Nostalgic modalities of (hyper)masculinity in Jay McInerney’s The Good Life and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
Keywords:
Nostalgia, Masculinity, 9/11, Jay McInerny, Don DeLilloAbstract
In the following paper, I attempt to move away from the political stasis of trauma theory as applied to critical readings of the '9/11 novel'. By analyzing the post-9/11 discursive project of the Bush administration through gendered terms, I look at the ways in which McInerney and DeLillo appropriate this political rhetoric into their own literary representations of masculinity, specifically through recourse to nostalgic formations of hypermasculinity. Furthermore, I examine the ways in which the ‘home’ is imagined as the site of post-9/11 ‘reconciliation’.
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