Returning to the Academiland
On Saturday, my long trip away from the Bay Area will be coming to an end. Since the end of May, I've visited New York, London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Arhus (also in Denmark), New York, D.C., Boston, and New York again--in more or less that order. I've had a productive and enjoyable summer--not only in terms of my official work but also in some Off the Books writing, which I won't talk about in this space, since this is ostensibly a blog about my dissertation. In terms of my dissertation, I'm beginning to explore the specifics of the Habermas-Gadamer debate, which is, in all likelihood, going to become part of the theoretical set-piece that opens my dissertation. Ideas about communication, rhetoric, and different understandings of the hermeneutic tradition are at the core of what concerns many of the post-ironists who I'm writing about, even if they are unlikely to have read the specific contents of the Habermas-Gadamer exchange, and even if that exchange was written in a somewhat different socio-historical situation. At this point what I've got to decide is how I want to use the debate. I could treat is as interesting in itself, or interesting only inasmuch as it clarifies the positions and confusions of the post-ironists, or somehow part of the same socio-political matrix of problems which both sets are trying to overcome and address. Sorting through these possibilities is part of the taskt that I've set myself for the next few months. I'm inclined to avoid making grand, and hard to substantiate, statements if I can. Dealing with "questions" seems like the way to go, but of course all questions take on the force of meaning in specific historical and technological circumstances. Anyway, I may try to post in a more regular way this year. I'm still debating with myself whether blogging academic material is a useful and productive thing to do with my time.
Back in the U.S.
I have been a terrible and negligent blogger this summer. I am back in the United States and I have hardly written about my stay in Europe. Mostly, this is because I didn't do very much this summer. Highlights include a trip to Berlin (first time, awesome city) and Denmark. I visited Denmark to get together with a guy who is writing the same on the same topic as I am for his dissertation--post-ironic fiction. There are many details and little narratives I could have blogged about, but I am beginning to question the wisdom of spending time writing on blogs. In fact, after spending a lot of the summer gorging myself on webbrowsing, I'm questioning whether the full but still hungry feeling that comes with absorbing lots of information on the web isn't a not-perfect way to consumer information, especially for someone who should be spending his time reading books for his dissertation. I have been productive on my novel, "Apocalypse Live"--a semi-satirical look at the end of the world. MS Word reports that I've written 64,000 words towards what I hope to make an appoximately 70,000 word novel. I could write more on the contents of this novel, but I'll hold my hand for now. I feel comfortable reporting the title of the novel, since I've registered the domain name.
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About Me
I'm a novelist, scholar of post-WWII U.S. fiction, and ACLS New Faculty Fellow at Princeton University. My first novel, Pop Apocalypse, was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2009. 
I co-edited (with Samuel Cohen) a collection of creative and critical essays, The Legacy of David Foster Wallace, which was released by the University of Iowa Press in 2012.
My second novel, Hamsterstan, was recently completed. 
I'm working on a literary history of countercultural irony from Ralph Ellison to David Foster Wallace, which is under contract with Harvard University Press. My writing has appeared in The Believer, boundary 2, io9, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. I blog pretty regularly over at Arcade. In the fall, I will become an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. If this litany of interesting biographical tidbits doesn't slake your fact-thirst, please feel free to contact me at lee [dot] konstantinou [at sign] gmail [dot] com or via Facebook. |
@lkonstan
- @LeifSorensen1 Will do. http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
- Off to Chicago tomorrow for "Comics: Philosophy & Practice." Superexciting lineup: http://t.co/jw7sQfeJ What should I do at night? http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
- @Ed_Raso Oppositional in the sense that they oppose the degrading effects of a dominant cultural irony, and want a positive alternative. http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
- Got my copy of J R from @Dalkey_Archive today. #OccupyGaddis commences in a little more than 2 weeks at @LAReviewofBooks http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
- @Ed_Raso His stories and essays often geographically counterpose a credulous midwest against a cynical coastal elite. He wanted a third way. http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
- @Ed_Raso Totally agree. Wallace took that common Gen X feeling and turned it into interesting art. I think his Midwestern-ness mattered... http://twitter.com/#!/lkonstan
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