1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910300042903321

Autore

Engles Tim

Titolo

White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature [[electronic resource] /] / by Tim Engles

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2018

ISBN

3-319-90460-4

Edizione

[1st ed. 2018.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XII, 243 p. 1 illus.)

Disciplina

809

Soggetti

Literature, Modern—20th century

Literature, Modern—21st century

Men

Contemporary Literature

Twentieth-Century Literature

Men's Studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction: Making America White Male Again -- 2. Ethnicized White Male Nostalgia: Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit -- 3. Moralizing White Male Nostalgia: Richard Wright’s Savage Holiday -- 4. Spatialized White Male Nostalgia: Carol Shields’s Happenstance -- 5. Denying White Male Nostalgia: Don DeLillo’s Underworld -- 6. Possessive White Male Nostalgia: Louis Begley’s About Schmidt -- 7. Epilogue: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last and the Futures of Domineering .

Sommario/riassunto

White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature charts the late twentieth-century development of reactionary emotions commonly felt by resentful, yet often goodhearted white men. Examining an eclectic array of literary case studies in light of recent work in critical whiteness and masculinity studies, history, geography, philosophy and theology, Tim Engles delineates five preliminary forms of white male nostalgia—as dramatized in novels by Sloan Wilson, Richard Wright, Carol Shields, Don DeLillo, Louis Begley and Margaret Atwood—demonstrating how literary fiction can help us understand the



inner workings of deluded dominance. These authors write from identities outside the defensive domain of normalized white masculinity, demonstrating via extended interior dramas that although nostalgia is primarily thought of as an emotion felt by individuals, it also works to shore up entrenched collective power.