Boy Detectives
Literature

Boy Detectives


Over the past month I have been reworking my current book project, a literary-critical study of airports. In particular, I have been drawing on some very helpful feedback from friends and mentors. So, in the midst of heavy duty rewriting and revision, it was very gratifying to receive in the mail a copy of the just published book The Boy Detectives: Essays on the Hardy Boys and Others, edited by Michael Cornelius. I wrote one of the chapters for this volume, and I was thrilled to see it in print.

My chapter is entitled "Terminal Immaterial: The Uncertain Subject of the Hardy Boys Airport Mysteries." In this essay I consider the roles of airports in three Hardy Boys detective stories, one from 1930s and two from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I find that these three garishly boyish representations of airports are in fact entirely consistent with (and no less philosophically complex than) the broader trends that I locate throughout my larger book project, tentatively called The Textual Life of Airports. In one chapter of my book project, I discuss the idea of "airport reading" as light, undemanding entertainment. In this sense, the Hardy Boys stories serve as excellent case studies for how the heaviness of airports infiltrates the lightness of everyday life in 20th-century U.S. culture.







- The End Of Airports
  The End of Airports is a sequel to (and kind of a prequel, too) and companion for my book The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight. Extending from the theories in my first book, but written more like creative nonfiction...

- New Book Cover
I'm really pleased to show off the slightly modified cover for the paperback edition of my book, which will be out in a month or so! The book has been re-branded by Bloomsbury, at I'm very happy with how they tweaked the cover for their imprint....

- It's In The Air
A short essay about my airport work?cleaning out aircraft seat-back pockets at night?is in the current issue of Narrative magazine. Meanwhile, over at Room 220 Nate Martin recently discussed the fantastic atmospheric photographs of JFK by Sophie Lvoff,...

- Grab Bag
Today Continuum featured my book on their Literary Studies blog, and over on his site Roy Christopher wrote an engaging distillation of "terminal philosophy," which includes a discussion of my book. Then there's this: It may not look like anything...

- Book Work
I have not been posting to my blog as regularly these days, as I'm busy completing my book The Textual Life of Airports. My book explores how airports appear in literature and culture, with an eye toward the interpretive demands made on passengers,...



Literature








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