The Theory of the Loser Class: A Work in Three Parts
- ISBN-10
- 1552451682
- ISBN-13
- 9781552451687
- Category
- Poetry / General
- Pages
- 84
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Coach House Books
- Author
- Jon Paul Fiorentino
Description
In the early nineties, Beck sang 'I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?' and changed everything. Suddenly, it wasn't so bad to be a nerd or an oddball; loser chic had begun.
Ten years later, after all the computer nerds have had the last laugh, Jon Paul Fiorentino turns to Thorstein Veblen's seminal social science text from 1899, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen's book introduced to our culture the terms 'conspicuous consumption' and 'nouveau riche'; it identified a new demographic, the leisure class, and demarcated its position in culture. The Theory of the Loser Class, then, is an art manifesto for the aesthetics and ethics of loser culture.
If the Anthony Michael Hall character in The Breakfast Club wrote poems (and, deep down, you know that he did), they’d probably read a lot like The Theory of the Loser Class. Drawing on texts ranging from Thorstein Veblen’s groundbreaking The Theory of the Leisure Class to Star Wars (the nerd Bible) for inspiration, this carefully crafted suite of poems documents the tribulations and insecurities of everyone’s inner geek. Fiorentino maps the psychic territory of abjection across the shopworn spaces of suburban Winnipeg, where a landscape of aging strip malls, burned-out houses and living rooms littered with video-game consoles serves as a mirror to the inner states of urban ennui among the socially inept and the culturally vexed.
By turns compassionate, funny and filled with selfloathing, The Theory of the Loser Class is never without the possibility of redemption; ‘And if a loser falls,’ says the narrator of ‘Right in the Spine,’ ‘I feel it.’ The Theory of the Loser Class is the perfect soundtrack for the alienated and the hopeless.
Get the book
Similar books
-
狄金森全集：卷二·诗歌
By 艾米莉·狄金森... 把另一个吸收—像海绵—吸桶中水—一般—头脑正好是上帝的重量—因为—把它们掂一掂—八两半斤如果—有所不同—就像音节有别于声音—约1862(1863) 1896 633 (601)钟声停止时—礼拜—开始钟的—决断—轮齿—停止时—那是周圈—轮子的—极限—约1862(1863) 1945 634 (604)
-
The Works of Aphra Behn: The fair jilt and other short stories
By Aphra BehnThe Works of Aphra Behn: The fair jilt and other short stories
-
American Spirituals
By Jeffrey GreeneWinner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize
-
(W)holes: Poems
By Cynthia MacdonaldI asked to be transferred to Sterling and Gems . But the tines , the blades , the facets Menaced me . I learned you break or are broken . And then a Texaco receptionist , Jack - In - The - Box waitress ... No need to spell the perils ...
-
Riley Love-Lyrics [By] James Whitcomb Riley; With Life Pictures by William B. Dyer.
By James Whitcomb RileyRiley Love-Lyrics [By] James Whitcomb Riley; With Life Pictures by William B. Dyer.
-
The Quicken Tree: Poems
By Bill KnottIn The Man Who Married His Checkout Lane, he writes: "Oh my checkout lane / has the longest wait of any--though unlike / all the others in line, I won't leaf through the life / those tabloids provide rumors of: none of them / are beautiful ...
-
Single Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt ; & Talking Heads : Six Monologues
By Alan BennettSingle Spies: Two Plays about Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt ; & Talking Heads : Six Monologues
-
Selected Poems [of] Baudelaire
By Charles BaudelaireSelected Poems [of] Baudelaire
-
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats
By John KeatsThere he became particular friends with the headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, who was eight years his senior. Many years after Keats's death, Clarke recalled how as a schoolboy Keats had been “highly pugnacious” with an ...
-
南村草堂诗钞
By , 弘征好读书,尤精宋五子家言,于天文、舆地、兵法、河渠、水利,旁及艺术、方技靡不穷究。诗文皆有法度,不苟作。状言君天资高迈,践履笃实,平居以古名贤自期许,临事建树,卓卓如是,非偶然也。君生于乾隆四十一年丙申,春秋五十有八。嘉庆戊午举人,辛酉进士, ...