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Author Konstantinou, Lee, author.

Title Cool characters : irony and American fiction / Lee Konstantinou.

Publication Info. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2016.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 2nd Floor Stacks  813.540918 K837c 2016    ---  Available
1 copy being processed for Axe Acquisitions Order.
Description xiii, 368 pages ; 24 cm
text rdacontent
unmediated rdamedia
volume rdacarrier
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary "Cool Characters tells the story of American political irony from World War II to the present: how irony came to seem politically subversive for American countercultural rebels; how mainstream culture allegedly co-opted countercultural irony; how irony became part of major critical theories of postmodernism; and how -- starting in the late 1980s -- innovative writers developed an idea of "postirony" with the hope of overcoming the political limitations of postmodern irony. To chart the shift from irony to postirony, and show what relationship culture has to politics, the book offers intensive analyses of important American countercultural figures: the hipster, the punk, a figure the author calls "the believer," the coolhunter, and the occupier; and new interpretations of important works by Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker, Michael Muhammad Knight, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, Alex Shakar, William Gibson, Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Lethem, and Rachel Kushner."--Provided by publisher.
Contents Introduction: the character of irony -- Irony -- The hipster as critic -- Punk's positive dystopia -- Postirony -- How to be a believer -- The work of the coolhunter -- Conclusion: Manic pixie dream occupier.
Subject Irony -- Political aspects -- United States -- History.
Counterculture -- United States -- History.
Irony in literature.
Politics and culture -- United States -- History.
Postmodernism (Literature)
Irony.
Counterculture. (OCoLC)fst00881315
Irony. (OCoLC)fst00979386
Irony in literature. (OCoLC)fst00979394
Irony -- Political aspects. (OCoLC)fst00979388
Politics and culture. (OCoLC)fst01069952
Postmodernism (Literature) (OCoLC)fst01073181
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
ISBN 9780674967885
0674967887
Standard No. 40025682429

 
    
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