LEADER 04361nam 22007452 450 001 9910511621403321 005 20140707183758.0 010 $a1-5013-1962-0 010 $a1-62892-713-5 010 $a1-62356-810-2 024 7 $a10.5040/9781628927139 035 $a(CKB)2670000000568579 035 $a(EBL)1791727 035 $a(SSID)ssj0001349472 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)12502970 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0001349472 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)11417821 035 $a(PQKB)10554517 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC1791727 035 $a(OCoLC)1162728854 035 $a(UtOrBLW)bpp09257910 035 $a(EXLCZ)992670000000568579 100 $a20140626d2014 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aAmerican tantalus $ehorizons, happiness, and the impossible pursuits of US literature and culture /$fAndrew Warnes 205 $aFirst edition. 210 1$aNew York :$cBloomsbury Academic,$d2014. 215 $a1 online resource (209 p.) 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a1-322-14516-4 311 $a1-62356-107-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aTable of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Do not touch -- 1. Perpetual Pursuits: Happiness, horizons and other elusive objects in modern US culture -- 2. The Becoming Blank: Fantasies of invisibility after the frontier -- 3. Play Things: Toys at the edge of whiteness -- 4. Necessary Torments: Temptations, falls and bodily compensations in modern US culture -- Conclusion: Beyond fetishism -- End Notes -- Bibliography. 330 $a"American Tantalus argues that modern US fictions often grow preoccupied by tantalisation. This keyword might seem commonplace; thesauruses, certainly, often lump it in with tease and torment in their general inventories of desire. Such lists, however, mislead. Just as most US dictionaries have in fact long recognised tantalise's origins in The Odyssey, so they have defined it as the unique desire we feel for objects that (like the fruit and water once cruelly placed before Tantalus) lie within our reach yet withdraw from our attempts to touch them. On these terms, American Tantalus shows, tantalise not only describes a particular kind of thwarted desire, but also one that dominates modern US fiction to a remarkable extent. For this term specifically evokes the yearning to touch alienated or virginal objects that we find examined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Cade Bambara, Richard Wright and Toni Morrison; and it also indicates the insatiable pursuit of the horizon so important to Willa Cather and Edith Wharton among others. This eclectic canon indeed "prefers" the dictionary to the thesaurus: unreachable destinations and untouched commodities here indeed tantalise, inviting gestures of inquiry from which they then recoil. This focus, while lodging cycles of tantalisation at the very heart of American myth, holds profound implications for our understanding of modernity, and, in particular, of the cultural genesis of the commodity as a form."--Bloomsbury Publishing. 517 3 $aImpossible pursuits of US literature and culture 606 $aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism 606 $aConsumption (Economics) in literature 606 $aDesire in literature 606 $aMaterial culture in literature 606 $aModernism (Literature)$zUnited States 606 $aNational characteristics, American, in literature 606 $aSearching behavior in literature 606 $aTeasing in literature 606 $2Literary theory 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aConsumption (Economics) in literature. 615 0$aDesire in literature. 615 0$aMaterial culture in literature. 615 0$aModernism (Literature) 615 0$aNational characteristics, American, in literature. 615 0$aSearching behavior in literature. 615 0$aTeasing in literature. 676 $a810.9/353 700 $aWarnes$b Andrew$f1974-$0822529 801 0$bUtOrBLW 801 1$bUtOrBLW 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910511621403321 996 $aAmerican tantalus$92552589 997 $aUNINA