{"product_id":"failure-and-the-american-writer-gavin-jones-9781107056671","title":"Failure and the American Writer: A Literary History","description":"If America worships success, then why has the nation's literature dwelled obsessively on failure? This book explores encounters with failure by nineteenth-century writers - ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett - whose celebrated works more often struck readers as profoundly messy, flawed, and even perverse. Reading textual inconsistency against the backdrop of a turbulent nineteenth century, Gavin Jones describes how the difficulties these writers faced in their faltering search for new styles, coherent characters, and satisfactory endings uncovered experiences of blunder and inadequacy hidden in the culture at large. Through Jones's treatment, these American writers emerge as the great theorists of failure who discovered ways to translate their own social insecurities into complex portrayals of a modern self, founded in moral fallibility, precarious knowledge, and negative feelings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Gavin Jones\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1107056675\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781107056671\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Cambridge University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 01\/20\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 201\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward:\u003c\/b\u003e PROSE - Honorable Mention\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/07\/2014 pg. 17","brand":"Gavin Jones","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44067054747903,"sku":"9781107056671","price":74.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_85ad3221-c5a1-4407-919c-25fb3686d8a4.jpg?v=1685410917","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/failure-and-the-american-writer-gavin-jones-9781107056671","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}