KJB@400 WATCH: Robert Alter's 'Pen of Iron' -- A Review

KJB@400 WATCH: Robert Alter's 'Pen of Iron' -- A Review (Peggy Burc at The Shelf Life). Excerpt:

"Pen of Iron" explains the unique relationship that Americans have with the ancient Israelites by way of the King James Bible, a relationship that has revealed itself in both the style and the language of many great works of modern fiction. As Alter demonstrates, the ancient languages of biblical thinkers have seeped into the imaginations of American authors in ways both deliberate and subconscious, subtle and pronounced, so that writers have hardly been able to escape the tradition which they once loathed or loved or regarded as irrelevant. In short, they have revived precisely that text which many of them disclaimed as passé.