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Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film

Condition: BRAND NEW ISBN: 9780803269729 Author(s): Jeremy Withers Format: Hardcover Year: 2016 Publisher: University of Nebraska Press Dimensions: 152 x 229 x 24 (w x l x h) Pages: 366

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Description: Bicycles have more cultural identities than many realize, functioningnot only as literal vehicles in a text but also as 'vehicles' for thattext's themes, ideas, and critiques. In the late nineteenth century,the bicycle was seen as a way for the wealthy urban elite to reconnectwith nature and for women to gain a measure of personal freedom,while during World War II it became a utilitarian tool of the FrenchResistance and in 1970s China stood for wealth and modernization.Lately it has functioned variously as the favored ideological steed ofenvironmentalists, a means of community bonding and aestheticself-expression in hip hop, and the ride of choice for bike-messengeridolizingurban hipsters. Culture on Two Wheels analyzes the shiftingcultural significance of the bicycle by examining its appearances inliterary, musical, and cinematic works spanning three continents andmore than 125 years of history. Bringing together essays by a variety of cyclists and scholars withmyriad angles of approach, this collection highlights the bicycle's flexibility as a signifier and analyzes the appearance of bicycles in canonical and well-known texts such as Samuel Beckett's modernist novel Molloy, the Oscar-winning film Breaking Away, and various Stephen King novels and stories, as well as in lesser known but equally significanttexts such as the celebrated Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's filmSacrifice and Elizabeth R