I don't know of any Western writer... who is so grandiosely and sentimentally deluded about human suffering... that he's come back from behind the Iron Curtain thinking himself devalued because he hasn't had to contend with such a wretched intellectual and literary environment".
The immediate point to make about the east European literary environment of the 1960s, in which the flimsiest evidence of "dissent" could destroy a writer's career, is that it is rather a surprise that more journalists didn't take the government's zloty.
However, other scholars argue that this operational definition is too narrow, and includes reading habits and literary environment, family educational resources, extracurricular activities, and other indicators (Jæger 2011).
Soon after reaching the capital, Cerna became involved in political debates and the literary environment.
In a literary environment where LGBTQ representation is still catching up from centuries of erasure, it's refreshing to see a queer protagonist like Maria, not a stereotype nor a trope but a deeply flawed, complicated person battling conflicting desires.
And if The Lord of the Rings had become the model for epic fantasy in the West, its centrality would only be greater in a literary environment that was largely inhospitable to elves.
He seamlessly synthesizes vast amounts of historical material and provides often riveting accounts of terrorist atrocities and the literary and political environments where they took place.
There are separate lengthy interpretive essays woven into the alphabetical section on topics such as the built environment, literary images of Chicago, and the city's sports culture.
As Sullivan (2006, 10) argues, "relocating out of geographical, literary, political, and other environments that encourage the white solipsism of living as if only white people existed or mattered can be a powerful way of disrupting and transforming unconscious habits of white privilege".
