Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck: Why We Can't Look Away - Couverture rigide

Wilson, Eric G.

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0374150338 ISBN 13 : 9780374150334

Editeur : Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc, 2012

Synopsis

Morbid curiosity, morose delectation, and schadenfreude: As conventional wisdom has it, these are the symptoms of our dark side; we succumb to them at our own peril. And yet we are compelled to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway, and there's no slaking our thirst for gory entertainments like horror movies and police procedurals. What makes these spectacles so irresistible? In "Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck", Eric G. Wilson sets out to discover the source of our attraction to the caustic, drawing on the findings of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and artists. A professor of English literature and a lifelong student of the macabre, Wilson believes there's something nourishing in darkness. "To repress death is to lose the feeling of life", he writes. "A closeness to death discloses our most fertile energies". His examples are legion and startling in their diversity. Citing everything from elephant graveyards and Susan Sontag's "On Photography" to the Tiger Wood's sex scandal and Steel Magnolias, Wilson finds heartening truths wherever he confronts death. In "Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck", the perverse is never far from the sublime. The result is a powerful and delightfully provocative defence of what it means to be human - for better and for worse.

A propos du livre

Revue de presse

Eric G. Wilson's smart, probing new book . . . sets out to explain what lies beneath our collective fascination with death and suffering . . . Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck isn't some holier-than-thou polemic out to cure us of our dark leanings . . . Instead, it simply aims to help readers gain 'a fulfilling response to two of life's greatest, most pressing and persistent questions. What is the meaning of suffering? What is the significance of death? . . . The book's slim, peripatetic chapters cover an awful lot of erudite territory, as Wilson draws ideas and research from a delightful grab bag of academics, artists and thinkers. Aristotle, Freud, Kant, Goya and Hardy all make appearances, alongside an assortment of sociopaths and serial murderers.--John Wilwol, NPR.org Wilson is provocative, entertaining and above all honest. --Chris Tucker, The Dallas Morning News. A leisurely, light-footed overview of our cultural obsession with doom, gloom, and gore. --Josh Rothman, The Boston Globe. Compelling . . . Wilson keeps hearing a voice within that tells him to look. He follows this instinct, energized by the idea that his thoughtful connoisseurship of the world's darkness is good--noble, even. Wilson draws on philosophers, poets, psychologists, filmmakers and more to build a case that an eager, open-minded interest in the macabre provides a special invitation to think about life's meanings . . . Wilson's guidance is personal, engaging, and convincing . . . The book offers heaps of terribly tantalizing topics. --Chris Jozefowicz, Rue Morgue Mixing anecdotes, arguments and his own quirky persona, the author of Against Happiness delivers a provocative meditation on morbid curiosity and the pleasure of seeing others suffer.The Times-Picayune (New Orleans) --Various

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
• Date d'édition: 2012
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0374150338
• ISBN 13: 9780374150334
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 176
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible