Description
Book SynopsisSite Reading offers a new method of literary and cultural interpretation and a new theory of narrative setting by examining five sites--supermarkets, dumps, roads, ruins, and asylums--that have been crucial to American literature and visual art since the mid-twentieth century. Against the traditional understanding of setting as a static background
Trade ReviewWinner of the 2016 Erving Goffman Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Social Interaction, Media Ecology Association
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations xi INTRODUCTION: THE SITE OF THE SOCIAL 1 1 SUPERMARKET SOCIOLOGY (Don DeLillo, Andy Warhol) 25 TEST SITES 49 2 DUMPS (William S. Burroughs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) 51 3 ROADS (Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, John Chamberlain) 73 4 RUINS (Thomas Pynchon, Robert Smithson) 96 5 ASYLUMS (Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, Jeff Wall) 121 AFTERWORD: SITE UNSEEN 149 Acknowledgments 157 Notes 161 Bibliography 187 Index 201
