Escape, Escapism, Escapology

American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

AvJohn Limon

1 569 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar. Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

Finns i fler format (1)

Häftad

509 kr

Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar

Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century identifies and explores what has emerged as perhaps the central theme of 21st-century American fiction: the desire to escape—from the commodified present, from directionless history, from moral death—at a time of inescapable globalization. The driving question is how to find an alternative to the world within the world, at a time when utopian and messianic ideals have lost their power to compel belief. John Limon traces the American answer to that question in the writings of some of the most important authors of the last two decades—Chabon, Diaz, Foer, Eggers, Donoghue, Groff, Ward, Saunders, and Whitehead, among others—and finds that it always involves the faux utopian freedom and pseudo-messianic salvation of childhood.When contemporary novelists feature actual historical escape, pervasively from slavery or Nazism, it appears in their novels as escape envy or escape nostalgia—as if globalization like slavery or Nazism could be escaped in a direction, from this place to another. Thus the closing of the world frontier inspires a mirror messianism and utopianism that in US novels can only be rendered as a performative, momentary, chiasmic relationship between precocious kids and their ludic guardians.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-09-29
Mått148 x 218 x 20 mm
Vikt720 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor248
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781501391118

Tillhör följande kategorier

Litteraturvetenskap inom Skönlitteratur
Litteraturteori inom Skönlitteratur

IntroductionPart I: Escape, Escapism, Escapology1. Notes from Neverland 2. I Flit, I Float, I Fleetly Flee, I Fly [on The Sound of Music]Part II: Family Likenesses3. The Escapist [on Michael Chabon]4. Mellon [on Junot Diaz]5. Bath and Bathos [on Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer]6. The Beauty! The Horror! [on Emma Donoghue]7. Et in Nobis Arcadia [on Lauren Groff]8. The Ethics of Immortality [on Colson Whitehead] 9. The Songs of Murdered Souls [On Jesmyn Ward and George Saunders] Part III: Foreign Correspondents10. Choice and the Chosen [on David Grossman]11. Categorical Denial [on Arundhati Roy] Part IV: Prequel12. The Tunnel Out [on William H. Gass] AcknowledgmentsReferencesIndex

If you haven’t yet encountered John Limon’s work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it’s witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we’re escaping from but also what we’re escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells.

Mer från samma författare

Del 39

The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science

John Limon

Häftad, 2009

829 kr

Del 39

The Place of Fiction in the Time of Science

John Limon, Albert Gelpi, Ross Posnock

Inbunden, 1990

2 059 kr

Stand-up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America

John Limon

Häftad, 2000

429 kr

Death's Following

John Limon

Inbunden, 2012

1 399 kr

Death's Following

John Limon

Häftad, 2012

569 kr

Du kanske också är intresserad av