writers . . . [and] acute
analyses of the incessant war between the artist and American
society."--American Quarterly
"Poirier makes a radical distinction between 'works that create
through language an essentially imaginative environment for the
hero and works that mirror an environment already accredited by
history and society.' Although he discusses works of the latter
kind for sake of contrast . . . his book principally studies
authors who attempt the former. These authors seek to build 'a
world elsewhere.' They try 'temporarily to free the here . . . from
systems, ' to create for him 'an environment of freedom, ' the
freedom being 'that reality which the consciousness creates for
itself, ' which the author creates 'throught style.' [Poirier's
book] is rich in penetrating analyses and illuminating
insights."--Southwest Review
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