Paranoia and Contentment by John Hampsey

Paranoia and Contentment by John Hampsey

A hybrid in both content and style, ""Paranoia and Contentment"" is a bold and original investigation into Western intellectual history. John Hampsey approaches paranoia not as a clinical term for an irrational sense of persecution but from a uniquely positive perspective, as a cultural truth - a way of understanding the history of human thought and perhaps the best way to describe being itself.

Paranoia and Contentment is a fascinating exercise in redefining 'paranoia' and coining the word 'paranoidic,' thereby positing new criteria for analyzing our life and society today- Lawrence Ferlinghetti ""Paranoia and Contentment is a sharply reasoned, humane, surprising, and intellectually bold meditation on paranoic vision. Part scholarship, part personal essay, this beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about paranoia, creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human."" - Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and winner of the National Book Award ""An extraordinarily original rumination on the human condition, ranging across a broad field of philosophical thought and Western literature.... Hampsey's goal is to startle us into reconsidering our conventional ways of thinking, and I believe he has achieved that goal admirably.... Eminently readable, often eloquent."" - Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Boston University, author of A People's History of the United States

John C. Hampsey is professor of Romantic and Classical Literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he has won the University Distinguished Teaching Award. Previously, he taught at Boston University and MIT. He received his BA from Holy Cross College and his PhD from Boston College.His book, Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought (2005, University of Virginia Press) won enthusiastic endorsements from fellow writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tim O'Brien. O'Brien judged Paranoia and Contentment to be sharply reasoned and intellectually bold... This beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human. Paranoia and Contentment was the first book to view paranoia in a positive light, and to use the concept to re-examine Western thought. The book is still selling well in paperback.Professor Hampsey's memoir Kaufman's Hill (Bancroft Press, hardcover, January 2015) is set in Pittsburgh between 1961-68. It begins when the narrator is seven years old and focuses on that threshold time between the late 1950s and the full counter-cultural world that arrived after 1968, as well as on the graphic yet mythical world of boyhood that vanishes right into the twilight. Each chapter, in fact, has a key scene occurring at twilight.Howard Zinn, after reading an early draft of Kaufman's Hill, called it the best book on American boyhood in decades. Of Kaufman's Hill, another reader says it touches on something about boyhood within the expansiveness of life that I can't remember anyone doing, especially not with your voice and perspective. Another early reader asserts that the book captures the dynamics of the lost world of boyhood with sensitivity but without sentimentality, in a way no one has before. It is an American Angela's Ashes, suggests yet another pre-publication reader.The Gettysburg Review is publishing an excerpt from Kaufman's Hill in Autumn 2014.Professor Hampsey is currently working on a novel--Soda Lake, an existential mystery mixed with interconnected imaginary portraits. The Alaska Quarterly has recently agreed to publish an excerpt.During his career, Hampsey has had more than thirty stories and essays published in such places as The Gettysburg Review (four times), The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Alaska Quarterly, The Boston Globe, Arizona Quarterly, European Romantic Review, Witness, Colby Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and McNeese Review, among many others.He lives in San Luis Obispo, Califorinia, with his wife and daughter.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780813925097
ISBN 10	0813925096
Titel	Paranoia and Contentment
Autor	John Hampsey
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	University of Virginia Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2005-12-30
Seitenanzahl	256
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar