Literature and Race in Los Angeles

ISBN-13: 9780521801492 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 214 str.

Julian Murphet (University of Oxford)

Opis

This book analyzes contemporary literature in Los Angeles in relation to the city's form, its visual character and its recent political history. Writers such as Bret Easton Ellis and James Ellroy are considered as responding to racial and ethnic partitioning in LA, as well as to increasing cultural homogeneity. Unlike other books on contemporary American literature, this book builds a composite portrait of a single literary scene in order to demonstrate the significance of writing in a tendentially post-literate culture, and the difficulties of literary representation in a city committed to visual representation.

Recenzje

'This is a gripping, compulsive book. In its reading of the literary readings of Los Angeles offered by thriller writers, poets, and performance artists, Murphet makes a decisive contribution to the body of work that […] we have started to think of as LA studies. The book itself is commandingly written, each sentence deeply-pondered and finely tuned.' Stephen Connor

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The representation of Los Angeles; 2. Neo-noir and the archaeology of urban space; 3. Postcards from sin-city; 4. Cities within the city: Third world in the First; 5. Realism and beyond; Notes; Bibliography; Index.