Brian Jarvis

Over the course of a prodigious literary career which now spans seven decades, DeLillo has engaged with the problem and the promise of vision. Don DeLillo and the Visual offers a fresh perspective on the lead writer for the Age of the Image. Whilst the author is sometimes characterised and even caricatured as a ‘novelist of ideas’, this study makes a case for DeLillo as a ‘body artist’ with a particular fascination for the varieties of visual experience. DeLillo’s work dramatizes diverse ways of seeing: the eye of the artist; the scientific stare; the consumer leer; the plagiarised perception of the tourist; the athlete’s field of sight; and the seer’s sacred vision. Framed by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the dialectical optic of Walter Benjamin, a series of close readings consider the visuality of writing itself, light and colour, the screen cultures of cinema, television and computer and the ekphrastic depiction of painting and photography.

Tickety - Tackity - Tackity - Tick Ramon loves to tap dance late into the night. But the wonderful characters of his town are having trouble sleeping. So they come up with a plan that teaches them compassion, empathy, and tolerance.--Brian Jarvis

A Book for Beginners by a BeginnerFor a 'Beginner', says the author, composing and writing Haiku or Senryu verses, in English, can prove to be a most enjoyable, rewarding - and challenging - endeavour. For those who have become intrigued by this ancient yet so 'mindfully poetic' Japanese short-form verses, the author believes this comprehensive introduction will prove the helping hand that anyone can assimilate, and begin writing their first verses in English. Its opening 'essay' and following Guidelines are accompanied by hundreds of the author's original English verses - in the traditional 5-7-5 syllable 'three-liners'. Rather than display haiku and senryu as one inter-mixed offering, the book is sectioned under 'titles' - Haiku and Seasons, Everyday Senryu, Philosophy and Psychology, and Spirit. Finally, a section of Potpourri verses - with its own 'challenge' for the beginner. He encourages the beginner with 'Try and succeed is to be your aim, your intent, your desire' adding that 'A little talent goes a long way - and you all have that'.

Time Travel Is Real? For Brian, the "Time Traveling Hippie Surfer", Time Travel is pure fact! It turns out that the exact center of "Time the Universe and All Things" is a Yellow Pole that sits about a mile or so behind his house in the coastal pine forest of North Carolina. Our narrator, "Brian" is living in the year 1974, until he stumbles upon the Yellow Pole, the Dome of Time and the Keeper of Time, "Carl the First". Carl takes him 65,000,000 years back in time to watch the prehistoric dinosaurs. That Time Trip changed Brian''s world forever; he begins his new life as a "Time Traveler". Sandra is the only other time traveler in the universe. She is the perfect "California Surfer Girl", a tall tan blonde who can't resist "Zapping" around in time with the "Boys". This fantastic odyssey is narrated by the Hippie Surfer Dude riding the Cosmic Waves of Time.

This title offers a critical introduction to the contemporary American novel focusing on contexts, key texts, and criticism. Adventurous, engaging and politically urgent, contemporary American novels have come to enjoy a particular prestige and, through university courses, film adaptations and cultural controversies, a global circulation. This book provides a critical introduction to novels produced in the United States between 1980 and the present. Compact yet wide-ranging, and written in vivid, accessible prose, it registers the diversity of contemporary American writing and carefully situates this work in historical contexts that include Reaganomics, the Clinton years and the post-9/11 'War on Terror'. Detailed attention is given throughout to how America's current novelists have responded to shifting gender politics, changes in the nation's racial configuration, the increasing dominance of a commodity culture and to adjustments in the United States' place in the world following the end of the Cold War and the increased pace of globalisation. Complete with timelines of historical and literary events, detailed lists of secondary sources both in print and on the web, and suggestions for students' own research projects, this is the ideal resource for anyone beginning study of this vibrant literature. "Texts and Contexts" is a series of clear, concise and accessible introductions to key literary fields and concepts. The series provides the literary, critical, historical context for texts and authors in a specific literary area in a way that introduces a range of work in the field and enables further independent study and reading.

This is a critical introduction to the contemporary American novel focusing on contexts, key texts and criticism. Adventurous, engaging and politically urgent, contemporary American novels have come to enjoy a particular prestige and, through university courses, film adaptations and cultural controversies, a global circulation. This book provides a critical introduction to novels produced in the United States between 1980 and the present. Compact yet wide-ranging, and written in vivid, accessible prose, it registers the diversity of contemporary American writing and carefully situates this work in historical contexts that include Reaganomics, the Clinton years and the post-9/11 'War on Terror'. Detailed attention is given throughout to how America's current novelists have responded to shifting gender politics, changes in the nation's racial configuration, the increasing dominance of a commodity culture and to adjustments in the United States's place in the world following the end of the Cold War and the increased pace of globalisation. Complete with timelines of historical and literary events, detailed lists of secondary sources both in print and on the web, and suggestions for students' own research projects, this is the ideal resource for anyone beginning study of this vibrant literature. "Texts and Contexts" is a series of clear, concise and accessible introductions to key literary fields and concepts. The series provides the literary, critical, historical context for texts and authors in a specific literary area in a way that introduces a range of work in the field and enables further independent study and reading.

From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history. In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Cruel and Unusual offers an exploration of the history of punishment as mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault's influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.

From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history. In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Cruel and Unusual offers an exploration of the history of punishment as mediated in American culture. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault's influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.