UNITED STATES AUTHOR · HISTORY AND CRITICISM · FICTION
M. Keith Booker
Also known as: Marvin Keith Booker
Marvin Keith Booker (born May 21, 1953) is an American English scholar, literary scholar, and author of nonfiction.
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories.
— from Brave New World, 2004
Most acclaimed
Colonial power, colonial texts
1997
In Colonial Power, Colonial Texts, M. Keith Booker examines a number of British novels that deal with colonial rule in India in the first half of the twentieth century. The works discussed - by authors such as Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Paul Scott, and J. G. Farrell - date from both the colonial and postcolonial periods, and Booker pays attention as well to representations of India in both British and American popular culture, especially film. These various cultural texts open multiple viewpoints on the role of literature in the British vision of India and the role of India in the British conception of literature. Drawing particularly on the work of Georg Lukacs and Fredric Jameson, Booker focuses on the treatment of British colonial power in these fictions as that treatment indicates how colonialism and decolonization participate in a larger historical process of modernization. The author uses a Marxist model of bourgeois cultural revolution to illustrate the ways these texts engage in productive exchanges with their historical context. Colonial Power, Colonial Texts will be of particular value to those who study the role of culture in colonialism and anti-colonial resistance, as well as to students and scholars of modern British literature and culture.
Star Trek
What is Starfleet? It is the universe’s most famous and inspirational coalitions of all time. It has boldly gone where no pop culture franchise has gone before. It is the foundation for a thriving community of passionate fans. Creator Gene Roddenberry said Star Trek “was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms . . . If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.” After more than 50 years, 11 television series, 13 movies, and countless fan conventions later, Star Trek fans of all ages continue to gather—in person or virtually-- and enjoy, share, and live up to Roddenberry’s optimistic vision of the future. Fully authorized and filled with full-color images spanning the entire canon, Star Trek: Starfleet is… celebrates of Roddenberry’s vision. This commemorative book highlights 50 of the key traits of the Star Trek universe and demonstrates, through memorable images and beautiful artwork, how these ideals are personified by everyone from Kirk and Spock, to Picard and Janeway, to Burnham and Mariner, and their voyages to everywhere from Earth to Vulcan, from Q’onoS to the Delta Quadrant, and even to the Mirror Universe and back in time—and how they are actively and sincerely lived by the Star Trek fans themselves. What is Starfleet? Starfleet is fun. Starfleet is not always logical. Starfleet is adventure. Starfleet is brave. Starfleet is compassion. Starfleet is diverse. Starfleet is evolving. And it is by sharing their passions, supporting one another through difficult times, celebrating one another’s successes, and boldly going into a bright and hopeful future that Star Trek fans show that, above all, Starfleet is family. Starfleet is forever. A portion of the proceeds from Starfleet Is . . . will benefit ALS research.
Vargas Llosa among the Postmodernists
1994
Mario Vargas Llosa is one of the world's most respected and widely read living writers. His work is marked by technical sophistication and by its alliance with a variety of trends in modern culture. To date little criticism of his work has made use of the important developments in literary theory in the past two decades. This book does so, analyzing Vargas Llosa's place in modern and postmodern criticism. Keith Booker begins with an analysis of The Green House within the context of modernism, using this early work to develop several hypotheses concerning the differences between modernism and postmodernism in literature. He tests these hypotheses in the remainder of the book through detailed readings of Vargas Llosa's later novels (from Captain Pantoja and the Special Service onward) and within the context of theoretical discussions of postmodernism by such critics as Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Linda Hutcheon, and Andreas Huyssen. Booker's specific readings of Vargas Llosa's work are also informed by the insights of a number of critics, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, and Theodor Adorno . The readings focus on the formal characteristics of Vargas Llosa's writing and on the intense political engagement - characterized in later works by skepticism toward the claims of various political programs - that marks his career. As a result, this study yields insights into both the aesthetics and the politics of postmodernism, and it should be useful to those interested in Latin American literature and in the social and cultural landscapes of Vargas Llosa's works. The book ends with a lucid description of published theories of modernism and postmodernism.