Fausta's Blog

For those of us looking for an escape from dismal politics – American and Latin American alike – there’s a will and a way: Dude studies!

Dwight Gardner reviews in the NYTimes Dissertations on His Dudeness,

New in bookstores, and already in its second printing, is “The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies,” an essay collection edited by Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe (Indiana University Press, $24.95). The book is, like the Dude himself, a little rough around the edges. But it’s worth an end-of-the-year holiday pop-in. Ideally you’d read it with a White Russian — the Dude’s cocktail of choice — in hand.

And don’t forget the 10th anniversary DVD edition of the film, too.

The book was put together by academics who had to make tough choices:

“When we first put out a call for papers, we received about 200 proposals,” said Mr. Comentale, an associate professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, whose previous books include “Modernism, Cultural Production and the British Avant-Garde” and “T. E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism.”

When putting the book together, Mr. Comentale said, he and his co-editor “immediately cut out all the papers celebrating the Dude as a hippie hero in a postmodern landscape.” That’s a sober choice. Admirers of the Dude are already dangerously close to becoming Internet-age versions of Parrotheads, the weekend-warrior Jimmy Buffett fans who tip back margaritas — and embarrass their children — while wearing flip-flops, board shorts, Hawaiian shirts and coconut bras.

One of them is a college professor:

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?”

Good question.

While you ponder that, you might want to watch the The Dude version of The Big Lebowski (not to be confused with the LANGUAGE WARNING other version):

The Dude abides.

Special thanks to the friend who sent me this article.

Tags: Big Lebowski, Coen brothers, Fausta's blog, Jeff Bridges, The Dude

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 11:35 am and is filed under entertainment, films, movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.