{"product_id":"site-reading-david-j-alworth-9780691183343","title":"Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eSite Reading\u003c\/i\u003e 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 for narrative action and character development, David Alworth argues that sites figure in novels as social agents. Engaging a wide range of social and cultural theorists, especially Bruno Latour and Erving Goffman, \u003ci\u003eSite Reading\u003c\/i\u003e examines how the literary figuration of real, material environments reorients our sense of social relations. To read the sites of fiction, Alworth demonstrates, is to reveal literature as a profound sociological resource, one that simultaneously models and theorizes collective life. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEach chapter identifies a particular site as a point of contact for writers and artists-the supermarket for Don DeLillo and Andy Warhol; the dump for William Burroughs and Mierle Laderman Ukeles; the road for Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, and John Chamberlain; the ruin for Thomas Pynchon and Robert Smithson; and the asylum for Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks, and Jeff Wall-and shows how this site mediates complex interactions among humans and nonhumans. The result is an interdisciplinary study of American culture that brings together literature, visual art, and social theory to develop a new sociology of literature that emphasizes the sociology in literature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e David J. Alworth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0691183341\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780691183343\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Princeton University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/20\/2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.77lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.51d","brand":"David J. Alworth","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43925628846335,"sku":"9780691183343","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_51337cea-b307-4c64-96bb-a91a760258e6.jpg?v=1681078403","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/site-reading-david-j-alworth-9780691183343","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}