LoiteratureU of Nebraska Press, 01.01.1999 - 311 Seiten The fabric of the western literary tradition is not always predictable. In one wayward strand, waywardness itself is at work, delay becomes almost predictable, triviality is auspicious, and failure is cheerfully admired. This is loiterature. Loiterature is the first book to identify this strand, to follow its path through major works and genres, and to evaluate its literary significance. ø By offering subtle resistance to the laws of "good social order," loiterly literature blurs the distinctions between innocent pleasure and harmless relaxation on the one hand, and not-so-innocent intent on the other. The result is covert social criticism that casts doubt on the values good citizens hold dear?values like discipline, organization, productivity, and, above all, work. It levels this criticism, however, under the guise of innocent wit or harmless entertainment. Loiterature distracts attention the way a street conjurer diverts us with his sleight of hand.øøø If the pleasurable has critical potential, may not one of the functions of the critical be to produce pleasure? The ability to digress, Ross Chambers suggests, is at the heart of both, and loiterature?s digressive waywardness offers something to ponder for critics of culture as well as lovers of literature. |
Inhalt
Divided Attentions On Being Dilatory | 3 |
On Stepping out of Line | 26 |
Loiterly Subjects or Ça ne se dessine pas | 56 |
Changing the Subject or the Etcetera Principle | 85 |
Meditation and the Escalator Principle | 114 |
Learning from Dogs I Home Truths | 157 |
Learning from Dogs II Mongrel Lives | 182 |
Flâneur Reading On Being Belated | 215 |
Pointless Stories Storyless Points | 250 |
Reading and Being Read On Being Pedestrian | 270 |
Notes | 293 |
305 | |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Ackerley Ackerley's alienation Andromache Baker's banality Barbara Bush Barthes Baudelaire Baudelaire's becomes Belacqua belatedness Berganza canine Certeau chapter Charles Baudelaire Cipión clogged colonial commoditized condition consciousness context critical practice critique cruising Cygne cynical defined Descartes desire digression dilatory discourse Dog Tulip enacts énoncé enunciation escalator etcetera principle everyday false consciousness figure flânerie flâneur Frank O'Hara function genre historical human hypocrisy identity ideology implies intellectual irony Jean-François Lyotard kind knowledge kynical Le Cygne learn from dogs linear loiterature loiterly subject marginalized mediation memory Mezzanine Millie's mode modern murmuración narrative narrator narrator's natural Néré Nerval Nicholson Baker one's parasite philosophical pleasure poem position possible potential produces Rameau's Nephew readability reader relation Renée Roland Barthes romanesque saltimbanks sense sexual Sharikov simultaneously social Soirées de Paris split spottiness Stillman story street structure talking dogs there's things trivial Tulip turn Walter Benjamin words writing