The Tunnel at the End of the Light: Essays on Movies and Politics by Jim Shepard 

Tin House, 272p., 9781941040720, September 12, 2017.



Given that most Americans proudly consider themselves non-political, where do

our notions of collective responsibility come from? Which self-deceptions,

when considering ourselves as actors on the world stage, do we cling to most

tenaciously? Why do we so stubbornly believe, for example, that our country

always means well when intervening abroad?  



The Tunnel at the End of the Light argues that some of our most persistent and

destructive assumptions, in that regard, might come from the movies. In these

ten essays Jim Shepard weaves close readings of film with cultural criticism

to explore the ways in which movies work so ubiquitously to reflect how

Americans think and act. Whether assessing the “high-spirited glee of American

ruthlessness” captured in GoodFellas, or finding in Lawrence of Arabia a

“portrait of the lunatic serenity of our leaders’ conviction in the face of

all evidence and their own lack of knowledge,” he explores how we enter into

conversations with specific genres and films—Chinatown, The Third Man, and

Badlands among others—in order to construct and refine our most cherished

illusions about ourselves.



Author Info:

Jim Shepard is the author of seven novels, including most recently The Book of

Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Achievement in Jewish Literature

from the American Library Association and the PEN/New England Award for

fiction, and five story collections, including his new collection, The World

To Come. Five of his short stories have been chosen for the Best American

Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart

Prize. He teaches at Williams College.



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