Edward Jackson - Böcker

It is a peculiarity of Cambridge that in one of the principal streets, Trumpington Street, there is a runnel of fresh water, called Hobson's Conduit, on either side of the road (a similar stream in St Andrew's Street was covered over in the 1990s.) These streams form part of a system of water supply named after Thomas Hobson (1545-1631), the Cambridge carrier, from whom we get the expression 'Hobson's Choice', and for who the young John Milton wrote two verse epitaphs, reproduced in this work. For 250 years, Hobson's Conduit provided the principal supply of drinking water for the centre of the city, after Andrew Perne (1519-89), Vice-Chancellor of the University, persuaded a number of patrons, including Hobson, to subscribe towards the project. First published in 1938, this history of Cambridge's ancient urban watercourse was written by W. D. Bushell, one of the trustees of the Hobson's Conduit Trust.

David Foster Wallace’s Toxic Sexuality: Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics is the first full-length study of perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wallace’s work – male sexuality. Departing from biographical accounts of Wallace’s troubled relationship to sex, the book offers new and engaging close readings of this vexed topic in both his fiction and non-fiction. Wallace consistently returns to images of sexual toxicity across his career to argue that, when it comes to sex, men are immutably hideous. He makes this argument by drawing on a variety of neoliberal logics and spermatic metaphors, which in their appeal to apparently neutral economic processes and natural bodily facts, forestall the possibility that men can change. The book therefore provides a revisionist account of Wallace’s attitudes towards capitalism, as well as a critical dissection of his approach to masculinity and sexuality. In doing so, David Foster Wallace’s Toxic Sexuality shows how Wallace can be considered a neoliberal writer, whose commitment to furthering male sexual toxicity is a disturbing but undeniable part of his literary project.

David Foster Wallace’s Toxic Sexuality: Hideousness, Neoliberalism, Spermatics is the first full-length study of perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wallace’s work – male sexuality. Departing from biographical accounts of Wallace’s troubled relationship to sex, the book offers new and engaging close readings of this vexed topic in both his fiction and non-fiction. Wallace consistently returns to images of sexual toxicity across his career to argue that, when it comes to sex, men are immutably hideous. He makes this argument by drawing on a variety of neoliberal logics and spermatic metaphors, which in their appeal to apparently neutral economic processes and natural bodily facts, forestall the possibility that men can change. The book therefore provides a revisionist account of Wallace’s attitudes towards capitalism, as well as a critical dissection of his approach to masculinity and sexuality. In doing so, David Foster Wallace’s Toxic Sexuality shows how Wallace can be considered a neoliberal writer, whose commitment to furthering male sexual toxicity is a disturbing but undeniable part of his literary project.