{"product_id":"tough-enough-deborah-nelson-9780226457802","title":"Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil","description":"This book focuses on six brilliant women who are often seen as particularly tough-minded: Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Diane Arbus, and Joan Didion. Aligned with no single tradition, they escape straightforward categories. Yet their work evinces an affinity of style and philosophical viewpoint that derives from a shared attitude toward suffering. What Mary McCarthy called a \"cold eye\" was not merely a personal aversion to displays of emotion: it was an unsentimental mode of attention that dictated both ethical positions and aesthetic approaches. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eTough Enough\u003c\/i\u003e traces the careers of these women and their challenges to the pre-eminence of empathy as \u003ci\u003ethe\u003c\/i\u003e ethical posture from which to examine pain. Their writing and art reveal an adamant belief that the hurts of the world must be treated concretely, directly, and realistically, without recourse to either melodrama or callousness. As Deborah Nelson shows, this stance offers an important counter-tradition to the familiar postwar poles of emotional expressivity on the one hand and cool irony on the other. Ultimately, in its insistence on facing reality without consolation or compensation, this austere \"school of the unsentimental\" offers new ways to approach suffering in both its spectacular forms and all of its ordinariness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Deborah Nelson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 022645780X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780226457802\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Chicago Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/03\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.85lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.70d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 09\/01\/2017","brand":"Deborah Nelson","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43987268862207,"sku":"9780226457802","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_09eb1cc8-8224-45de-b657-35e9203a223a.jpg?v=1683287970","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/tough-enough-deborah-nelson-9780226457802","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}