California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels: Exiled from Eden focuses on the concept of Californian identity in the fiction of Joan Didion. This identity is understood as melancholic, in the sense that the critics following the tradition of both Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin use the word. The book traces the progress of the way Californian identity is portrayed in Joan Didion’s novels, starting with the first two in which California plays the central role, Run River and Play It As It Lays, through A Book of Common Prayer to Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, where California functions only as a distant point of reference, receding to the background of Didion’s interests. Curiously enough, Didion presents Californian history as a history of white settlement, disregarding whole chapters of the history of the region in which the Californios and Native Americans, among other groups, played a crucial role: it is this reticence that the monograph sees as the main problem of Didion’s fiction and presents it as the silent center of gravity in Didion’s oeuvre. The monograph proposes to see the melancholy expressed by Didion’s fiction organized into four losses: of Nature, History, Ethics, and Language; around which the main analytical chapters are constructed. What remains unrepresented and silenced comes back to haunt Didion’s fiction, and it results in a melancholic portrayal of California and its identity – which is the central theme this monograph addresses.
| ISBN: | 9781138370418 |
| Publication date: | 11th December 2018 |
| Author: | Katarzyna Nowak McNeice |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis Ltd |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 202 pages |
| Series: | Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers Literary theory Biography: writers |
California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels: Exiled from Eden focuses on the concept of Californian identity in the fiction of Joan Didion. This identity is understood as melancholic, in the sense that the critics following the tradition of both Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin use the word. The book traces the progress of the way Californian identity is portrayed in Joan Didion’s novels, starting with the first two in which California plays the central role, Run River and Play It As It Lays, through A Book of Common Prayer to Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, where California functions only as a distant point of reference, receding to the background of Didion’s interests. Curiously enough, Didion presents Californian history as a history of white settlement, disregarding whole chapters of the history of the region in which the Californios and Native Americans, among other groups, played a crucial role: it is this reticence that the monograph sees as the main problem of Didion’s fiction and presents it as the silent center of gravity in Didion’s oeuvre. The monograph proposes to see the melancholy expressed by Didion’s fiction organized into four losses: of Nature, History, Ethics, and Language; around which the main analytical chapters are constructed. What remains unrepresented and silenced comes back to haunt Didion’s fiction, and it results in a melancholic portrayal of California and its identity – which is the central theme this monograph addresses.
California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels features in the following genres: Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary theory, Biography: writers
California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels is available in Hardback
California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels was written by Katarzyna Nowak McNeice and published by Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis Ltd
California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels has 202 pages
Yes it is part of Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory series
£139.50