Title The American adrenaline narrative / Kristin J. Jacobson

Published Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2020

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Description 1 online resource (284 pages) Contents 1. DESIRING NATURES -- 2. CONQUERING NATURES -- 3. SPIRITUAL NATURES -- 4. EROTIC NATURES -- 5. RISKY NATURES -- 6. RESTORATIVE NATURES -- Appendix : List of Contemporary American Adrenaline Narratives Summary "The attempt to understand the desires related to radical, risky acts like climbing to 29,028 feet as well as the everyday participation in and fascination with extreme lifestyles lays at the heart of this book and the extreme adventure narratives it studies. The American Adrenaline Narrative identifies and examines such stories' desiring natures and considers how perilous outdoor adventure tales, what the author terms "adrenaline narratives," simultaneously promote and hinder ecological sustainability. To explore these interdepended desires, the manuscript defines and compares adrenaline narratives by a range of American authors writing after the first Earth Day in 1970, selected as a crucial watershed for the contemporary American environmental movement and for cultures of the extreme. The forty-plus years since the first Earth Day mark the rise in the popularity and marketing of all things extreme-including sports, jobs, travel, beverages, gum, makeovers, laundry detergent, and even the environmental movement itself. This book and the term "adrenaline narrative" provide a classification for and analysis of the rapidly growing and wildly popular collection of narratives-primarily nonfiction, autobiographical, or biographical accounts-focused on extreme sports, lifestyle, and travel that emerge into the popular consciousness during a time of environmental activism that, like the adrenaline narratives themselves, range from conservative to radical acts. While literary or artistic merit, as a result, is not Jacobson's primary impetus for identifying and studying adrenaline narratives, attention to narrative form plays a key role in understanding their ecological messages and the ways the accounts deftly exploit form to craft suspenseful, page-turning exploits. The author's methods to map the American eco-imagination via adrenaline narratives are grounded in the traditional literary practice of close reading analysis and in ecofeminism. The book surveys a range of popular and lesser-known primary texts by American authors, including bestselling books-such as Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place-and lesser-known and read texts-such as Patricia C. McCairen's Canyon Solitude, Eddy L. Harris's Mississippi Solo, and Stacy Allison's Beyond the Limits. Jacobson primarily focuses on book-length nonfiction narratives; however, adrenaline narratives may also be found in print and online articles and magazines, feature length and short films, television shows, amateur videos, social networking sites, fiction, advertising, and blogs. Jacobson contends that these stories-whatever their format-comprise a distinctive genre because-unlike traditional nature, travel, and sports writing-adrenaline narratives sustain heightened risk or the element of the "extreme" within a natural setting. Additionally, reading these narratives as a separate genre provides important insight into the American environmental imagination's connection to masculinity and adventure"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource, title from digital title page (viewed on February 23, 2021) Subject Adventure and adventurers in literature. Prose literature, American -- History and criticism American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism Danger in literature. Risk-taking (Psychology) in literature. Outdoor life in literature. Environmentalism -- United States. Electronic books. e-books. Adventure and adventurers in literature American literature Danger in literature Environmentalism Outdoor life in literature Risk-taking (Psychology) in literature United States Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780820356983 0820356980

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