My Claustrophobic Happiness (2020) by Jeanne Randolph (signed)

Jeanne Randolph
My Claustrophobic Happiness
Paperback
104 pages, 8.5 x 4.6 x 0.25 inches
October 2020
Arbeiter Ring Publishing
 
ISBN - 10:1927886414
ISBN - 13:9781927886410
 
signed copy
 
The crafted vignettes in My Claustrophobic Happiness present a satiric and prophetic depiction of the isolated mind and body that is hauntingly prescient.
 
Inspired by Athanasius The Temptations of St. Anthony in which the protagonist is repeatedly beset by desert demons, My Claustrophobic Happiness offers La Betty, a wealthy condo inhabitant whose cloistered consumer object worship provides her with fragile protection against supernatural visitations of representatives from a reality outside.
 
Psychoanalyst Jeanne Randolph approaches La Betty's psyche with distinctively transcendental wit, unveiling an unstable and absurdly fragile existence of repetition in denial. Lush and playful descriptions of La Betty's objects and her surreal psychological space enfold a series of complex conundrums around identity's relationship to consumerism.
 
Jeanne Randolph is one of Canada's foremost cultural theorists. She is the author of the influential book Psychoanalysis & Synchronized Swimming (1991) as well as Symbolization and Its Discontents (1997), Why Stoics Box (2003), Ethics of Luxury (2007), Shopping Cart Pantheism (2015), and more recently Prairie Modernist Noir: The Disappearance of the Manitoba Telephone Booth (2018). Dr. Randolph is also known for her curation and as an engaging lecturer, performance artist and musician. In universities and galleries across Canada, England, Australia, and Spain, she has spoken on topics ranging from the aesthetics of Barbie to the philosophy of Wittgenstein.