Tough enough : Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil / Deborah Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, Deborah, 1962- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Weil, Simone, 1909-1943.

Weil, Simone.

Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975.

Arendt, Hannah.

Sontag, Susan, 1933-2004.

Sontag, Susan.

MacCarthy, Mary, 1882-1953.

MacCarthy, Mary.

Arbus, Diane, 1923-1971.

Arbus, Diane.

Didion, Joan.

Toughness (Personality trait).

Aesthetics--Psychological aspects.

Aesthetics.

Suffering in literature.

Suffering in art.

Physical Description:

208 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Summary:

This book focuses on six brilliant women who are often seen as particularly tough-minded: Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Diane Arbus, and Joan Didion. Aligned with no single tradition, they escape straightforward categories. Yet their work evinces an affinity of style and philosophical viewpoint that derives from a shared attitude toward suffering. What Mary McCarthy called a "cold eye" was not merely a personal aversion to displays of emotion: it was an unsentimental mode of attention that dictated both ethical positions and aesthetic approaches. 'Tough Enough' traces the careers of these women and their challenges to the pre-eminence of empathy as 'the' ethical posture from which to examine pain. Their writing and art reveal an adamant belief that the hurts of the world must be treated concretely, directly, and realistically, without recourse to either melodrama or callousness. As Deborah Nelson shows, this stance offers an important counter-tradition to the common postwar poles of emotional expressivity on the one hand and cool irony on the other. Ultimately, in its insistence on facing reality without consolation or compensation, this austere "school of the unsentimental" offers new ways to approach suffering in both its spectacular forms and all of its ordinariness.

Contents:

Introduction: tough enough

Simone Weil: thinking tragically in the age of trauma

Hannah Arendt: irony and atrocity

Mary McCarthy: the aesthetic of the fact

Susan Sontag: an-aesthetics and agency

Diane Arbus: a feeling for the camera

Joan Didion: the question of self-pity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226457772

022645777X

9780226457802

022645780X

OCLC:

958780855