Maximalism in Contemporary American Literature: The Uses of Detail

ISBN-13: 9780367878504 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 176 str.

Nick Levey

Opis

This book studies the maximalist novels of Wallace, Baker, Pynchon, and others, considering how overly-detailed writing serves the institutional, emotional, and intellectual needs of contemporary readers and writers. It argues that maximalist novels not only exceed perceived limits of style, subject matter, and scope, but strive to remake the us

Spis treści

Introduction

1. Giants and Junk: Power-Reading Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow

2. On Flunking: Maximalist Description in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest 94

3. Data-Sickle: Maximalism and White-Collar Aesthetics in David Foster Wallace's The Pale King

4. Just Maximalist Things: Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine and Objects of Curiosity

5. Housebound: Domestic Excess in Nicholson Baker’s Room Temperature

6. Mindless Pleasures: Playlists, Unemployment, and Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice

Conclusion: Overflow: The Margins of American Maximalism

O autorze

Nick Levey teaches in the English Department at La Trobe University, Australia. He publishes on contemporary fiction and is currently writing about post-press literature and the rise of digital self-publishing.