Male sexuality under surveillance : the office in American literature / Graham Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Graham, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Offices in literature.

Sex (Psychology) in literature.

Sex in literature.

Men in literature.

Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Bartleby, the scrivener.

Melville, Herman.

Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. Rise of Silas Lapham.

Howells, William Dean.

Lewis, Sinclair, 1885-1951. Babbitt.

Lewis, Sinclair.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (271 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, c2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Male Sexuality under Surveillance is a lively, intelligent, and expertly argued analysis of the construction of male sexuality in the business office. Graham Thompson interweaves three main threads: a historicized cultural analysis of the development of the modern business office from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century to the present day, a Foucauldian discussion of the office as the site of various disciplinary practices, and a queer-theoretical discussion of the textualization of the gay male body as a device for producing a taxonomy of male-male relations. The combin

Contents:

Acknowledgments; Introduction; Part One: Managing Desire; 1."Dead letters . . . dead men?":The Rhetoric of the Oce in Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener"; 2. "And that paint is a thing that will bear looking into":The Business of Sexuality in The Rise of Silas Lapham; 3. "A dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea":The Businessman and the Fairy Child in Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt; Part Two: Postwar Unsettlement; 4. "The spirit of work weaves a magic wand":From Babbittry to Gray Flannelvia Tropical Incorporation

5. "Opaque glass bricks":Sloan Wilson's Gray Flannel Man in the Queer Organization 6. "I ascend like a condor,while falling to pieces":Fear, Paranoia, and Self-Pity in Joseph Heller's Something Happened; Part Three: A Word for Windows; 7. "My own plein-air Arnality bared to the sky":Shoelaces, Social Energy, and sexuality in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and The Fermata; 8. "Frank Lloyd Oop":Microserfs, Modern Migration, and the Architecture of the 1990's; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-243) and index.

ISBN:

9781587294402

1587294400

OCLC:

56109469