On Friday, February 21, Open Books will host Dr. Robin Blyn to celebrate the release of her new book, “The Freak-Garde: Extraordinary Bodies and Revolutionary Art in America” (published by the University of Minnesota Press).
Dr. Blyn, an associate professor of English at the University of West Florida, will give a presentation from her book entitled: “After the Crash: The Avant-garde, the Communist Party, and the Strange Case of Brother Nathanael West.”
After the crash of the stock market in 1929, membership in the American Communist Party soared to its peak. Proletarian revolution appeared to be around the corner. When this revolution failed to arrive, the Left was forced to question its fundamental assumption that rational enlightenment of dispossessed could produce the self-conscious movement of the masses.
How does the subject of capitalism transform into the subject of revolution? From where does the desire for revolution come?
These are the questions at stake in the defiantly unfashionable fiction that Nathanael West produced in the 1930s. Deeply sympathetic to the communist cause, West’s novels return to the disgraced aesthetics of the avant-garde as a means of generating a revolutionary subject. In the process, novels like A Cool Million and The Day of the Locust redefine desire and provide new insights into the politics of the avant-garde.
A book signing will follow the presentation. Copies of her book will be for sale at the event. Reception begins at 6:30. Reading begins at 7pm. Refreshments and wine
will be provided.
This event is free and open to the public. Donations are gladly accepted for the Open Books Prison Book Project. Open Books is located at 1040 N Guillemard St, Pensacola, FL.
For more information, please contact Open Books at openbookspcola@riseup.net or call 453-6774.