On this episode,
Lee Pierce (she/they) interviews
Joe Packer of Central Michigan University about
A Feeling of Wrongness: Pessimistic Rhetoric on the Fringes of Popular Culture (Penn State UP, 2019)
, an intriguing book attempting to rescue pessimism from the dustbin of public emotion and philosophical thought. From the work of H.P. Lovecraft to
Rick and Morty to
True Detective, Packer and his co-author Ethan Stoneman find the best of pessimistic philosophy reflected back in the weird affects of these cultural touchstones.
A Feeling of Wrongness explores how these texts twist genres, upend common tropes, and disturb conventional narrative structures in a way that catches their audience off guard, resulting in belief without cognition, a more rhetorically effective form of pessimism than philosophical pessimism.
I hope you enjoy listening as I much as I enjoyed chatting with Joe about this fascinating book. I’d love to hear from you at
rhetoriclee@gmail.com or connect with me on
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Facebook @rhetoriclee and @rhetoricleespeaking. Share your thoughts about the interview with the hashtag #newbooksnerd.