Contenu
"Throw Yourself Away proposes that we can best understand literature's connection to sex through a renewed focus on masochism. In a series of readings that engage American and European works of fiction, drama, and theory from the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, critic and playwright Julia Jarcho argues that these works conceive writing itself as masochistic, and masochism as sexuality enacted in writing. Today, masochistic sex is ubiquitous even in mainstream media, proving itself compatible with the most orthodox heteronormative narratives-"basic" indeed. Jarcho's aim is to specify masochism, accounting for its importance in a wide swath of writing life, without relying on the assumption of masochism's inherent subversiveness. Ultimately, she argues that a retheorized concept of masochism helps us understand literature itself as a sex act and shows us how writing can tend to our burdened, desirous bodies. With startling insights into writers from Henry James to Mary Gaitskill, Throw Yourself Away is a significant addition to the Thinking Literature series"--