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The first intellectual biography of the life and work of John Berger
John Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art in Ways of Seeing; as a storyteller and political activist he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants and the oppressed around the world. In 1953 he wrote: "Far from dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics." He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January, 2017.
In A Writer of Our Time, Joshua Sperling places Berger’s life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond. The book also explores, through the work, the larger questions that vexed a generation: the purpose of art, the nature of creative freedom, the meaning of commitment. Drawing on extensive interviews, close readings and a wealth of archival sources only recently made available, the book brings the many different faces of John Berger together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, thinkers and storytellers of our time.
Reviews
The remarkable John Berger has gotten the thoughtful, sensitive study he deserves. Joshua Sperling is at ease in every aspect of this extraordinarily multifaceted writer’s life: his art criticism, his fiction, his passionate political commitment, his immersion in the lives of Alpine villagers, and more. Lovers of Berger’s work will find a rich array of background here, and those who don’t yet know Berger will, I hope, be inspired to read him
The author of G., A Seventh Man and Ways of Seeing was of course a lifelong controversialist and revolutionary. But, ultimately, he was a man ‘defined less by what he was against than by what he loved.’ Occasionally critical, always passionate, Joshua Sperling’s study of John Berger is as observant, rigorous, profound and as surprisingly entertaining as its subject.
Across the 90 years of John Berger’s life, he was by turns, and sometimes at the same time, an art critic and novelist, documentarian and screenwriter, farm laborer and historian, poet and polemicist...Does this mass of apparent contradictions add up to anything? The trick for any would-be biographer of John Berger is to find the unity in variety. Joshua Sperling is up to the task.
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With sophistication and passion to match his subject, Sperling unfolds a chronological and thematic assessment of Berger...[A Writer of Our Time] is a lively and astute contribution to the writing on Berger, as well as to scholarship on the last 50 years of the cultural left in general.
Publishers Weekly -
This engaging intellectual biography traces Berger’s creative evolution, analyzes highlights from his vast output ... and situates them within his empathetic Marxism.
The New Yorker -
A Writer of Our Time, switches expertly from the political to the personal and back, mapping the highs and lows of an eventful—and sometimes turbulent—life.
Sunday Guardian Live -
Switches expertly from the political to the personal and back, mapping the highs and lows of an eventful—and sometimes turbulent—life.
Sunday Guardian -
Excellent ... Sperling writes crisply as a Berger fan without hagiography.
Sydney Morning Herald -
An excellent introduction not only to Berger but also to the aesthetic and political issues of his era. Sperling is a clear and elegant writer, and the book is very well researched.
Choice -
A first-order intellectual biography of John Berger . . . Sperling explores the context of Berger's development with reference to the rapidly evolving social and political climate.
Choice, editor's picks -
Sharp, moving, and immensely readable
, The Nation -
Sperling provides context for the art and political movements of Berger’s years such that we now have a full context for the evolution of his ideas and style–and the remarkable variety of his sustained output. ... There is no question that Berger is one of the most influential arts and culture intellectuals of the past 50 years.
, On the Seawall -
An extraordinary and analytical biography of an extraordinary and influential life, A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Biography collections in general, and John Berger supplemental studies reading lists in particular
Midwest Book Review