The American Adrenaline Narrative
- ISBN-10
- 0820356999
- ISBN-13
- 9780820356990
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 318
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020
- Publisher
- University of Georgia Press
- Author
- Kristin J. Jacobson
Description
"The attempt to understand the desires related to radical, risky acts like climbing to 29,028 feet as well as the everyday participation in and fascination with extreme lifestyles lays at the heart of this book and the extreme adventure narratives it studies. The American Adrenaline Narrative identifies and examines such stories' desiring natures and considers how perilous outdoor adventure tales, what the author terms "adrenaline narratives," simultaneously promote and hinder ecological sustainability. To explore these interdepended desires, the manuscript defines and compares adrenaline narratives by a range of American authors writing after the first Earth Day in 1970, selected as a crucial watershed for the contemporary American environmental movement and for cultures of the extreme. The forty-plus years since the first Earth Day mark the rise in the popularity and marketing of all things extreme-including sports, jobs, travel, beverages, gum, makeovers, laundry detergent, and even the environmental movement itself. This book and the term "adrenaline narrative" provide a classification for and analysis of the rapidly growing and wildly popular collection of narratives-primarily nonfiction, autobiographical, or biographical accounts-focused on extreme sports, lifestyle, and travel that emerge into the popular consciousness during a time of environmental activism that, like the adrenaline narratives themselves, range from conservative to radical acts. While literary or artistic merit, as a result, is not Jacobson's primary impetus for identifying and studying adrenaline narratives, attention to narrative form plays a key role in understanding their ecological messages and the ways the accounts deftly exploit form to craft suspenseful, page-turning exploits. The author's methods to map the American eco-imagination via adrenaline narratives are grounded in the traditional literary practice of close reading analysis and in ecofeminism. The book surveys a range of popular and lesser-known primary texts by American authors, including bestselling books-such as Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place-and lesser-known and read texts-such as Patricia C. McCairen's Canyon Solitude, Eddy L. Harris's Mississippi Solo, and Stacy Allison's Beyond the Limits. Jacobson primarily focuses on book-length nonfiction narratives; however, adrenaline narratives may also be found in print and online articles and magazines, feature length and short films, television shows, amateur videos, social networking sites, fiction, advertising, and blogs. Jacobson contends that these stories-whatever their format-comprise a distinctive genre because-unlike traditional nature, travel, and sports writing-adrenaline narratives sustain heightened risk or the element of the "extreme" within a natural setting. Additionally, reading these narratives as a separate genre provides important insight into the American environmental imagination's connection to masculinity and adventure"--
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2
By Clint WillisFollowing the success of EPIC: STORIES OF SURVIVAL FROM THE WORLD'S HIGHEST PEAKS, Adrenaline Books returns with HIGH: STORIES OF SURVIVAL FROM EVEREST AND K2. The first anthology devote exculusively to climbing on the world's two highest ...
-
Adrenaline
By Brian B. HoffmanFamous as the catalyst of the fight or flight response, adrenaline has also received forensic attention as a perfect, untraceable poison—and rumors persist of its power to revive the dead.
-
Adrenaline Rush 742!: A Woman's Wrestle with Her Worth
By Melvina MpowersAdrenaline Rush 742! is a bildungsroman with a braided structure about a trendy, young woman from the San Francisco Bay Area who becomes romantically involved with a Nigerian seducer.
-
Neodomestic American Fiction
By Kristin J. JacobsonEmploying a spatial lens, Neodomestic American Fiction joins and extends other studies in redefining domestic fiction's literary history and definition.
-
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stockholm: The Adrenaline Fueled Adventures of an Accidental Scientist
By Robert Lefkowitz, Randy HallWe were cooling our heels outside the Oval Office in the act of White House, waiting to meet with President Obama, and I was admiring Brian's perfectly tailored new suit. He was usually a pretty casual dresser, so I commented on his ...
-
Climb: Stories of Survival from Rock, Snow, and Ice
By Clint WillisClimb focuses on the most exciting descriptions of climbing in the world, from the cliffs of Yosemite to the windswept towers of Patagonia to the high peaks of Alaska and the Himalayas.
-
An Apple in My Back
By Gabriel Leif BellmanAn Apple in My Back is a novel about a surreal Sisyphus of sex and stunted self-discovery.
-
Valley of Terror
By Haohui ZhouNow, trekking deep into the legendary Valley of Terror, they find themselves being stalked by someone--or something--daring them to uncover the truth.
-
American Spy: A Novel
By Lauren WilkinsonThis is a face of the Cold War you’ve never seen before, and it introduces a powerful new literary voice.
-
Adrenaline Rush 742!: A Woman's Wrestle With Her Worth
By Yemaya SternAdrenaline Rush 742! is a Bildungsroman, with a braided structure, about a trendy, young woman from the SF Bay Area who becomes romantically involved with a Nigerian seducer.