The disappearance of the outside

"This cultural-literary-social critique examines the paradoxes of repression and artistic freedom in both totalitarian and democratic societies. Beginning with his Stalinist childhood and later exile from a national-communist state, Codrescu considers the status of oppositional writers as diverse as Tristan Tzara, the Dadaist; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the magical realist; Milan Kundera, the acerbic rationalist; Czeslaw Milosz, the Catholic dissident; and William Burroughs, the technodystopian. This crucial work calls for an imaginative reach beyond a benign reality founded in technology and commercialism, by striving for a better, evolutionary existence through art."--BOOK JACKET.