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Book Review: ‘Theory & Practice,’ by Michelle de Kretser

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Book Review: ‘Theory & Practice,’ by Michelle de Kretser

THEORY & PRACTICE, by Michelle de Kretser


In the 1980s, an intellectual revolution took hold on college campuses, spreading, this newspaper reported at the time, “like kudzu.” Under the deceptively unassuming shorthand of “theory,” a heady brew of philosophical schools and ideas — many of them imported from France — upended longstanding assumptions about language, meaning, reality and the human self. According to theory, words referred not to the world they were tasked with representing but only to other words in a ruthless system where meaning was elusive, reality an illusion and the self a romantic fiction perpetrated by the capitalist bourgeoisie.

This revolution is in full swing when the 24-year-old narrator of Michelle de Kretser’s deftly crafted new novel, “Theory & Practice,” leaves her job in market research and moves from Sydney to Melbourne in 1986 to attend a graduate program in English literature. She buys a vintage dress in “Intellectual Black,” finds a feminist scholar to supervise her thesis on Virginia Woolf and falls in with a loose circle of ironic creatives: a sax player in a feminist band, a sculptor who “looked like Patti Smith but with much stormier hair” and a Marxist lecturer in art history who throws a party for his brand-new Apple Macintosh — “a boxy object in orthopedic non-color” that presides over his desk surrounded by awed guests.

Soon the narrator embarks on a consuming affair with Kit, an engineering student who’s in a “deconstructed relationship” with someone else. Yet she’s unprepared for how her field has changed since she was last in school: “Theory had taken book, essay, novel, story, poem and play, and replaced them all with text,” she marvels. “It was necessary to make the text confess. Applying pressure to soft, secret places, the critic exposed fake oppositions, crude essentialisms, bourgeois hegemonies, totalizing mechanisms, humanist teleologies, squalid repressions, influential aporias, and many more textual fragilities. The text bucked and shrieked under the critic’s ministrations, but the critic was merciless.”

The excesses of 1980s academia are ripe fodder for de Kretser’s mordant wit, but her aim here is more ambitious — and the results more rewarding. An Australian novelist of the first rank, who, like the narrator of “Theory & Practice,” emigrated from Sri Lanka as a child, de Kretser has long been fascinated by the gap between our ideals and our actions — between theory and practice — including with respect to the novel itself. Her last book, “Scary Monsters,” featured two obliquely linked narratives printed back to back and upside down; “Theory & Practice” is also a bold experiment in form.

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Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

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Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights thrillers first published as novels (or graphic novels) that were adapted into popular films. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.

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Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

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Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. In honor of Gen. George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, this week’s super-size challenge is focused on the literature and history related to the American Revolution. In the 10 multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to exhibits, books and other materials related to this intense chapter in the country’s story, including an award-winning biography of the general and first U.S. president.

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Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

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Video: How Much Do You Know About Romance Books?

Let’s play romance roulette. No genre has dominated the books world in the last few years. Like romance, it accounts for the biggest percentage of book sales, their avid fan bases. Everyone has been talking about romance as a Book Review editor and as a fan of the genre myself, I put together a to z glossary of 101 terms that you should know if you want to understand the world of romance are cinnamon roll. You may think a cinnamon roll is a delicious breakfast treat, but in a romance novel, this refers to a typically male character who is so sweet and tender and precious that you just want to protect him and his beautiful heart from the world. Ooh, a rake. This is basically the Playboy of historical romance. He defies societal rules. He drinks, he gambles. He’s out on the town all night and is a very prolific lover with a bit of a reputation as a ladies’ man. FEI these are super strong, super sexy, super powerful, immortal, fairy like creatures. One of my favorite discoveries in terms that I learned was stern brunch daddy. A lot of daddy’s usually a male love interest who seems very intimidating and alpha, but then turns out to be a total softie who just wants to make his love interest brunch. I think there’s a misconception that because these books can follow these typical patterns, that they can be predictable and boring. But I think what makes a really great romance novel is the way that these writers use the tropes in interesting ways, or subvert them. If you can think of it, there’s probably a romance novel about it. Oops, there’s only one bed. This is one of my personal favorite tropes is a twist on forced proximity. Characters find themselves in very close quarters, where inevitably sparks start to fly. Why choose is the porkulus dose of the romance world. Sometimes the best way to resolve a love triangle is by turning it into a circle, where everyone is invited to play. Oops, we lost one spice level. There’s a really wide spectrum. You can range from really low heat or no spice, what might also be called kisses. Only then you start to get into what we call closed door or fade to Black. These books go right up to the moment of intimacy, and then you get into what we call open door, which is more explicit. And sometimes these can get very high heat or spicy and even start verging into kink. There’s one thing that almost every romance novel has in common. It’s that no matter what the characters get up to in the end, it ends with a happily ever after. I say almost every romance novel. Sometimes you’re just happy for now.

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