White male nostalgia in contemporary North American literature
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Bibliographic Information
White male nostalgia in contemporary North American literature
Palgrave Macmillan, c2018
- : [hbk.]
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
White Male Nostalgia in Contemporary North American Literature charts the late twentieth-century development of reactionary emotions commonly felt by resentful, yet often goodhearted white men. Examining an eclectic array of literary case studies in light of recent work in critical whiteness and masculinity studies, history, geography, philosophy and theology, Tim Engles delineates five preliminary forms of white male nostalgia-as dramatized in novels by Sloan Wilson, Richard Wright, Carol Shields, Don DeLillo, Louis Begley and Margaret Atwood-demonstrating how literary fiction can help us understand the inner workings of deluded dominance. These authors write from identities outside the defensive domain of normalized white masculinity, demonstrating via extended interior dramas that although nostalgia is primarily thought of as an emotion felt by individuals, it also works to shore up entrenched collective power.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1 Introduction: Making America White Male Again
Common White Male Dispositions
Forms of White Male Nostalgia
2 Ethnicized White Male Nostalgia: Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
White Anglo-Saxonism
Resurgent White Anglo-Saxonism
Empathetic Black Embodiment and White Male Emotional Constipation
The Ethnicist Presence
Pseudo-feudal Nostalgia
3 Moralizing White Male Nostalgia: Richard Wright's Savage Holiday
White Male Histories
Purified White Male Bodies
The White Male Death Drive
4 Spatialized White Male Nostalgia: Carol Shields's Happenstance
Contexts for Happenstance
An Unwittingly White Male Historian
Communally Cognizant Reflective Nostalgia
Dehistoricized Land
Geographical Space and White Male Mobility
5 Denying White Male Nostalgia: Don DeLillo's Underworld
The Relational Underpinnings of Cold War White Masculinity
Reflective Nostalgia and Communal Art
White-male Pattern Deafness
Masculinized Isolation and Feminized Community
6 Possessive White Male Nostalgia: Louis Begley's About Schmidt
Entitled White Masculinity
Sovereign WASP Masculinity
Nostalgic White World-traveling
The White Manchild
Repressed White Male Shame
7 Epilogue: Margaret Atwood's The Heart Goes Last and the Futures of Domineering
White Masculinity
by "Nielsen BookData"