Hope Isn’t Stupid is the first study to interrogate the neglected connections between affect and the practice of utopia in contemporary American literature. Although these concepts are rarely theorized together, it is difficult to fully articulate utopia without understanding how affects circulate within utopian texts. Moving away from science fiction—the genre in which utopian visions are often located—author Sean Grattan resuscitates the importance of utopianism in recent Americ...

Noir Affect proposes a new understanding of noir as defined by negative affect. This new understanding emphasizes that noir is, first and foremost, an affective disposition rather than a specific cycle of films or novels associated with a given time period or national tradition. Instead, the essays in Noir Affect trace noir’s negativity as it manifests in different national contexts from the United States to Mexico, France, and Japan and in a range of different media, inc...

On Being Blue is a book about everything blue—sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things—and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do.Gass writes:Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, ov...

First published in 1936, The Geographical History of America compiles prose pieces, dialogues, philosophical meditations, and playlets by one of the century's most influential writers. In this work, Stein sets forth her view of the human mind: what it is, how it works, and how it is different from - and more interesting than - human nature.

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of It Can't Happen Here tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Sinclair Lewis's book.Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.This short summary and analysis of It Can't Happen Here includes:Historical contextChapter-by-chapter overviewsProfiles o...

Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) is one of the most violent and revolutionary works in the American canon. Controversial and compelling, its account of crime and racism remain the source of profound disagreement both within African-American culture and throughout the world.This guide to Wright's provocative novel offers:an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of Native Sona critical history, surveying the many interp...

The term ‘science fiction’ has an established common usage, but close examination reveals that writers, fans, editors, scholars, and publishers often use this word in different ways for different reasons. Exploring how science fiction has emerged through competing versions and the struggle to define its limits, this Concise History:provides an accessible and clear overview of the development of the genretraces the separation of sf from a broader f...

Master the in-depth knowledge and higher-level skills that A-level Geography students need to succeed; this focused topic book extends learning far beyond your course textbooks.Blending detailed content and case studies with questions, exemplars and guidance, this book:- Significantly improves students' knowledge and understanding of A-level content and concepts, providing more coverage of The Water and Carbon Cycles than your existing resources- St...

Conversations with W. S. Merwin is the first collection of interviews with former United States Poet Laureate W. S. Merwin (b. 1927). Spanning almost six decades of conversations, the collection touches on such topics as Merwin's early influences (Robert Graves and Ezra Pound), his location within the twin poles of Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, and his extraordinary work as a translator, as well as his decades-long interest in environmental conservation. Anticipating the c...

Although Herman Melville's masterworks Moby-Dick and Benito Cereno have long been the subject of vigorous scholarly examination, the impact of African culture on these works has received surprisingly little critical attention. Presenting a groundbreaking reappraisal of these two powerful pieces of fiction, Sterling Stuckey reveals how African customs and rituals heavily influenced one of America's greatest novelists. The Melville that emerges in this innovative, intertex...

First published in 1990, this book represents the first full-length study of into the group of novels designated ‘Rosicrucian’ and traces the emergence of this distinct fictional genre, revealing a continuous occult tradition running through seemingly diverse literary texts. Taking the Enlightenment as a starting point, the author shows how the physician’s secular appropriation of the idea of eternal life, through the study of longevity and physical decay, attracted writers like William Go...

How an understanding of intellectual disability transforms the pleasures of readingNarrative informs everything we think, do, plan, remember, and imagine. We tell stories and we listen to stories, gauging their "well-formedness" within a couple of years of learning to walk and talk. Some argue that the capacity to understand narrative is innate to our species; others claim that while that might be so, the invention of writing then re-wired our brains.In T...