Before his death in 1988 at age 38, Allon White had become known as one of the most important literary and cultural critics of his generation. This collection represents a summation of the work which, as Stuart Hall explains in the Introduction, transformed cultural studies in the 1980s. White's central concerns--with writing, carnival, the body, hysteria, and memory--recur with differing inflections in the pieces here. They range from a discussion of Julia Kristeva's work to language and location in Bleak House, from a Thomas Pynchon short story to the "seriousness" of academic language....
Before his death in 1988 at age 38, Allon White had become known as one of the most important literary and cultural critics of his generation. This co...