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   Book Info

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Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead  
Author: Tim Dayton
ISBN: 082621469X
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review

Book Description
The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser was published as part of her 1938 volume U.S. 1. The poem commemorates the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, the Gauley Tunnel tragedy. In this terrible disaster, an undetermined number of men died of acute silicosis after working on a tunnel project in Fayette County, West Virginia, in the early 1930s. After many years of relative neglect, The Book of the Dead has recently returned to print and has become the subject of critical attention. In Muriel Rukeyser's "The Book of the Dead," Tim Dayton continues that study by characterizing the literary and political world of Rukeyser at the time she wrote The Book of the Dead.

About the Author
Tim Dayton is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University in Manhattan.




Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser was published as part of her 1938 volume U.S. 1. The poem, which is probably the most ambitious and least understood work of Depression-era American verse, commemorates the worst industrial accident in U.S. history, the Gualey Tunnel tragedy. In this terrible disaster, an undetermined number of men - likely somewhere between 700 and 800 - died of acute silicosis, a lung disorder caused by prolonged inhalation of silica dust, after working on a tunnel project in Fayette Country, West Virginia, in the early 1930s." "After many years of relative neglect, The Book of the Dead has recently returned to print and has become the subject of critical attention. In Muriel Rukeyser's "The Book of the Dead," Tim Dayton continues that study by characterizing the literary and political world of Rukeyser at the time she wrote The Book of the Dead." "Dayton also studies the critical reception of The Book of the Dead and determines that while the contemporary response was mixed, most reviewers felt that Rukeyser had certainly attempted something of value and significance. He pays particular attention to John Wheelwright's critical review and to the defenses of Rukeyser launched in the 1980s and 1990s by Louise Kertesz and Walter Kalaidjian. The author also examines the relationship between Marxism as a theory of history governing The Book of the Dead and the poem itself, which presents a vision of history." Based upon primary scholarship in Rukeyser's papers, a close reading of the poem, and Marxist theory, Muriel Rukeyser's "The Book of the Dead" offers a comprehensive and compelling analysis of The Book of the Dead and will likely remain the definitive work on this poem.

     



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