Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 123) - Philip Graham (review date 5 November 1995)

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Philip Graham (review date 5 November 1995)

SOURCE: "On 'The Concealed Side,'" in Chicago Tribune Books, November 5, 1995, pp. 6-7.

[In the following review, Graham describes Gordimer's artistic ethos as outlined in Writing and Being.]

This collection of Nadine Gordimer's recent Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University [Writing and Being] offers six lucid and interconnected essays on fiction that should be read by every serious reader and writer. Throughout this slim yet intellectually hefty volume Gordimer—the distinguished South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner—succeeds in elegantly explicating her hard-won artistic ethos, a moving and fluid blend of personal discovery and commitment to the wider world.

Gordimer's first essay, "Adam's Rib: Fictions and Realities," explores with a wry eye the persistent desire of some critics and readers to play the game of "I Spy": trying to discover who a fictional...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Charles Poore (review date 8 May 1965)
   2. Adrian Mitchell (review date 23 May 1965)
   3. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 22 July 1965)
   4. Patrick Cruttwell (review date Autumn 1965)
   5. Gail Godwin (review date April 1976)
   6. George Kearns (review date Winter 1984–85)
   7. Sylvia Clayton (review date 15-18 April 1984)
   8. Judie Newman (essay date 1985)
   9. Dick Roraback (review date 6 October 1991)
   10. John Bayley (review date 5 December 1991)
   11. Barbara J. Eckstein (essay date Winter 1992)
   12. Nadine Gordimer with Claudia Dreifus (interview date January 1992)
   13. Thomas Knipp (essay date Spring 1993)
   14. Graham Huggan (essay date Winter 1994)
   15. Rosemary Dinnage (review date 9 September 1994)
   16. Richard Eder (review date 18 September 1994)
   17. Richard Bausch (review date 25 September 1994)
   18. Michael Wood (review date 1 December 1994)
   19. Jeremy Harding (review date 12 January 1995)
   20. Philip Graham (review date 5 November 1995)
   21. Nancy Topping Bazin (essay date 1995)
   22. Edith Milton (review date June 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Nadine Gordimer