Fields of Vision: Essays on Literature, Language, and Television

D.J. Enright, eminent poet and critic, has here collected a broad range of cultural essays covering literature, language, and television. Fields of Vision reveals his multi-cultural sensibility, as he makes references to The Phil Donahue Show, Don DeLillo's White Noise, and other signposts of the American cultural landscape.
Enright begins by surveying our daily diet of television, from adaptations of classics through the highly addictive soap operas to talk shows ("chat shows") and commercials. As he examines the successes and failures of television, he also thoroughly investigates the impact television has had on our lives. The second section focuses on literature, specifically on works that do not lend themselves to screen adaptation, and on writers such as Günter Grass, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Czeslaw Milosz who depict worlds still inhabited by "wonder, and the fear and dread and splendour and freedom of wonder." Presenting language as a living thing, the essays in the final section include notes on usage, etymologies, and misappropriations.
Wide-ranging, perceptive, and often entertaining, these essays represent the work of one of our most trenchant literary critics.