Mail-Orders

Sunka Simon is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Swarthmore College.

• Acknowledgments Preface and Postal Route 1. A Briefing Mailing Women and FeminismsEpistolary Theory and Fiction: A Postmodern Poetics? 2. Rhapsody in Letters: Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina Epistolary Metonymy or the Letter as MetaphorRhapsody and LettersRhapsody #1-4 3. Chain Mail: Letters*Postcards*Travel Guides...? Barth, Derrida, and Levi "LETTERS""POSTCARD""TRAVEL GUIDE" 4. Mass-Mailing: The Language Hazard Mail-Order ManualThe Discourse of the Other 5. Romancing the Post: Peter Handke's Short Letter, Long Farewell 6. Mail-Art: Einsteckalbum First Insert: Nick Bantock's Griffin and SabineSecond Insert: Karl Schaper's "Post Office of Thanatos"Third Insert: Nicomedes Suarez-Arauz's Amnesis Art 7. Posting E-Mail Posting 1 on "the electronic world"Posting 2 on ExegesisPosting 3 on The Postman P.S. Notes Selected Bibliography Author and Title Index Subject Index

"Significant and relevant to cultural studies, literary studies, and film studies, the epistolary form has played a central role in philosophy and literature since the Renaissance, and, as Simon demonstrates, the letter has enjoyed a renewed vogue since the 1970s and promises to play a central role in our evolving cyber-culture." — Susan Cocalis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst"Intellectually ambitious and enterprising, Simon's Mail-Orders never loses sight of its addressees. A thoughtful and thought-provoking invitation to its readers to rethink questions of literary genre, gender, art, and modes of communication in a new light, this book 'delivers.'" — Christian Rogowski, Amherst College"While the topic of letters and letter-writing, including their theoretical reflection, is not new, Simon's approach is unique and most refreshing, and reveals a broad knowledge of the subject, including its historical and contemporary critical discourse." — Chris Lorey, University of New Brunswick