Gorra, Michael (Edward) 1957-

views updated

GORRA, Michael (Edward) 1957-

PERSONAL: Born February 17, 1957 in New London, CT; married Brigitte Buettner (an art historian); children: Miriam. Education: Amherst College, A.B., 1979; Stanford University, Ph.D., 1986.

ADDRESSES: Office—Smith College, Department of English, Seelye Hall 401, Northampton, MA 01063; fax: 413-585-3305. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Smith College, Northampton, MA, professor of English, 1985—. Freelance book reviewer for periodicals, including New York Times Book Review, Times Literary Supplement, Boston Globe, and London Review of Books.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, 2002.

WRITINGS:

The English Novel at Mid-Century: From the Leaning Tower, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1990.

After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1997.

The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 2004.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A travel narrative from a trip to Germany, which also incorporates an overview of travel writing as a genre.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael Gorra is a book reviewer and college professor who has written for periodicals such as the New York Times Book Review and Times Literary Supplement. His books The English Novel at Mid-Century and After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie examine the lives and works of many influential writers, some his contemporaries, some not. Gorra's reputation as a book reviewer has earned him the coveted Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle.

In The English Novel at Mid-Century Gorra takes four lauded twentieth-century British writers—Henry Green, Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, and Evelyn Waugh—and examines their work beginning in the late 1920s, following them throughout the rest of their writing careers. These writers were caught between two literary movements: the modernist movement and the social disillusionment of post-World War II. They struggled with their art, hoping to capture the changing face of society without focusing too much on individual characters. Gorra scrutinizes each writer and his role in this period of literature in considerable length. Modern Fiction Studies reviewer David Leon Higdon praised Gorra's "uncanny ability to select a passage or a scene that unfolds the entire novel to perceptive, informed reading." His formal analysis ties together the similarities of these writers, especially the writers' attempts to diverge from modernist qualities of the British novel. According to P. A. Doyle in Choice, Gorra's examination is a "zestful, stimulating study" with "many keen insights and provokes controversy."

Gorra's next work, After Empire: Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie, revolves around the issue of postcolonial literature and the identity conflicts most of these works entail. In particular, After Empire examines English identity in the face of colonized India and Indian identity under British rule. Ideals of British identity are propped up against a model of less-desirable Indian society. Without the colonizers to compare themselves to, what is the perception of Indian identity after rule by a very different and consuming culture? Gorra examines this, not only by quoting the works of writers Paul Scott, V. S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie, but also by alluding to earlier works by colonial authors like Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. This cross-referencing of the present to the past creates a "richness" in Gorra's work, according to Zohreh T. Sullivan in his critique in Journal of English and Germanic Philology. In Brian May's review of After Empire for Contemporary Literature, the reviewer stated, "the book manages to hit several targets at once, to appeal to that fabled 'general audience' … without surrendering its grip on the specialists." Sullivan added that the work is "an elegant and smart series of reflections about three writers deformed, enraged, and unhomed by imperialism and its aftermath."