Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.34 (747 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 019508022X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 368 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-04-12 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
This study is unique in several respects: it offers some of the keenest readings of major American texts that have ever been written, including some of the most significant works of the past decades, and it fashions a rich and supple view of the American novel as a writerly form of freedom, in sharp contrast to today's critical emphasis on blindness and co-option.. Weinstein contends that American writers are haunted by the twin specters of the self as a mirage, as Nobody, and by the brutal forces of culture and ideology that deny selfhood to people on the basis of money, sex, and color of skin. Focusing on some of the deepest instincts of American life and culture--individual liberty, freedom of speech, constructing a life--Arnold Weinstein brilliantly sketches the remarkable career of the American self in some of the major works of the past one hundred fifty years. Nobody's Home is a bold view of the American novel from its beginnings to the contemporary scene. His central thesis is that language makes possible freedoms and accomplishments that are achievable in no other realm, and that American fiction is a fascinating record of the human fight against coercion, of the kinds of maneuvering room that we may find in life and in art
Weinstein is simply superb on Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway."--James Cox, Dartmouth College. From Hawthorne's `Wakefield' to Don DeLillo's novels this book illuminates everything it touches. I'd recommend him to anyone--graduate or undergraduate."--Nelson Hathcock, Saint Xavier University"A refreshingly clear, insightful, and useful reevaluation of literary works often taught."--Choice"This book is, in one word, splendid. His readings have that esoteric freedom from dogma that is unfortunately rare these days. He then studies that impression with all the tools provided by
Arnold Weinstein is at Brown University.
Nobody's Home is an imaginative, incisive, and rich work. Arnold Weinstein is one of our most gifted literary comparativists working in the academy today, and Nobody's Home is Weinstein at his absolute best. Here he weaves together a wide range of American literature (Hawthorne, Melville, Fitzgerald, Morrison, Delillo) by demonstrating that it is the uniqu. Nobody's Home is an imaginative, incisive, and rich work. A Customer Arnold Weinstein is one of our most gifted literary comparativists working in the academy today, and Nobody's Home is Weinstein at his absolute best. Here he weaves together a wide range of American literature (Hawthorne, Melville, Fitzgerald, Morrison, Delillo) by demonstrating that it is the uniqu. A Customer said Our failed Enlightenment. America's intellectual father is the Modern Enlightenement. From Descarte's turn inward to Kant's radical autonomy, the Enlightenement gave birth to our understanding of freedom. Here, the Western intellectual tradtion separated the self from Nature and God, from any determining context. Essentially