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Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction Online 6Wgt8 (Download) Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction Online [6Wgt8.ebook] Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction Pdf Free Lee Konstantinou *Download PDF | ePub | DOC | audiobook | ebooks #1058185 in Books imusti 2016-03-07Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 1.30 x 6.10 x 9.30l, .0 #File Name: 0674967887384 pagesHARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS | File size: 73.Mb Lee Konstantinou : Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction: 3 of 6 people found the following review helpful. This book is a must-read for any scholar of contemporary ...By ACFThis book is a must-read for any scholar of contemporary fiction. I now have a much greater appreciation for the complexity of the post-postmodernist movement. Konstantinou explains how contemporary writers have a far more complicated relation to irony than most literary critics have acknowledged. Also, his writing style is lucid and compelling. Charting a new course in the criticism of postwar fiction, Cool Characters examines the changing status of irony in American cultural and political life from World War II to the present, showing how irony migrated from the countercultural margins of the 1950s to the cultural mainstream of the 1980s. Along the way, irony was absorbed into postmodern theory and ultimately became a target of recent writers who have sought to create a practice of ldquo;postironyrdquo; that might move beyond its limitations.As a concept, irony has been theorized from countless angles, but Cool Characters argues that it is best understood as an ethos: an attitude or orientation toward the world, embodied in different character types, articulated via literary style. Lee Konstantinou traces five such types?the hipster, the punk, the believer, the coolhunter, and the occupier?in new interpretations of works by authors including Ralph Ellison, William S. Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, Dave Eggers, William Gibson, Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Lethem, and Rachel Kushner.For earlier generations of writers, irony was something vital to be embraced, but beginning most dramatically with David Foster Wallace, dissatisfaction with irony, especially with its alleged tendency to promote cynicism and political passivity, gained force. Postirony?the endpoint in an arc that begins with naive belief, passes through irony, and arrives at a new form of contingent conviction?illuminates the literary environment that has flourished in the United States since the 1990s. Cool Characters is a remarkably thorough work of literary scholarship, most valuable for how it unravels the political thinking of canonical American writers (Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer), as well as some celebrated contemporary writers. (Maggie Doherty Dissent 2016-07-01)A crisply intelligent and very readable study of ironyrsquo;s literary trajectory. (Dustin Illingworth Literary Hub 2016-02-25)Excellent, well-read and well-writtenhellip;[An] insightful, provocative and necessary book in literary studies. (Robert Eaglestone Times Higher Education 2016-04-28)Cool Characters is a major work of criticism that promises to transform the study of postndash;World War II American literature. It will be of enormous interest to graduate students and professors in the field, as well as to anyone interested in the state of contemporary literature. (Michael Clune, author of White Out)Lee Konstantinoursquo;s Cool Characters is the best study of post-1945 fiction that I have read since Mark McGurlrsquo;s The Program Era, and it will no doubt be as influential. (Andrew Hoberek, author of The Twilight of the Middle Class)Konstantinou tells the story of lsquo;how postmodernism became historicalrsquo; with some of the verve of a novelist, but without sacrificing any of the virtues we expect to find in the work of a top-notch cultural critic. It is, in the most surprising way, a character-driven story, and one that sets out to answer a key question about our now routinely ironic culture: how might we take it and ourselves seriously again? (Mark McGurl, author of The Program Era)An impressive breadth of scholarshiphellip;Each chapter offers new insightshellip;Each of the bookrsquo;s characterological types exemplifies a style of engagement with political and economic realities; by approaching recent American fiction in such a novel way, Konstantinou contributes not only to literary studies but to our ongoing discussion of those realities as well. (Benjamin Madden Times Literary Supplement 2017-03-15)About the AuthorLee Konstantinou is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. 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