IUKL Library
Normal view MARC view ISBD view

Jonathan Lethem [electronic resource] / James Peacock.

By: Peacock, James, 1970-.
Contributor(s): ebrary, Inc.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookSeries: Contemporary American and Canadian writers. Publisher: Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, 2012Description: ix, 185 p.Subject(s): Lethem, Jonathan -- Criticism and interpretationGenre/Form: Electronic books.DDC classification: 813.54 Online resources: An electronic book accessible through the World Wide Web; click to view
Contents:
Private dicks: science fiction meets detection in Gun, With Occasional Music -- The nightmare of the local: apocalypse on the road in Amnesia Moon -- Alice in the academy: As She Climbed Across the Table -- Far away, so close: Brooklyn goes to space in Girl in Landscape -- 'We learned to tell our story walking': Tourette's and urban space in Motherless Brooklyn -- Mixed media: graffiti, writing and coming-of-age in The Fortress of Solitude -- 'Hiding in plain sight': reality and secrecy in You Don't Love Me Yet and Chronic City.
Summary: "Examining all of Lethem's novels, as well as a number of his short fictions, essays and critical works, this study shows how the author's prolific output, his restlessness and his desire always to be subverting literary forms and genres, are consistent with his interest in subcultural identities. The human need to break off into small groupings, subcultures or miniature utopias is mirrored in the critical tendency to enforce generic boundaries. To break down the boundaries between genres, then, is partly to make a nonsense of critical distinctions between 'high' and 'low' literature, and partly to reflect the wider need to recognise difference, to appreciate that other people, no matter how outlandish and alien they may appear, share similar desires, experiences and problems. With this in mind, James Peacock argues that Lethem's experiments with genre are not merely games or elaborate literary jokes, but ethical necessities, particularly when viewed in the light of the losses and traumas that shadow all of his writing. Jonathan Lethem, therefore, makes an important contribution not just to Lethem studies, but also to debates about genre and its position in postmodern or 'post-postmodern' literature."--Publisher's website.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Item type Current location Collection Call number URL Copy number Status Date due Item holds
E-book E-book IUKL Library
Subscripti http://site.ebrary.com/lib/kliuc/Doc?id=10627273 1 Available
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-181) and index.

Private dicks: science fiction meets detection in Gun, With Occasional Music -- The nightmare of the local: apocalypse on the road in Amnesia Moon -- Alice in the academy: As She Climbed Across the Table -- Far away, so close: Brooklyn goes to space in Girl in Landscape -- 'We learned to tell our story walking': Tourette's and urban space in Motherless Brooklyn -- Mixed media: graffiti, writing and coming-of-age in The Fortress of Solitude -- 'Hiding in plain sight': reality and secrecy in You Don't Love Me Yet and Chronic City.

"Examining all of Lethem's novels, as well as a number of his short fictions, essays and critical works, this study shows how the author's prolific output, his restlessness and his desire always to be subverting literary forms and genres, are consistent with his interest in subcultural identities. The human need to break off into small groupings, subcultures or miniature utopias is mirrored in the critical tendency to enforce generic boundaries. To break down the boundaries between genres, then, is partly to make a nonsense of critical distinctions between 'high' and 'low' literature, and partly to reflect the wider need to recognise difference, to appreciate that other people, no matter how outlandish and alien they may appear, share similar desires, experiences and problems. With this in mind, James Peacock argues that Lethem's experiments with genre are not merely games or elaborate literary jokes, but ethical necessities, particularly when viewed in the light of the losses and traumas that shadow all of his writing. Jonathan Lethem, therefore, makes an important contribution not just to Lethem studies, but also to debates about genre and its position in postmodern or 'post-postmodern' literature."--Publisher's website.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2011. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.

There are no comments for this item.

Log in to your account to post a comment.
The Library's homepage is at http://library.iukl.edu.my/.