R. Clifton Spargo's Books

Beautiful Fools

The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald

By: R. Clifton Spargo

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Beautiful Fools

The Last Affair of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald

By: R. Clifton Spargo

This Fitzgeralds’ novel “is historical fiction at its best, imaginatively filling the gaps and bringing us intimately into a portrait of a marriage.”(Times Literary Supplement) In 1939 F. Scott Fitzgerald is living in Hollywood, a virulent alcoholic and deeply in debt. Despite his relationship with gossip columnist Sheila Graham, he remains fiercely loyal to his wife, Zelda, his soul mate and muse. In an attempt to fuse together their fractured marriage, Scott arranges a trip to Cuba, where, after a disastrous first night in Havana, the couple runs off to a beach resort outside the city. But even in paradise, Scott and Zelda cannot escape the dangerous intensity of their relationship. In Beautiful Fools, R. Clifton Spargo gives us a vivid, resplendent, and truly human portrait of the Fitzgeralds, and reveals the heartbreaking patterns and unexpected moments of tenderness that characterize a great romance in decline. “This approach to the Fitzgeralds’ story is the most successful of the bunch . . . With its contained arc and energetic plotting, Beautiful Fools takes the focus off more familiar episodes in the couple’s history.” —The New Yorker “In Spargo’s hands, the Fitzgeralds emerge as fully human, if crazed and ruined characters.” —The Washington Post “Beautiful Fools is the work of a genuine literary talent. . . . Spargo’s Fitzgeralds come alive.” —The Spectator “Spargo's book is richly imagined, and paints a delightfully detailed portrait of Cuba of 1939. It's a positively delicious travelogue.” —Chicago Tribune “Alternating between Scott’s and Zelda’s perspectives, Spargo describes the imperfect communion of two troubled souls who can’t quite let go of their past or each other.” —Boston Globe

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Page Count

246

Publisher

Abrams

Published Date

ISBN 10

1468307606

ISBN 13

9781468307603

The Ethics of Mourning

Grief and Responsibility in Elegiac Literature

By: R. Clifton Spargo

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The Ethics of Mourning

Grief and Responsibility in Elegiac Literature

By: R. Clifton Spargo

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Page Count

338

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801879779

ISBN 13

9780801879777

Vigilant Memory

Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death

By: R. Clifton Spargo

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Vigilant Memory

Emmanuel Levinas, the Holocaust, and the Unjust Death

By: R. Clifton Spargo

Vigilant Memory focuses on the particular role of Emmanuel Levinas's thought in reasserting the ethical parameters for poststructuralist criticism in the aftermath of the Holocaust. More than simply situating Levinas's ethics within the larger context of his philosophy, R. Clifton Spargo offers a new explanation of its significance in relation to history. In critical readings of the limits and also the heretofore untapped possibilities of Levinasian ethics, Spargo explores the impact of the Holocaust on Levinas's various figures of injustice while examining the place of mourning, the bad conscience, the victim, and the stranger/neighbor as they appear in Levinas's work. Ultimately, Spargo ranges beyond Levinas's explicit philosophical or implicit political positions to calculate the necessary function of the "memory of injustice" in our cultural and political discourses on the characteristics of a just society. In this original and magisterial study, Spargo uses Levinas's work to approach our understanding of the suffering and death of others, and in doing so reintroduces an essential ethical element to the reading of literature, culture, and everyday life.

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Age

Page Count

328

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801883113

ISBN 13

9780801883118

Book's by R. Clifton Spargo

Beautiful Fools

Beautiful Fools

The Ethics of Mourning

The Ethics of Mourning

Vigilant Memory

Vigilant Memory

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