Overview
"No Accident, Comrade argues that chance became a complex yet conflicted cultural signifier during the Cold War, when a range of thinkers--politicians, novelists, historians, biologists, sociologists, and others--contended that totalitarianism denied the very existence and operation of chance in the world. They claimed that the USSR perpetrated a vast fiction on its population, a fiction amplified by the Soviet view that there is no such thing as chance or accident, only manifestations of historical law (hence the popular American refrain used to refer to Marxism: ""It was no accident, Comrade"").By reading an expansive range of American novels published between 1947-2005, alongside nonfiction texts by the likes of Jerzy Kosinski, Daniel Bell, Ian Hacking, and mid-century game theorists, No Accident, Comrade explains how associations of chance with democratic freedom and the denial of chance with totalitarianism circulated in Cold War America. Chance became tied to the liberties of U.S. democracy, whereas its eradication or denial became symptomatic of Soviet tyranny. With works by Nabokov, Ellison, Pynchon, Didion, DeLillo, Colson Whitehead, and many others, Steven Belletto shows how writers developed innovative strategies for dealing with and incorporating these ever-present beliefs about chance and its role in their culture. These newly developed narrative techniques allowed them to theorize, satirize, and make sense of the constantly changing relationship between the individual and the state during a largely rhetorical conflict."
Full Product Details
Author: Steven Belletto (Assistant Professor of English, Assistant Professor of English, Lafayette College)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.10cm
, Height: 1.50cm
, Length: 15.50cm
Weight: 0.320kg
ISBN: 9780199354351
ISBN 10: 0199354359
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 23 January 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
One of the most useful and effective aspects of No Accident, Comrade is that it suggests connections within quite a disparate body of fiction. David Seed, Modern Language Review
One of the most useful and effective aspects of No Accident, Comrade is that it suggests connections within quite a disparate body of fiction. * David Seed, Modern Language Review *
Author Information
Steven Belletto is Associate Professor of English and chair of the American Studies program at Lafayette College.
