Background
Weinstein, Arnold Louis was born on July 8, 1940 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Jack and Rose (Wahl) Weinstein.
("A clear and straightforward discussion of the ways in wh...)
"A clear and straightforward discussion of the ways in which literatures and their compartive study must depend upon the problematics of interpersonal and other relations. . . . This study will prove as useful as it is wide-ranging, and, indeed, comparative in the good sense." -Mary Ann Caws. Graduate School, City University of New York "Here is a comparatist working at the peak of his powers.... Weinstein moves easily from Goethe and Flaubert to Kafka or Joyce or Boris Vian. Locating fictions of relationship 'at the heart of both literary criticism and human affairs' and acknowledging his own 'distinctly humanistic' concerns, Weinstein writes in an urgent tone and eloquent voice, inflecting the theme of 'relationship' in every way: in its surrender to the erotic, in its frenzied drive for control of the other, in its ability to confer identity or eclipse difference.... When he couples texts (e.g., William Burrough's Naked Lunch and C. de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses), he takes risks that bear brilliant fruit. Exploring famous texts and relatively unknown ones, Weinstein infuses the traditional study of fiction with new energy." -Choice Arnold Weinstein is Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is author of Vision and Response in Modern Fiction (Cornell) and Fictions of the Self: 1550-1800 (Princeton).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069101499X/?tag=2022091-20
(Nobody's Home is a bold view of the American novel from i...)
Nobody's Home is a bold view of the American novel from its beginnings to the contemporary scene. Focusing on some of the deepest instincts of American life and culture--individual liberty, freedom of speech, constructing a life--Arnold Weinstein brilliantly sketches the remarkable career of the American self in some of the major works of the past one hundred fifty years. Weinstein contends that American writers are haunted by the twin specters of the self as a mirage, as Nobody, and by the brutal forces of culture and ideology that deny selfhood to people on the basis of money, sex, and color of skin. His central thesis is that language makes possible freedoms and accomplishments that are achievable in no other realm, and that American fiction is a fascinating record of the human fight against coercion, of the kinds of maneuvering room that we may find in life and in art. This study is unique in several respects: it offers some of the keenest readings of major American texts that have ever been written, including some of the most significant works of the past decades, and it fashions a rich and supple view of the American novel as a writerly form of freedom, in sharp contrast to today's critical emphasis on blindness and co-option.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019508022X/?tag=2022091-20
Weinstein, Arnold Louis was born on July 8, 1940 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Son of Jack and Rose (Wahl) Weinstein.
Bachelor, Princeton University, 1962. Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1964. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1968.
Assistant professor French, Brown U., Providence, 1968-1970; assistant professor French and comparative literature, Brown U., Providence, 1970-1973; associate professor, Brown U., Providence, 1973-1978; professor comparative literature, French and English, Brown U., Providence, since 1978; Henry Merritt Wriston professor comparative literature, Brown U., Providence, since 1990.
( The author charts the interaction between self and worl...)
("A clear and straightforward discussion of the ways in wh...)
(Nobody's Home is a bold view of the American novel from i...)
Member Modern Language Association, American Comparative Literature Association.
Married Ann Berntson, December 22, 1962. Children: Catherine, Alexander.