Loaded Words
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- $47.99
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- $47.99
Publisher Description
In Loaded Words the inimitable literary and cultural critic Marjorie Garber invites readers to join her in a rigorous and exuberant exploration of language. What links the pieces included in this vibrant new collection is the author’s contention that all words are inescapably loaded—that is, highly charged, explosive, substantial, intoxicating, fruitful, and overbrimming—and that such loading is what makes language matter.
Garber casts her keen eye on terms from knowledge, belief, madness, interruption, genius, and celebrity to humanities, general education, and academia. Included here are an array of stirring essays, from the title piece, with its demonstration of the importance of language to our thinking about the world; to the superb “Mad Lib,” on the concept of madness from Mad magazine to debates between Foucault and Derrida; to pieces on Shakespeare, “the most culturally loaded name of our time,” and the Renaissance.
With its wide range of cultural references and engaging style coupled with fresh intellectual inquiry, Loaded Words will draw in and enchant scholars, students, and general readers alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Self-styled "peripatetic writer," Harvard Shakespearean, and culture critic Garber (The Use and Abuse of Literature) collects loosely connected but fascinating essays (about half of them previously published in journals and books) on a range of themes. No word is more loaded than "madness," which she considers in its '50s and '60s expression and incarnation in Mad magazine and Mad Libs. She considers the significance of reading "in slow motion," focusing on the words rather than on external contexts, and the cultural implications of Shakespeare astride the literary canon. She uses the occasion of Patti Smith winning a National Book Award (Garber was on the panel that selected her book Just Kids) to meditate on celebrity lives as mythologies (like celebrities, "whatever did, they were always good copy"). And finally, she pleads for reinvigorating the humanities, which she sees as plagued by low self-esteem, through the fostering of collaboration, a new literary commitment, and a reduction of hyperspecialization and overinsulation within English departments. Scholarship cross-fertilized by a new engagement with the political world remains Garber's vision.
