Clark Gifford's Body

(Paperback, Main)

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Clark Gifford A cipher. A disaffected, vaguely idealistic politician in a nameless media-driven modern state where representative politics has dwindled to the corrupt transaction of business as usual and a new foreign war is always breaking out. One night Gifford and his followers seize some radio stations and broadcast a call for freedom-a rebellion that is immediately put down by the government and whose motive will remain forever obscure. Even so, it leads to twenty years of war. A paranoid tour de force of political noir, Clark Gifford's Body skips back and forth in time, interspersing newspaper clippings and court transcripts with the reactions and reminiscences of the politicians, generals, businessmen, journalists, waiters, and soldiers who double as the actors and the chorus in a drama over which, finally, they have no control. Who here is leading Who is being led Fearing's novel is a pseudo-documentary of a world given over to pseudo-politics and pseudo-events, a prophetic glimpse of the future as a poisonous fog.

Reviews

Praise for Kenneth Fearing:

I have not developed the habit of reading thrillers, but I have read enough of them to know that from now on Mr. Fearing is my man.The New Yorker

There are plenty of people currently writing variations on Fearing (possibly without being aware of it), but its tough to beat the stylish chill of the original.Poetry Magazine

Author Bio

Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) was born in Oak Park, Illinois. His parents divorced when he was a year old, and he was raised mainly by his aunt. After studying at the University of Wisconsin, Fearing moved to New York City where he began a career as a poet and was active in leftist politics. In the Twenties and Thirties, he published regularly in The New Yorker and Poetry and helped found The Partisan Review, while also working as an editor, journalist, and speechwriter and turning out a good deal of pulp fiction, including pornography. A selection of Fearing's poems has been published as part of the Library of America's American Poets Project. His 1946 noir novel, The Big Clock, is also published by NYRB Classics. Robert Polito is the author of Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson and A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover, among other books. He edited Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems and directs the Graduate Writing Program at the New School.