Productive Failure
Sincerity and Irony in Contemporary North American Literature
Can literature transcend the limits of language? At the turn of the millennium, several American and Canadian authors grappled with this question in their works. They formed a literary movement: the New Sincerity. Felix Haase studies how the New Sincerity negotiates sincerity and irony. He traces the origin of its ideas back to the Romantics and Postmodernism. His close readings of works by Ben Lerner, Dave Eggers and Sheila Heti are a fascinating account of contemporary North American literature
