|
Showing 1 - 2 of
2 matches in All Departments
In Neatness Counts, Kevin Kopelson reflects on the poetics of the
desk--rolltop or bureau-plat, cluttered or bare, the nestlike desk,
the schematic desk, the dramatic desk, the dramatic lack of any
such furniture. Exploring the topography of literary creation by
way of the topography of work space, Kopelson, one of today's most
important critics, offers a series of meditations on how
orderliness, chaos, and other physical states correspond with both
the exhilaration of production and the desperation of writer's
block. Focusing on the poet Elizabeth Bishop, the novelist Marcel
Proust, the critic Roland Barthes, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and
the travel writer Bruce Chatwin, Neatness Counts is at once
critical and creative, examining how various writers' work habits
relate to their published work. Kopelson also considers desks of
his own--one that had belonged to an older brother, one he borrowed
from a messy friend, one now shared with a partner. And by pursuing
these two lines of inquiry to their unlikely but enlightening
conclusions, Kopelson both fabricates a virtual library of literary
insight and commemorates an era in which the term "desktop" didn't
denote one's computer screen. Kevin Kopelson is professor of
English at the University of Iowa. His books include, most
recently, The Queer Afterlife of Vaslav Nijinsky.
|
Sedaris (Paperback)
Kevin Kopelson Kopelson
|
R446
Discovery Miles 4 460
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
“When you're laughing aloud at David Sedaris’s every sentence,
it’s easy to miss the more serious side of what he’s up to.
Fortunately, Kevin Kopelson has come along to guide readers
through the work of the best and most subversive social satirist in
America.” —Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My
Affection "Charting a course from Marcel Proust to Tony
Danza, Kevin artfully captures the exquisite pleasure and pain of
reading David Sedaris. A witty, thoughtful, intimate encounter."
—David Hyde Pierce "If I were to read a book on David Sedaris it
might be this one." —Paul Reubens David Sedaris is nothing less
than a literary phenomenon. His readings and live performances sell
out within hours, while his books—Barrel Fever, Holidays on Ice,
Naked, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and Dress Your Family in Corduroy
and Denim—have each been best-sellers. Sedaris became an almost
overnight sensation in 1992 when he recounted his surreal
experiences working as a Macy’s department store elf named
Crumpet on NPR’s Morning Edition. The sardonic wit displayed in
his “SantaLand Diaries” has since made him America’s
preeminent satirist—brutally honest, often painfully sad, and
above all, truly hilarious. In Sedaris, Kevin Kopelson
engages with the most difficult, uncomfortable, and often most
humorous aspects of Sedaris’s writing—shame and public
humiliation, dysfunctional families and destructive relationships,
misanthropy and self-loathing—to reveal what makes Sedaris such
an effective and affecting satirist, and to show why so many
readers and listeners identify with him. For Kopelson, the key to
understanding Sedaris lies in recognizing the importance of
relationships to his comedy. Drawing extensively on both his
nonfiction essays and short stories, Kopelson maps out Sedaris’s
relationships in more or less chronological order—grandparents,
parents, siblings, teachers, friends, coworkers, strangers,
children, and lovers—and identifies the misunderstandings,
betrayals, and cruelties that we all experience, but which in
Sedaris’s voice are brilliantly and grotesquely magnified.
Written for everyone who loves David Sedaris and has
wondered why they find him so relevant to their own lives, Sedaris
succeeds in taking seriously this sublimely caustic, riotously
funny, and ultimately important writer. And for anyone unfamiliar
with Sedaris, this book is the perfect introduction. Kevin
Kopelson is professor of English at the University of Iowa. His
previous books include Neatness Counts: Essays on the Writer’s
Desk (Minnesota, 2004).
|
You may like...
TattooIsMe
Chris Coppola
Hardcover
R1,244
R952
Discovery Miles 9 520
|