Theory of the Gimmick

<p><b>Christian Gauss Award Shortlist<br>Winner of the ASAP Book Prize<br>A <i>Literary Hub</i> Book of the Year</b> <p/>Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical value...Lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag's best work.<br>--<i>Los Angeles Review of Books</i> <p/>Ngai exposes capitalism's tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks.<br>--<i>New Statesman</i> <p/>One of the most creative humanities scholars working today...My god it's so good.<br>--<i>Literary Hub</i> <p/>Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life...Highly original.<br>--<i>4Columns</i> <p/>It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai's analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing...is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly.<br>--<i>Bookforum</i> <p/>A page turner.<br>--<i>American Literary History</i> <p/>Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook a financial strategy a striptease a novel of ideas. Above all acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). <p/>When we call something a gimmick we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value money and time making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann Helen DeWitt and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.</p>