Going down for Air A Memoir in Search of a Subject

Author/creator Sayer, Derek Author
Format Electronic
Publication InfoNew York : Routledge Florence : Taylor & Francis Group [Distributor]
Description216 p. ill 21.600 x 014.000 cm.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from Ebook Central - Academic Complete
Subjects

Summary Annotation What is hidden in the taste of a madeleine - or in snatches of Bob Dylan songs, operatic arias, and the remembered sting of a rattan cane? An exploration of memory, Going Down for Air artfully combines two very different yet connected texts. A Memoir is richly evocative not only of times past, but also of a very English, imperial, queerly masculine subjectivity, caught on the cusp of the extinction of the world in and of which it made sense. Derek Sayer's allusive writing succeeds as few have done before in capturing the leaps and bounds of memory itself. Rich in its detail, unstinting in its honesty, this beautifully written memoir is a considerable literary achievement. The memoir is complemented by Sayer's provocative theoretical essay on memory and social identity. Drawing on linguistic and psychoanalytic theory, photographic images, and literary texts, In Search of a Subject argues that it is memory above all that maintains the imagined identities upon which society rests. Going Down for Air is a bold and strikingly successful literary and sociological experiment, which makes a major contribution to understanding how our memories work - and gives them social meaning far beyond what we normally imagine. Praise for Derek Sayer's The Cost of Bohemia: 'Excellent...the most stimulating introduction to its subject available in English, or any other language.' - New York Times
Access restrictionAvailable only to authorized users.
Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
ISBN9781594510403
ISBN1594510407 (Trade Cloth) Active Record
Standard identifier# 9781594510403
Stock number1594510407 00081154

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