Year's Work in Lebowski Studies

Edward P. Comentale is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington. He is author of Modernism, Cultural Production, and the British Avant-Garde and editor (with Stephen Watt and Skip Willman) of Ian Fleming and James Bond (IUP, 2005) and (with Andrzej Gasiorek) of T.E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism. Aaron Jaffe is Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville. He is author of Modernism and the Culture of Celebrity.

More than a few of this book's essay titles will make you groan and laugh out loud at the same time. . . . But just as often, the writing here is a bit like the film: amiable, laid-back and possessed of a wobbly Zen-acuity.December 30, 2009(New York Times) If you're a 'Big Lebowski' collector . . . you may want to acquire this . . . illuminating book.December 31, 2009(Washington Post) Any self-respecting fan will want a copy for the living-room table.December 2009(Indianapolis Monthly) Fantastic . . . not just a book to be passed around among film studies majors. It manages to be deeply smart and serious about its ideas without become stuffy and impenetrable. It's also not one of those hokey knock-off, cash-in books that you see trying to jump on the coattails. If you're holiday shopping, this should definitely make the cut.11/11/2009(http://condalmo.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dude-i-know/) Dudely interesting. . . . Comentale and Jaffe have mixed up a provocative, truly strange cocktail of cultural studies and cultural theory.- Simon Critchley This book is the Dude's joint. The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies proves that academics can be very funny and even sometimes smart.- Percival Everett The essays are complex, evocative, approachable, and attentive to the film's ironies and nuances. There is something here for the slacker as well as the scholar, for all Lebowskis, big and small, for film specialists, 90s fanatics, scholars of American studies, and the ever-growing assemblage of Lebowski cultists worldwide.- Patrick O'Donnell (Michigan State University) What could be more ridiculous than the application of Marxist, feminist, and other Very Serious theories to the orgy of goofiness that constitutes the Coen brothers' film? But the thing is, after reading the book's 21 essays, you can't help yourself. You find yourself thinking, Dude, it really is all in there: the updated Western, the Arthurian romance (think pee-stained rug as Holy Grail), the homage to Raymond Chandler, the critique of petro-capitalism, the riff on Rip Van Winkle (bowling, duh!).March/April 2010(Indiana Alumni Magazine) The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies is like a roller coaster ride. And, like the amusement park for children, there are no disappointments. Each one of the essays in the collection is original, unexpected in content and elegant in writing, skilled in the difficult art of intertextual references, intriguing conclusions and always theoretically founded....the authors of this enthusiastic, passionate and rigorous book question Lebowski with the same care with which we read the works of the most representative of contemporary intellectualsJanuary 6, 2010- Sara Antonelli (L'Unità [translation])

• Introduction / Edward P. Comentale and Aaron JaffePart 1. Ins (Intrinsic Models and Influences)1. The Really Big Sleep: Jeffrey Lebowski as the Second Coming of Rip Van Winkle / Fred Ashe2. A Once and Future Dude: The Big Lebowski as Medieval Grail-Quest / Andrew Rabin3. Dudespeak: Or, How to Bowl like a Pornstar / Justus Nieland4. Metonymic Hats and Metaphoric Tumbleweeds: Noir Literary Aesthetics in Miller's Crossing and The Big Lebowski / Christopher Raczkowski 5. The Dude and the New Left / Stacy Thompson6. The Big Lebowski and Paul de Man: Historicizing Irony and Ironizing Historicism / Joshua Kates7. Lebowski and the Ends of Postmodern American Comedy / Matthew Biberman8. Found Document: The Stranger's Commentary and a Note on His Method / Thomas B. Byers9. No Literal Connection: Mass Commodification, U.S. Militarism, and the Oil Industry in The Big Lebowski / David Martin-Jones10. "I'll Keep Rolling Along": Some Notes on Singing Cowboys and Bowling Alleys in The Big Lebowski / Edward P. Comentale Part 2. Outs (Eccentric Activities and Behaviors)11. What Condition the Postmodern Condition Is In: Collecting Culture in The Big Lebowski / Allan Smithee12. Holding Out Hope for the Creedence: Music and the Search for the Real Thing in The Big Lebowski / Diane Pecknold 13. "Fuck It, Let's Go Bowling": The Cultural Connotations of Bowling in The Big Lebowski / Bradley D. Clissold14. LebowskIcons: The Rug, The Irong Lung, The Tiki Bar, and Busby Berkeley / Dennis Hall and Susan Grove Hall 15. On the White Russian / Craig N. Owens16. Professor Dude: An Inquiry into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary College Students / Richard Gaughran17. Abiding (as) Animal: Marmot, Pomeranian, Whale, Dude / David Pagano18. Logjammin' and Gutterballs: Masculinities in The Big Lebowski / Dennis Allen 19. Size Matters / Judith Roof20. Brunswick = Fluxus / Aaron Jaffe 21. Enduring and Abiding / Jonathan Elmer Endnote: The Goofy and the Profound: A Non-Academic's Perspective on the Lebowski Achievement / William Preston RobertsonWorks CitedIndexList of Contributors