Losing the Plot - by Pardis Dabashi (Hardcover)

About the Book

"It is widely understood that the modernist novel sought to escape what Virginia Woolf called the "tyranny" of plot. Yet even as twentieth-century writers pushed against the constraints of Victorian, plot-driven novels, Pardis Dabashi shows that plot kept its hold on them through the influence of another medium: the cinema. Focusing on the novels of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner-writers known for their moviegoing affinities and connections to early film-Dabashi uses the relationship between literature and the cinema to reveal a profound longing for plot in modernist fiction. Dabashi links the moviegoing practices of Larsen, Barnes, and Faulkner to the tensions in their works, tensions between the formal properties of the novels and the characters in them. In making a distinction between what the novel is doing and what their characters desire, these authors ponder how it is one thing to withhold plot as a gesture of modernist aesthetics, and quite another to be denied the comfort of plot's architecture in one's living and breathing existence"--

Book Synopsis

An examination of the relationship between literature and classical Hollywood cinema reveals a profound longing for plot in modernist fiction.

The modernist novel sought to escape what Virginia Woolf called the "tyranny" of plot. Yet even as twentieth-century writers pushed against the constraints of plot-driven Victorian novels, plot kept its hold on them through the influence of another medium: the cinema. Focusing on the novels of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner--writers known for their affinities and connections to classical Hollywood--Pardis Dabashi links the moviegoing practices of these writers to the tensions between the formal properties of their novels and the characters in them. Even when they did not feature outright happy endings, classical Hollywood films often provided satisfying formal resolutions and promoted normative social and political values. Watching these films, modernist authors were reminded of what they were leaving behind--both formally and in the name of aesthetic experimentalism--by losing the plot.

Review Quotes

"Losing the Plot is an extremely ambitious book, one that aims to fundamentally rewrite and revise our understanding of modernist aesthetics in film and literature. By recasting plot as a modernist fantasy, and then by showing how cinema served as a model of that fantasy, Dabashi is able to provide an entirely original way of thinking about the relation between cinema and modernism, and indeed about modernism itself."-- "Daniel Morgan, University of Chicago"

"Reevaluating one of the most familiar critical truisms about the period, Losing the Plot is an erudite, elegant, and insightful exploration of modernism's ambivalent relationship to plot. Reading Larsen alongside Garbo, or Barnes alongside Dietrich, Dabashi shows us how the encounter with commercial narrative cinema allowed modernist writers to negotiate the double feelings of repudiation and longing for stability and coherence associated with the closure and teleology of plot."-- "Dora Zhang, University of California, Berkeley"

About the Author

Pardis Dabashi is assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College and a faculty affiliate in the Film Studies Program and the Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and North African Studies Program. She is the coeditor of The New William Faulkner Studies, with Sarah Gleeson-White.