Remember the movie "The Great Lebowski" by the Coen brothers? Tt has become a cult film and has spawned a whole area of academic "enterprise" as represented in a semi-review of a book on the subject. The book is:
|“The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies,” an essay collection edited |by Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe (Indiana University Press, |$24.95). And the semi-review is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/books/30lebowski.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all It is a curious review but any review that quotes Umberto Eco can't be all bad. To give a sense of what "Lubowsku Studies" is about, consider the following quote: |As a new generation of “Lebowski” fans emerges, Dude Studies |may linger for a while. In another of this book’s essays, “Professor |Dude: An Inquiry Into the Appeal of His Dudeness for Contemporary |College Students,” a bearded, longhaired and rather Dude-like |associate professor of English at James Madison University in |Harrisonburg, Va., named Richard Gaughran asks this question |about his students: “What is it that they see in the Dude that they |find so desirable?” | |One of Mr. Gaughran’s students came up with this summary, and |it’s somehow appropriate for an end-of-the-year reckoning: “He |doesn’t stand for what everybody thinks he should stand for, but |he has his values. He just does it. He lives in a very disjointed society, |but he’s gonna take things as they come, he’s gonna care about his |friends, he’s gonna go to somebody’s recital, and that’s it. That’s |how you respond.” | |Happy New Year, Dude. Happy New Year, Dudes and Dudettes (ignore the dudettes if you realize that Dude can be used in gender neutral mode). -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
