{"product_id":"fictions-of-fact-and-value-michael-lemahieu-9780199890408","title":"Fictions of Fact and Value: The Erasure of Logical Positivism in American Literature, 1945-1975","description":"\u003cem\u003eFictions of Fact and Value \u003c\/em\u003eargues that the philosophy of logical positivism, considered the antithesis of literary postmodernism, exerts a determining influence on the development of American fiction in the three decades following 1945, in what amounts to a constitutive encounter between literature and philosophy at mid-century: after the end of modernism, as it was traditionally conceived, but prior to the rise of postmodernism, as it came to be known. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTwo particular postwar literary preoccupations derive from logical positivist philosophy: the fact\/value problem and the correlative distinction between sense and nonsense. Even as postwar writers responded to logical positivism as a threat to the imagination, their works often manifest its influence, specifically with regard to \"emotive\" or \"meaningless\" terms. Far from a straightforward history of ideas, \u003cem\u003eFictions of Fact and Value\u003c\/em\u003e charts a genealogy that is often erased in the very texts where it registers and disowned by the very authors that it includes. LeMahieu complicates a predominant narrative of intellectual history in which a liberating postmodernism triumphs over a reactionary positivism by historicizing the literary response to positivism in works by John Barth, Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, Iris Murdoch, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Pynchon, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. As LeMahieu compelling demonstrates, the centrality of the fact\/value problem to both positivism and postmodernism demands a rethinking of postwar literary history. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA trenchantly argued study that unearths an important part of postwar literary history, \u003cem\u003eFictions of Fact and Value\u003c\/em\u003e will interest anyone concerned with postmodernism, modernist studies, analytic philosophy, or the history of ideas.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Michael LeMahieu\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0199890404\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780199890408\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/30\/2013\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.10lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.30h x 6.40w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/01\/2014 pg. 611","brand":"Michael LeMahieu","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47424988348671,"sku":"9780199890408","price":93.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_8e0f42cf-fecf-437b-9c1a-d90ebfdbdfa6.jpg?v=1761536230","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/fictions-of-fact-and-value-michael-lemahieu-9780199890408","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}