Paperback / softback
November 17, 2009
9780253221360
English
512
44 b&w illus.
7.00 Inches (US)
6.13 Inches (US)
1.25 Pounds (US)
$24.95 USD, £19.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies

A massive underground sensation, The Big Lebowski has been hailed as the first cult film of the internet age. In this book, 21 fans and scholars address the film's influences—westerns, noir, grail legends, the 1960s, and Fluxus—and its historical connections to the first Iraq war, boomers, slackerdom, surrealism, college culture, and of course bowling. The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies contains neither arid analyses nor lectures for the late-night crowd, but new ways of thinking and writing about film culture.

About the Authors

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.

Reviews

"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, the New School for Social Research, author of The Book of Dead Philosophers

"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, author of Erasure and American Desert

"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]

9780253221360 : the-years-work-in-lebowski-studies-dallis-comentale-jaffe
Paperback / softback
512 Pages
$24.95 USD

Other Titles by Edward P. Dallis-Comentale

The Worlds of John Wick

edited by Caitlin G. Watt, Stephen Watt, with contributions by Lisa Coulthard, Lindsay Steenberg, Lauren Steimer, Wayne Wong, Skip Willman, Aaron Jaffe, Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Mary Nestor, Andrew Battaglia, Marleen Newman, Charles...
May 2022 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$35.00 USD - Paperback / softback

The Year's Work at the Zombie Research Center

edited by Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Aaron Jaffe, with contributions by Stephen Watt, D. A. Hassler-Forest, Erik Bohman, Stephen Shapiro, Jack Raglin, Atia Sattar, Seth Morton, Andrea Ruthven, Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, Jonathan P. Eburne,...
Sep 2014 - Indiana University Press
$15.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$75.00 USD - Hardback

Ian Fleming and James Bond

edited by Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Stephen Watt, Skip Willman, with contributions by Alexis Albion, Dennis W. Allen, James Chapman, Vivian Nun Halloran, Jaime Hovey, Aaron Jaffe, Christoph Lindner, Andrew Lycett, Patrick O’Donnell, C...
Apr 2005 - Indiana University Press
$26.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles by Aaron Jaffe

The Worlds of John Wick

edited by Caitlin G. Watt, Stephen Watt, with contributions by Lisa Coulthard, Lindsay Steenberg, Lauren Steimer, Wayne Wong, Skip Willman, Aaron Jaffe, Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Mary Nestor, Andrew Battaglia, Marleen Newman, Charles...
May 2022 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$35.00 USD - Paperback / softback

The Year's Work at the Zombie Research Center

edited by Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Aaron Jaffe, with contributions by Stephen Watt, D. A. Hassler-Forest, Erik Bohman, Stephen Shapiro, Jack Raglin, Atia Sattar, Seth Morton, Andrea Ruthven, Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, Jonathan P. Eburne,...
Sep 2014 - Indiana University Press
$15.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$75.00 USD - Hardback

Ian Fleming and James Bond

edited by Edward P. Dallis-Comentale, Stephen Watt, Skip Willman, with contributions by Alexis Albion, Dennis W. Allen, James Chapman, Vivian Nun Halloran, Jaime Hovey, Aaron Jaffe, Christoph Lindner, Andrew Lycett, Patrick O’Donnell, C...
Apr 2005 - Indiana University Press
$26.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles from The Year's Work: Studies in Fan Culture and Cultural Theory

The Year's Work in Showgirls Studies

edited by Melissa Hardie, Meaghan Morris, and Kane Race
Feb 2024 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$38.00 USD - Paperback / softback

You Are Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!

edited by Adam M. Rosen, with contributions by Landon Palmer, Nathan Abrams, Lenika Cruz, James Curnow, John Donegan, John Dyck, Ernest Mathijs, Matt Foy, Keith Kahn-Harris, Amanda Ann Klein, James MacDowell, Renee Middlemost, Ross Mori...
Oct 2022 - Indiana University Press
$65.00 USD - Hardback
$22.00 USD - Paperback / softback

The Shaken and the Stirred

edited by Stephen Schneider, Craig N. Owens
Sep 2020 - Indiana University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$45.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles in ART / Popular Culture

Catland

Kathryn Hughes
Mar 2024 - Johns Hopkins University Press
$29.95 USD - Hardback
$29.95 USD - Electronic book text

The Cancer Plot

Reginald Wiebe, Dorothy Woodman
Nov 2023 - University of Alberta Press
$39.99 USD - Paperback / softback

Beyoncé in the World

edited by Christina Baade, Kristin A. McGee
Jun 2021 - Wesleyan University Press
$90.00 USD - Hardback
$27.95 USD - Paperback / softback
$22.99 USD - Electronic book text

Other Titles in Documentary films

Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition, Fourth Edition

Bill Nichols with Jaimie Baron
Aug 2024 - Indiana University Press
$25.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$60.00 USD - Hardback

Traveling Auteurs

Luca Caminati
Apr 2024 - Indiana University Press
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$70.00 USD - Hardback

Political Camerawork

David A. Rice, D. Andy Rice
Jul 2023 - Indiana University Press
$75.00 USD - Hardback
$34.00 USD - Paperback / softback