LEADER 05577nam 2200601 a 450 001 9910454475803321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-281-95906-5 010 $a9786611959067 010 $a0-226-03095-4 024 7 $a10.7208/9780226030951 035 $a(CKB)1000000000579829 035 $a(EBL)408339 035 $a(OCoLC)476228563 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000184246 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11174630 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000184246 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10199649 035 $a(PQKB)10282067 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC408339 035 $a(DE-B1597)524909 035 $a(OCoLC)1058353392 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780226030951 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL408339 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10265989 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL195906 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000579829 100 $a20060908d2007 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aIsolarion$b[electronic resource] $ea different Oxford journey /$fJames Attlee 210 $aChicago $cUniversity of Chicago Press$d2007 215 $a1 online resource (298 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-226-03093-8 327 $tIsolarion -- $tFrontmatter -- $tContents -- $tAcknowledgements -- $tIntroduction -- $tFIRST PARTITION -- $tEmbarkation -- $tPurification -- $tOf Music and Cannibalism -- $tDoing My Part -- $tThe Melancholy Pilgrim -- $tBread and Circuses -- $tBoucherie Chatar -- $tDesignated Desire-Lines: Planning a New Road -- $tFurther Purification of the Pilgrim -- $tEnrobed -- $tOf Love and Jewels -- $tBehind the Blue Door (Inside the Private Shop) -- $tFrom the Literal to the Allegorical and Back -- $tWittgenstein's Lion and a Cappuccino Sea -- $tVirtual Streets and Gateways: The Plans Revisited -- $tCosmonauts and Coleslaw -- $tSt. Edmund's Well and a Faded Warning -- $tSECOND PARTITION -- $tMaking Do and Getting By -- $tEgyptian Vagabonds, Afternoon Men, and the Malus Genius of Our Nation -- $tLosing the Key -- $tBed-Sits and Bir?rdari -- $tWhat They Think You Can Bear: Football, Religion, and Nightmares on the Cowley Road -- $tBetween Two Fires: Pulling the Dragon's Teeth -- $tMelancholy, an American Photographer, and the Irish Writer -- $tCowley Road Calling -- $tJust Less Lucky -- $tDreadlocks and Rim-Shots: Reggae at the Zodiac -- $tOf Lepers, Lunatics, and Layabouts -- $tDancing Sand and Zum-Zum Water -- $tJunior Jihad -- $tOf Books and Bitumen -- $tCarnival -- $tReturning to the Source -- $tTHIRD PARTITION -- $tA Journey in the Hinterland -- $tInto the Furnace -- $tBlessings and Tribulation -- $tA Graveyard Reborn -- $tFinding a Clue -- $tOf Bats and Mutton Curry -- $tMargaret's Story -- $tA Hidden Pool -- $tThe Liquid Kingdom -- $tThe Gateways Close -- $tOf Robots, Wild Rhubarb, and the New Oxford Way -- $tThings Fall Apart: An Ending of Sorts 330 $aThrough the centuries, people from all walks of life have heard the siren call of a pilgrimage, the lure to journey away from the familiar in search of understanding. But is a pilgrimage even possible these days for city-dwellers enmeshed in the pressures of work and family life? Or is there a way to be a pilgrim without leaving one's life behind? James Attlee answers these questions with Isolarion, a thoughtful, streetwise, and personal account of his pilgrimage to a place he thought he already knew-the Cowley Road in Oxford, right outside his door. Isolarion takes its title from a type of fifteenth-century map that isolates an area in order to present it in detail, and that's what Attlee, sharp-eyed and armed with tape recorder and notebook, provides for Cowley Road. The former site of a leper hospital, a workhouse, and a medieval well said to have miraculous healing powers, Cowley Road has little to do with the dreaming spires of the tourist's or student's Oxford. What Attlee presents instead is a thoroughly modern, impressively cosmopolitan, and utterly organic collection of shops, restaurants, pubs, and religious establishments teeming with life and reflecting the multicultural makeup of the surrounding neighborhood. From a sojourn in a sensory-deprivation tank to a furtive visit to an unmarked pornography emporium, Attlee investigates every aspect of the Cowley Road's appealingly eclectic culture, where halal shops jostle with craft jewelers and reggae clubs pulsate alongside quiet churchyards. But the very diversity that is, for Attlee, the essence of Cowley Road's appeal is under attack from well-meaning city planners and predatory developers. His pilgrimage is thus invested with melancholy: will the messy glories of the Cowley Road be lost to creeping homogenization? Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy to contemporary art, Attlee is a charming and companionable guide who revels in the extraordinary embedded in the everyday. Isolarion is at once a road movie, a quixotic stand against uniformity, and a rousing hymn in praise of the complex, invigorating nature of the twenty-first-century city. 606 $aTravel / General$2bisacsh 607 $aCowley (Oxfordshire, England)$xSocial life and customs$y20th century 608 $aElectronic books. 615 7$aTravel / General. 676 $a942.5/7 700 $aAttlee$b James$0880466 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910454475803321 996 $aIsolarion$92061829 997 $aUNINA