Reading Boyishly : Roland Barthes, J. M. Barrie, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust, and D. W. Winnicott

"An intricate text filled to the brim with connotations of desire, home, and childhood - nests, food, beds, birds, fairies, bits of string, ribbon, goodnight kisses, appetites sated and denied - Reading Boyishly is a story of mothers and sons, loss and longing, writing and photography. In this homage to four boyish men and one boy - J.M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, D.W. Winnicott, and the young photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue - Carol Mavor embraces what some have anxiously labeled an over-attachment to the mother. Here, the maternal is a cord (unsevered) to the night-light of boyish reading." "To "read boyishly" is to covet the mother s body as a home both lost and never lost, to desire her as only a son can, as only a body that longs for, but will never become Mother, can. Nostalgia (from the Greek nostos = return to native land, and algos = suffering or grief) is at the heart of the labor of boyish reading, which suffers in its love affair with the mother. The writers and the photographer that Mavor lovingly considers are boyish readers par excellence: Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up; Barthes, the "professor of desire" who lived with or near his mother until her death; Proust, the modernist master of nostalgia; Winnicott, therapist to "good enough" mothers; and Lartigue, the child photographer whose images invoke ghostlike memories of a past that is at once comforting and painful." "Drawing attention to the interplay between writing and vision, Reading Boyishly is stuffed full with more than 200 images. At once delicate and powerful, the book is a meditation on the threads that unite mothers and sons and on the writers and artists who create from those threads art that captures an irretrievable past."--Jacket. Read more... Abstract: Drawing attention to the interplay between writing and vision, this book is stuffed with more than 200 images. It is a meditation on the threads that unite mothers and sons and the ways that certain writers and photographers take up those threads and create art that captures an irretrievable past. Read more... An intricate text filled to the brim with connotations of desire, home, and childhood—nests, food, beds, birds, fairies, bits of string, ribbon, goodnight kisses, appetites sated and denied—__Reading Boyishly__ is a story of mothers and sons, loss and longing, writing and photography. In this homage to four boyish men and one boy—J. M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, D. W. Winnicott, and the young photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue—Carol Mavor embraces what some have anxiously labeled an over-attachment to the mother. Here, the maternal is a cord (unsevered) to the night-light of boyish reading.To “read boyishly” is to covet the mother’s body as a home both lost and never lost, to desire her as only a son can, as only a body that longs for, but will never become Mother, can. Nostalgia (from the Greek __nostos__ = return to native land, and __algos__ = suffering or grief) is at the heart of the labor of boyish reading, which suffers in its love affair with the mother. The writers and the photographer that Mavor lovingly considers are boyish readers __par excellence__: Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up; Barthes, the “professor of desire” who lived with or near his mother until her death; Proust, the modernist master of nostalgia; Winnicott, therapist to “good enough” mothers; and Lartigue, the child photographer whose images invoke ghostlike memories of a past that is at once comforting and painful. Drawing attention to the interplay between writing and vision, __Reading Boyishly__ is stuffed full with more than 200 images. At once delicate and powerful, the book is a meditation on the threads that unite mothers and sons and on the writers and artists who create from those threads art that captures an irretrievable past. An intricate text filled to the brim with connotations of desire, home, and childhood—nests, food, beds, birds, fairies, bits of string, ribbon, goodnight kisses, appetites sated and denied—Reading Boyishly is a story of mothers and sons, loss and longing, writing and photography. In this homage to four boyish men and one boy—J. M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, D. W. Winnicott, and the young photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue—Carol Mavor embraces what some have anxiously labeled an over-attachment to the mother. Here, the maternal is a cord (unsevered) to the night-light of boyish reading. To “read boyishly” is to covet the mother’s body as a home both lost and never lost, to desire her as only a son can, as only a body that longs for, but will never become Mother, can. Nostalgia (from the Greek nostos = return to native land, and algos = suffering or grief) is at the heart of the labor of boyish reading, which suffers in its love affair with the mother. The writers and the photographer that Mavor lovingly considers are boyish readers par excellence: Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up; Barthes, the “professor of desire” who lived with or near his mother until her death; Proust, the modernist master of nostalgia; Winnicott, therapist to “good enough” mothers; and Lartigue, the child photographer whose images invoke ghostlike memories of a past that is at once comforting and painful. Drawing attention to the interplay between writing and vision, Reading Boyishly is stuffed full with more than 200 images. At once delicate and powerful, the book is a meditation on the threads that unite mothers and sons and on the writers and artists who create from those threads art that captures an irretrievable past. An intricate text filled to the brim with connotations of desire, home, and childhoodnests, food, beds, birds, fairies, bits of string, ribbon, goodnight kisses, appetites sated and denied Reading Boyishly is a story of mothers and sons, loss and longing, writing and photography. In this homage to four boyish men and one boyJ. M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Marcel Proust, D. W. Winnicott, and the young photographer Jacques Henri LartigueCarol Mavor embraces what some have anxiously labeled an over-attachment to the mother. Here, the maternal is a cord (unsevered) to the night-light of boyish reading. To read boyishly is to covet the mothers body as a home both lost and never lost, to desire her as only a son can, as only a body that longs for, but will never become Mother, can. Nostalgia (from the Greek nostos = return to native land, and algos = suffering or grief) is at the heart of the labor of boyish reading, which suffers in its love affair with the mother. The writers and the photographer that Mavor lovingly considers are boyish readers par excellence : Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up; Barthes, the professor of desire who lived with or near his mother until her death; Proust, the modernist master of nostalgia; Winnicott, therapist to good enough mothers; and Lartigue, the child photographer whose images invoke ghostlike memories of a past that is at once comforting and painful. Drawing attention to the interplay between writing and vision, Reading Boyishly is stuffed full with more than 200 images. At once delicate and powerful, the book is a meditation on the threads that unite mothers and sons and on the writers and artists who create from those threads art that captures an irretrievable past.

study Of Nostalgic Representations Of The Maternal, The Home, And Childhood In The Literature And Photographs Of Early-20th-century Artists.

ali Houissa

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while The Titular Writers (barthes, Barrie, Proust, And Winnicott) And Photographer (lartigue) Do Not Represent The Same Genre And Did Not Even All Write In The Same Language, What Unifies Their Work Is The Sense That They Felt, Behaved, And Thought Like The Children They Once Were; This, Together With Their Close Attachment To Their Mothers, Posits Mavor (art History & Visual Studies, Univ. Of Manchester; becoming: The Photographs Of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden), Is What Took Their Art To A Similarly Boyish Place. Mavor Writes That As We Grow Up, Our Memories Of Childhood Become Hopelessly Fuzzy And Fragmented, And This Is Why These Mostly Early 20th-century Artists' Works, With Their Ability To Recapture An Irretrievable Past, So Fascinate Her. Her Book Is Essentially A Passionate Study Of Nostalgic Representations Of The Maternal In The Artistic Creations Of Five Distinguished And Famous-albeit Boyish-men. Combining Biography With Scholarly Literary Analysis, It Is Not Jargon-free And Requires From The Reader Familiarity With These Artists' Works, Depicted Here In 215 Mostly Black-and-white Images. Highly Recommended For Large And Comprehensive Literature Collections, A Good Choice For Large Public Libraries, And Essential For Academic Institutions.

Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction. Anorectic Hedonism: A Reader’s Guide to Reading Boyishly; Novel or a Philosophical Study? Am I a Novelist? 12 One. My Book Has a Disease 34 Two. Winnicott’s ABCs and String Boy 68 Three. Splitting: The Unmaking of Childhood and Home 88 Four. Pulling Ribbons from Mouths: Roland Barthes’s Umbilical Referent 140 Five. Nesting: The Boyish Labor of J. M. Barrie 174 Six. Childhood Swallows: Lartigue, Proust, and a Little Wilde 264 Seven. Mouth Wide Open for Proust: “A Sort of Puberty of Sorrow” 326 Eight. Soufflé/Souffle 360 Nine. Kissing Time 378 Ten. Beautiful, Boring, and Blue: The Fullness of Proust’s Search and Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman 408 Conclusion. Boys: “To Think a Part of One’s Body” 444 Illustrations 452 Notes 466 Index 530