Like the paintings of Jan Vermeer and Edward Hopper, Hugh Hood’s short fiction looks hard at what some might call the surface of things. Like the finely wrought realism of those canvases, Hood’s super-realist style doesn’t just see―it sees into. While his early publications prompted his reputation as an originator of Canadian modernism, Hood’s work taken as a whole reveals a philosophy far older: that of the allegorist. Like Dante’s pilgrim, Hood’s narrator finds spiritual truths in recognizable forms, affirming again and again the imagination’s capacity for penetrating insight and the transcendental potential of art. As he wrote in 1971, “I have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subjects. I hope my gaze has helped to light them up.”
With a foreword by John Metcalf, Light Shining Out of Darkness collects twenty-five of the best stories by this modern master of the form, whose sensibility set him apart from the writers of his generation and continues to distinguish his oeuvre as among the 20th century’s most enduring. Best understood as a suite of modern meditations, seemingly quotidian explorations of salvation, temptation, and damnation in an irreligious world, Hood balances insight into human failing with compassion for our shared condition.
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Hugh Hood (1928–2000) was a Canadian novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and university professor. Hood wrote 32 books: 17 novels, including the 12-volume New Age novel sequence (influenced by Marcel Proust and Anthony Powell), several volumes of short fiction, and 5 of nonfiction. He taught English literature at the Université de Montréal. In the early 1970s he and fellow authors Clark Blaise, Raymond Fraser, John Metcalf, and Ray Smith formed the well-known Montreal Story Tellers Fiction Performance Group, which popularized the public reading of fiction in Canada. In 1988, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
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Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781771961882
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Hugh Hood's Light Shining Out of Darkness collects twenty-five of the best stories by this modern master of the form, whose work remains quite unlike anything else. Best understood as a suite of modern meditations that are everyday explorations of salvation, temptation, and damnation in an irreligious world, Hood balances insight into human failing with sympathy for people and their plights.Hugh Hood (19282000) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist and university professor. Hood wrote thirty-two books: seventeen novels, including the twelve-volume New Age novel sequence; several volumes of short fiction; and five works of nonfiction. Hugh Hood's best short fiction: exploring moral order and human behavior, and exposing the violent emotions under placid surfaces. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781771961882