One of the twentieth century’s most original and influential
literary theorists, Stanley Fish is also known as a fascinatingly
atypical, polarizing public intellectual; a loud, cigar-smoking
contrarian; and a lightning rod for both the political right and
left. The truth and the limitations of this reputation are explored
in Stanley Fish, America’s Enfant Terrible by Gary A. Olson. At
once a literary biography and a traditional life story, this
engrossing volume details Fish’s vibrant personal life and his
remarkably versatile career. Born into a tumultuous family, Fish
survived life with an emotionally absent father and a headstrong
mother through street sports and troublemaking as much as through
his success at a rigorous prep school. As Olson shows, Fish’s
escape from the working-class neighborhoods of 1940s and 1950s
Providence, Rhode Island, came with his departure for the
university life at Penn and then Yale. His meteoric rise through
the academic ranks at a troubled Vietnam-era UC-Berkeley was
complemented by a 1966 romp through Europe that included drag
racing through the streets of Seville in his Alfa Romeo. He went on
to become an internationally prominent scholar at Johns Hopkins
before moving to Duke, where he built a star-studded academic
department that became a key site in the culture and theory wars of
the 1980s and 1990s. Olson discusses Fish’s tenure as a highly
visible dean at the University of Illinois at Chicago who clashed
publicly with the state legislature. He also covers Fish’s most
remarkable and controversial books, including Fish’s masterpiece,
Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, which was a critical
sensation and forever changed the craft of literary criticism, as
well as Professional Correctness and Save the World on Your Own
Time, two books that alienated Fish from most liberal-minded
professors in English studies. Olson concludes his biography of
Fish with an in-depth analysis of the contradictions between
Fish’s public persona and his private personality, examining how
impulses and events from Fish’s childhood shaped his lifelong
practices and personality traits. Also included are a chronology of
the major events of Fish’s life and never-before-published
photos. Based on hundreds of hours of recorded interviews with
friends, enemies, colleagues, former students, family members, and
Fish himself, along with material from the Stanley Fish archive,
Stanley Fish, America’s Enfant Terrible is a clearly written
narrative of the life of an important and controversial scholar.
General
Imprint: |
Southern Illinois University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
March 2016 |
Authors: |
Gary A. Olson
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 23mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
200 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8093-3476-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8093-3476-3 |
Barcode: |
9780809334766 |
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