Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life

Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life
Author :
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Total Pages : 221
Release :
ISBN-13 : 9781609386757
ISBN-10 : 1609386752
Rating : 4/5 (52 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life by : Alexandra Kingston-Reese

Download or read book Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life written by Alexandra Kingston-Reese and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Novelists and the Aesthetics of Twenty-First Century American Life gives us a new way to view contemporary art novels, asking the key question: How do contemporary writers imagine aesthetic experience? Examining the works of some of the most popular names in contemporary fiction and art criticism, including Zadie Smith, Teju Cole, Siri Hustvedt, Ben Lerner, Rachel Kushner, and others, Alexandra Kingston-Reese finds that contemporary art novels are seeking to reconcile the negative feelings of contemporary life through a concerted critical realignment in understanding artistic sensibility, literary form, and the function of the aesthetic. Kingston-Reese reveals how contemporary writers refract and problematize aesthetic experience, illuminating an uneasiness with failure: firstly, about the failure of aesthetic experiences to solve and save; and secondly, the literary inability to articulate the emotional dissonance caused by aesthetic experiences now.


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