Nostalgia, Class and Rurality in Empire Falls

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-518
Author(s):  
STACY DENTON
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Rural Identity ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
American Society ◽  
Rural Places

In American society, rural spaces – particularly those of the working class – are seen as stagnant holdovers from a temporal past that “modern” society has evolved beyond. As a result, working-class rurality and those living within these places are viewed as static, ignorant, insular and so on: whatever places do not conform to the appearance of “modern” progress and development simply must be regressed, on both socioeconomic and cultural levels. While scholars in some disciplines are attempting to redress this misconception, other disciplines (like literary studies) largely align with the mainstream perspective that rurality represents a regressed past to our evolved present. However, despite the critical lack of attention to rurality as a viable space in the present, we can see in various fictional works that working-class rural spaces can effectively show us the interrelationship of rural spaces with “modern” society and culture in the present, the continuing relevance and deep history alike of said spaces, and the potential of these fictional working-class rural places to confront America's norms of progress and development within and without their fictional borders. Richard Russo's fiction illustrates the potential to bring out this critical working-class rural voice. Russo's fictional treatments afford the reader an opportunity to witness the ever-changing complexity (not the temporal and cultural regression) of working-class rurality. In turn, Russo's fictional working-class rural spaces offer a counterperspective to the mainstream (defined here as middle-class and (sub)urban) notions of progress that otherwise dismiss these perspectives. In his book Empire Falls, Russo uses nostalgia to assert this counterperspective. This nostalgia not only reaffirms the postwar and early twenty-first-century working-class rural identity of Empire Falls, but it also offers a critique of dominant conceptions of progress and development that continue into our present.

Twenty-First-Century Writers: The Rural Southern Tradition Continues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean W. Cash
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Education ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
First Century ◽  
Southern Writers ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Universal Themes

This chapter focuses on twenty-first-century writers who carry on the rural southern tradition in their work. Since 2000, several young southern writers, nearly all born after 1975 and from middle-class rural and lower-class backgrounds, have begun to publish fiction. Both portraying the areas where they were born and grew up and transcending those settings to address more universal themes, they have produced a significant body of praiseworthy work. Most were born into rural families but received the benefits of post-secondary education, but all seem committed to presenting the working-class South with realism and empathy. Among these new novelists are Joe Samuel Starnes, Peter Farris, John Brandon, Wiley Cash, Skip Horack, Barb Johnson, Michael Farris Smith, and Jesmyn Ward. Clearly, novels that address southern characters in southern scenes will continue to be written, whether of the Rough South variety from writers like Johnson or from writers like Ward, Horack, Brandon, Cash, and Smith.

Progressivism, Liberalism, and the Rich

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McGerr
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
First Century ◽  
National Community ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Rich

This chapter discusses the indictment of wealthy Americans by progressives and liberals alike. Both effectively demonized the rich as alien beings who threatened the national community. The campaign against great wealth produced a paradoxical denouement. By the 1940s, the liberals' crusade helped create the seemingly homogeneous, essentially middle-class national community they wanted. But by the end of the twentieth century, the liberals' very success undermined their vigilance against the threat of wealth, helped make the rich seem safely like other Americans, and, paradoxically, made a liberal governmental elite appear to be the true threat to national community. As a result, liberalism has, in recent years, proved too conservative and too ineffective against the continuing resurgence of great fortunes in the early twenty-first century.

The quiet novel of cognition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Sykes
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Cognitive Approaches ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter argues that cognitive fictions expand the focus of the quiet novel, uncovering the complex and often discordant recesses of human consciousness and challenging the traditional division between what is internally and externally felt. This chapter connects the discussion of a quiet aesthetic with early twenty-first century debates about the place of cognitive approaches within literary studies. Indeed, the novel of cognition also recalls the modernist ‘stream’ or ‘novel of consciousness’ whose rich and ambiguous history overlaps with the quiet novels discussed throughout this study.

Continuing Visions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
William Blake ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Protest Group ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Dead Man

The questions that drove Blake’s American reception, from its earliest moments in the nineteenth century through to the explosion of Blakeanism in the mid-twentieth century, did not disappear. Visions of America continued to be part of Blake’s late twentieth- and early twenty-first century American legacy. This chapter begins with the 1982 film Blade Runner, which was directed by the British Ridley Scott but had an American-authored screenplay and was based on a 1968 American novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It moves to Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 film, Dead Man and Paul Chan’s twenty-first century social activism as part of a protest group called The Friends of William Blake, exploring common themes of democracy, freedom, limit, nationhood, and poetic shape.

Contrasting patterns of early twenty-first-century glacier mass change in the Himalayas

Nature ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 488 (7412) ◽  
pp. 495-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kääb ◽  
Etienne Berthier ◽  
Christopher Nuth ◽  
Julie Gardelle ◽  
Yves Arnaud
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century
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