Nelson, Thomas Allen

   Thomas Allen Nelson, a professor of English at San Diego State University, is the author of Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, published by Indiana University Press in two editions, the second expanded in 2000 to include new chapters on FULL METAL JACKET and EYES WIDE SHUT, “undoubtedly his most ‘personal’ film. ” The new edition also expanded the introductory chapter, “Kubrick and the Aesthetics of Contingency. ” Nelson’s goal is not only to demonstrate “how Kubrick’s work reveals his belief in film as an art form for the expression of a complex personal vision,” but also “to show how his collected work reveals an equally important conviction—that film, as a popular commercial form, can touch the lives of millions of people in profound ways only when it explores the universal (i. e. , generic) myths and archetypes of both our shared cultural experience and our collective unconscious. ” Library Journal called the first edition “the best book written to date about Kubrick’s films. ” The book successfully places Kubrick in an historical and theoretical context and was highly praised for offering “a penetrating, comprehensive examination of the style and substance of Kubrick’s canon. ” The approach is scholarly, comprehensive, carefully considered, yet eminently readable.

   J. M. W.