Escape, Escapism, Escapology

Rezensionen / Stimmen

If you haven't yet encountered John Limon's work, you have some exhilarating surprises ahead: it's witty, keenly idiosyncratic, beautifully adroit at drawing unexpected connections, and spectacularly attuned to the evocative possibilities of both paradox and pathos. Escape, Escapism, Escapology: American Novels of the Early Twenty-First Century is a savvy examination of crucial obsessions in some of our most ambitious and canonical contemporary fictions, helping us through the problem of conceiving not only what we're escaping from but also what we're escaping to. The result is an argument that will compel both the ornithologists and the birds: one that our Michael Chabons will find as illuminating as our Stanley Cavells. * Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron * Limon's bleakly funny and effortlessly learned study examines novels for which this, the world now before us, is 'as good as it gets.' That equivocal and confounding prospect, it turns out, haunts contemporary fiction in previously unimaginable ways. This is literary criticism at its very best. * Michael Szalay, Professor of English, Film, and Media, University of California, Irvine, USA * John Limon's Escape, Escapism, Escapology will stand as a landmark study of the early twenty-first century Anglophone novel. Its elaboration of escapism offers a brilliantly original and suggestive framework for a widescale reconsideration of the force and interest of contemporary fiction. I can think of very few recent works of criticism that can match its interpretive verve and its contagious curiosity. It is thrilling to read such an intellectually forceful engagement with aesthetic culture of the present moment. * Deak Nabers, Associate Professor of English, Brown University, USA *