{"product_id":"discrepant-solace-contemporary-literature-and-the-work-of-consolation-paperback","title":"Discrepant Solace: Contemporary Literature and the Work of Consolation - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eDavid James\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConsolation has always played an uncomfortable part in the literary history of loss. But in recent decades its affective meanings and ethical implications have been recast by narratives that appear at first sight to foil solace altogether. Illuminating this striking archive, \u003cem\u003eDiscrepant Solace\u003c\/em\u003e considers writers who engage with consolation not as an aesthetic salve but as an enduring problematic, one that unravels at the centre of emotionally challenging works of late twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction and life-writing. The book understands solace as a generative yet conflicted aspect of style, where microelements of diction, rhythm, and syntax capture consolation's alternating desirability and contestation. With a wide-angle lens on the contemporary scene, David James examines writers who are rarely considered in conversation, including Sonali Deraniyagala, Colson Whitehead, Cormac McCarthy, W.G. Sebald, Doris Lessing, Joan Didion, J. M. Coetzee, Marilynne Robinson, Julian Barnes, Helen Macdonald, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Kazuo Ishiguro, Denise Riley, and David Grossman. These figures overturn critical suppositions about consolation's kinship with ideological complaisance, superficial mitigation, or dubious distraction, producing unsettling perceptions of solace that shape the formal and political contours of their writing. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThrough intimate readings of novels and memoirs that explore seemingly indescribable experiences of grief, trauma, remorse, and dread, James demonstrates how they turn consolation into a condition of expressional possibility without ever promising us relief. He also supplies vital traction to current conversations about the stakes of thinking with contemporary writing to scrutinize affirmative structures of feeling, revealing unexpected common ground between the operations of literary consolation and the urgencies of cultural critique. \u003cem\u003eDiscrepant Solace\u003c\/em\u003e makes the close reading of emotion crucial to understanding the work literature does in our precarious present.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eDavid James, \u003cem\u003eProfessor of Modern and Contemporary Literature, University of Birmingham\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDavid James is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Birmingham. Among his other books are \u003cem\u003eSentimental Activism\u003c\/em\u003e (2026) and \u003cem\u003eModernist Futures\u003c\/em\u003e (2012), along with edited volumes such as \u003cem\u003eModernism and Close Reading\u003c\/em\u003e (2020), \u003cem\u003eThe Cambridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945\u003c\/em\u003e (2015), and \u003cem\u003eThe Legacies of Modernism\u003c\/em\u003e (2012). He is an editor at \u003cem\u003eContemporary Literature\u003c\/em\u003e and is founding co-editor of the Columbia University Press series Literature Now. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 288\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.9 x 5.9 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e December 01, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53522200887603,"sku":"9780198985914","price":66.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0300\/5595\/6612\/files\/Bayzf28R719780198985914.webp?v=1781966766","url":"https:\/\/www.vysn.com\/en-ca\/products\/discrepant-solace-contemporary-literature-and-the-work-of-consolation-paperback","provider":"VYSN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}