{"product_id":"on-fiction-and-being-a-good-animal-9781399538053","title":"On Fiction and Being a Good Animal","description":"\u003cp\u003eInstead of making readers into better people, what if fiction could help us to become better animals? \u003ci\u003eOn Fiction and Being a Good Animal\u003c\/i\u003e argues that we should abandon the persistent humanist idea that fiction can produce better people. Instead, we should read and value fiction according to its ability to help us to envision being better animals. Inspired by Theodor W. Adorno, David Rando defines a good animal as one who does not live a life of domination. He argues that when readers approach fiction's wishful images with non-anthropocentric expectations, we are rewarded by anthropocosmic visions of the world - ones in which humans are in and with the world but no longer at the centre of it. \u003cbr\u003eIn compelling readings of Agustina Bazterrica, T. C. Boyle, Leonora Carrington, Marian Engel, Karen Joy Fowler, Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, Clarice Lispector, Kenzaburo Oe, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jesmyn Ward, the book explores wishful images that pertain to the nonhuman and more-than-human worlds. Readers will discover in this fiction wishful images relating to irreconcilable minds and experiences, human-nonhuman family relationships, love and risk across race and species, and shared vulnerability, communion and pleasure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eDavid Rando is a Professor of English in the Department of English at Trinity University, Texas, USA. He is the author of four books: \u003ci\u003eDoing Animal Studies with Androids, Aliens, and Ghosts: Defamiliarizing Human-Nonhuman Animal Relationships in Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e (2023), \u003ci\u003eHope, Form, and Future in the Work of James Joyce\u003c\/i\u003e (2022), \u003ci\u003eHope and Wish Image in Music Technology\u003c\/i\u003e (2017) and \u003ci\u003eModernist Fiction and News: Representing Experience in the Early Twentieth Century\u003c\/i\u003e (2011).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Edinburgh University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50900700070162,"sku":"9781399538053","price":114.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_5f8e5003-04e4-4dca-81ae-f6d0e97bde06.jpg?v=1738392945","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/on-fiction-and-being-a-good-animal-9781399538053","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}