False starts : the rhetoric of failure and the making of American modernism / David M. Ball.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ball, David M., 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Failure (Psychology) in literature.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xii, 232 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2015.

Summary:

From Herman Melville's claim that "failure is the true test of greatness" to Henry Adams's self-identification with the "mortifying failure in [his] long education" to William Faulkner's eagerness to be judged by his "splendid failure to do the impossible," the rhetoric of failure has served as a master trope of modernist American literary expression. David M. Ball's magisterial study addresses the fundamental questions of language, meaning, and authority bound up in this rhetoric, which run counter to well-rehearsed claims of American innocence and positivity, beginning with the American Renaissance and extending into modernist and contemporary literature. Never merely something to be avoided or overcome, failure becomes a register of artistic ambition, a herald of the arrival of advanced capitalism and a rapidly changing culture, and the means by which authors negotiate their place within that culture. False Starts tells a lively narrative running through American literature that revisits and rewrites assumptions about the development of modernism in the United States. Book jacket.

Contents:

The rhetoric of failure and the case study of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The prestige of failure : modern sentiments in Susan Warner and Herman Melville

The economies of failure : the culture of antisemitism in Henry Adams and Edith Wharton

The inscription of failure : signifying documents in William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison

Afterword : the persistence of failure : Chris Ware's graphic narratives and the afterlife of modernism.

Notes:

Originally the author's thesis (doctoral)--Princeton University, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780810130005

0810130009

9780810131132

0810131137

OCLC:

879583853