{"product_id":"the-tears-of-things-peter-schwenger-9780816646319","title":"The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects","description":"We surround ourselves with material things that are invested with memories but can only stand for what we have lost. Physical objects--such as one's own body--situate and define us; yet at the same time they are fundamentally indifferent to us. The melancholy of this rift is a rich source of inspiration for artists. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePeter Schwenger deftly weaves together philosophical and psychoanalytical theory with artistic practice. Concerned in part with the act of collecting, \u003ci\u003eThe Tears of Things\u003c\/i\u003e is itself a collection of exemplary art objects--literary and cultural attempts to control and possess things--including paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe and René Magritte; sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Marcel Duchamp; Joseph Cornell's boxes; Edward Gorey's graphic art; fiction by Virginia Woolf, Georges Perec, and Louise Erdrich; the hallucinatory encyclopedias of Jorge Luis Borges and Luigi Serafini; and the corpse photographs of Joel Peter Witkin. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHowever, these representations of objects perpetually fall short of our aspirations. Schwenger examines what is left over--debris and waste--and asks what art can make of these. What emerges is not an art that reassembles but one that questions what it means to assemble in the first place. Contained in this catalog of waste is that ultimate still life, the cadaver, where the subject-object dichotomy receives its final ironic reconciliation. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePeter Schwenger is professor of English at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eFantasm and Fiction: On Textual Envisioning, Letter Bomb: Nuclear Holocaust and the Exploding Word\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003ePhallic Critiques: Masculinity and Twentieth-Century Literature.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Peter Schwenger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0816646317\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780816646319\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Minnesota Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/13\/2006\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.71lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.94h x 6.08w x 0.48d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eReference and Research Bk News\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/01\/2006 pg. 4","brand":"Peter Schwenger","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48443713093887,"sku":"9780816646319","price":28.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_ae90316d-b664-4d22-ac23-9d68effac3f0.jpg?v=1777207322","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-tears-of-things-peter-schwenger-9780816646319","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}