Single

Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"e;Table Normal"e;;mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"e;"e;;mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"e;Times New Roman"e;;}What single person hasn't suffered? Everyone, it seems, must be (or must want to be) in a couple. To existoutside of the couple is to assume an antisocial position that is ruthlesslydiscouraged because being in a couple is the way most people bind themselves tothe social. Singles might just be the single most reviled sexual minoritiestoday. Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled offers a polemic account of this supremacy of thecouple form, and how that supremacy blocks our understanding of the single.Michael Cobb reads the figurative language surrounding singleness as it traversesan eclectic set of literary, cultural, philosophical, psychoanalytical, andpopular culture objects from Plato, Freud, Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville,Virginia Woolf, Barack Obama, Emily Dickinson, Morrissey, Georgia O'Keeffe, andHannah Arendt to the Bible, Sex and theCity, Bridget Jones' Diary,Beyoncs "e;Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),"e; and HBO's Big Love. Within these flights of fancy, poetry, fiction, strangemoments in film and video, paintings made in the desert, bits of song, andmemoirs of hiking in national parks, Cobb offers an inspired, eloquentrumination on the single, which is guaranteed to spark conversation andconsideration.