Carnival, Hysteria, and Writing: The Collected Essays and Autobiography of Allon White

Before his death in 1988 at age 38, Allon White had become known as one of the most important literary and cultural critics of his generation. This collection represents a summation of the work which, as Stuart Hall explains in the Introduction, transformed cultural studies in the 1980s. White's central concerns--with writing, carnival, the body, hysteria, and memory--recur with differing inflections in the pieces here. They range from a discussion of Julia Kristeva's work to language and location in Bleak House, from a Thomas Pynchon short story to the "seriousness" of academic language. Other pieces deal with Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon, and Mikhail Bakhtin, one of White's major influences. This collection also includes White's poignant autobiographical fragment, "Too Close to the Bone." A fitting memorial to a major figure, this book will be essential reading for everyone working within literary and cultural studies.