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This book explores the concept of ‘quiet’ – an aesthetic of narrative driven by reflective principles – and argues for the term’s application to the study of contemporary American fiction. In doing so, it makes two critical interventions. Firstly, it maps the neglected history of quiet fictions, arguing that from Hester Prynne to Clarissa Dalloway, from Bartleby to William Stoner, the Western tradition is filled with quiet characters. Secondly, it asks what it means for a novel to be quiet and how we might read for quiet in an American literary tradition that critics so often describe as noisy. Examining recent works by Marilynne Robinson, Teju Cole and Ben Lerner, among others, the book argues that quiet can be a multi-faceted state of existence, one that is communicative and expressive in as many ways as noise but filled with potential for radical discourse by its marginalisation as a mode of expression.

The title of [Graham Greene]'s 1955 Vietnam novel, \"The Quiet American,\" as others have pointed out, is a joke. The eponymous character is not quiet. Like all the Americans who appear in its deft, succinct story, Alden Pyle is a prattling fool. Pyle (Greene was good with names and their associations) goes on to illustrate the joke's unspoken punch line: The only quiet American is a dead American. The two other principals, [Phuong] and Pyle, are present as metaphors and as soldiers of the plot, which is lively and Conradian, actually more well made and adroit than in anything by Greene's master. Phuong has a pretty little head which she fills with proto-tabloid celebrity gossip and interesting facts about the British royals. Childishly, she has transferred her affections to Pyle, the representative of a stronger foreign presence and one able to provide for her more generously. Pyle and all the American characters in \"The Quiet American\" speak with a straight man's timing. That is, they do not understand or respond to the witticisms offered at their expense. For them, words cast no shadows; they are deaf to irony: Pyle, Bill Granger, all of them, stand mute before [Thomas Fowler]'s very cinematic wisecracks. Pyle and the others refuse to be drawn, like Margaret Dumont subjected to Groucho Marx. They persistently offer their puppyish friendship (\"Do you mind if I call you Tom?\") in the face of Fowler's insults.

Purpose Given the workplace’s reinvention to accommodate the global pandemic’s novel conditions, knowledge hiding (KH) behaviour in knowledge-intensive organisations must be examined from a fresh perspective. In this context, the relationship between workplace ostracism (WO) as KH’s antecedent and quiet quitting (QQ) as its consequence is undertaken via the mediating role of KH behaviour among knowledge workers (KWs). Design/methodology/approach Through stratified sampling, data from 649 KWs is obtained to test the model. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) using SMART-PLS 4.0. software establishes a significant influence of WO on KH and QQ. KH significantly mediates the relationship between WO and QQ, highlighting its critical intermediary role PLSPredict evaluates the model’s predictiveness. WO and KH’s effects on QQ are examined using necessity logic by collectively applying PLS-SEM and necessary condition analysis (NCA). Findings The model wherein WO plays a significant role in increasing KH and QQ, with KH as a partial mediator in the relationship, has high predictive relevance. Moreover, NCA confirms WO as the key predictor variable that provides variance in QQ, followed by KH. The Importance-performance map analysis technique supports the study’s managerial implications. Originality/value This study enriches QQ’s emerging literature by empirically identifying its antecedents-WO and KH. Methodologically, this paper gives a model for using PLS-SEM and NCA together in relation to QQ by identifying WO as its necessary condition. Evidence of selected constructs’ interrelationships may help organisations draft leadership programmes to curtail KH and QQ behaviour.

This chapter contains sections titled: Background The Film and Conventions Reception All Quiet and Remakes of War Films

The recent histories of South Africa and Brazil share many commonalities. Most obviously, both have experienced a shared political history of democratic transition. Two somewhat similar forms of socio-political oppression and manipulation - military rule in Brazil (ended 1985) and South African apartheid (ended 1994) - have been replaced by democratic regimes and exceedingly optimistic hopes for the future. Yet neither transition has been as smooth as expected. Consequently, a liminal situation has been created, where past and present discourses compete for space. This has recently been explored in each country's respective literatures: K. Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams and Rodrigo de Souza Leão's All Dogs Are Blue are just two examples. This article will explore the common theme of madness in these novels to highlight liminality. In particular, I argue that the treatment of insanity denies the patient's individuality and replicates the identity politics of the colonial situation. This, I suggest, reveals how postcolonial modernity in Brazil and South Africa relies on a continuing and normalised psycho-politics of otherness. Further, I will consider questions revolving around language, reliability and everyday emotions, focusing on the uncomfortable juxtaposition of global, national and local in both countries as they struggle to enter the modern world order. Ultimately, the only way we can alleviate madness and harness the social benefits of modernity and globalisation comes through accepting difference and understanding the specific individual circumstances of those we call 'mad'.

Remarkably, Mr. Veronesi sustains the opening scene's excitement as he stirs a psychological ferment from almost no action -- a condition that Pietro calls \"frenzied stasis.\"

The power of the human mind (the purer the better) to memorize the shape of keys, to triumph over time, to feel the music in the human body gives all of Hoeg's novels a supernatural shimmer and the reader the impression that we can escape the various prisons created throughout history to control the human animal.

\"The Quiet Girl\" also features an unusually gifted protagonist on a kind of child-quest. Kasper Krone, Mr. [Peter Hoeg]'s latest hero, has a preternatural sense of hearing, which he uses to try to find a kidnapped child. Like \"Smilla's Sense of Snow,\" \"The Quiet Girl\" spins a labyrinthine plot, sometimes looping into the past to fill in context as scenes unfold. This time around, though, Mr. Hoeg adds a theological theme. In \"The Quiet Girl,\" Krone wants nothing less than to hear the sound of God. The novel teems with flashbacks, philosophical asides, ironical observations, theological musings, gripping scenes and events (the setting is again Denmark), and a sort of magic realism that elevates to celestial heights the uncanny human capacity to hear.

A little more than a decade ago, Greeneland did not seem a distant place. While the cold war still simmered, his stories of spies and shady types who were exiled to the sort of countries you wouldn't pick for a holiday had immediacy.