Mere Reading: the Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels by Lee Clark Mitchell Pdf

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Named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Yr

Mere Reading argues for a return to the foundations of literary written report established nearly a century ago. Following a recent period dominated by symptomatic analyses of fictional texts (new historicist, Marxist, feminist, identity-political), Lee Clark Mitchell joins a burgeoning neo-formalist movement in challenging readers to embrace a rationale for literary criticism that has besides long been ignored-a neglect that corresponds, perhaps not coincidentally, to a flight from literature courses themselves.

In shut readings of six American novels spread over the past century-Willa Cather's The Professor'due south House, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Marilynne Robinson'south Housekeeping, Cormac McCarthy'south Blood Meridian and The Road, and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao-Mitchell traces a shifting strain of late modernist innovation that celebrates a species of magic and wonder, of aesthetic "bliss" (as Barthes and Nabokov both coincidentally described the feel) that dumbfounds the reader and compels a reassessment of interpretive assumptions. The novels included hither aspire to beingness read slowly, then that sounds, rhythms, repetitions, rhymes, and other verbal features accept on a heightened poetic status-in critic Barbara Johnson'due south words, "the rigorous perversity and seductiveness of literary language"-thwarting pressures of plot that otherwise push button us ineluctably forwards.

In each chapter, the return to "mere reading" becomes paradoxically a gesture that honors the intractability of fictional texts, their sheer irresolution, indeed the way in which their "literary" status rests on the play of irreconcilables that emerges from the verbal tensions nosotros find ourselves start astonished by, then delighting in.

Tabular array of Contents

Introduction: Slowing Down
one. Possession in The Professor's House (1925)
2. Oscillation in Lolita (1955)
three. Hospitality in Housekeeping (1980)
4. Violence in Blood Meridian (1985)
v. Language in The Road (2006)
6. Belatedness in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)
Epilogue: Resisting Rules
Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published	Apr 20 2017
Format	Hardback
Edition	1st
Extent	280
ISBN	9781501329654
Imprint	Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions	ix 10 6 inches
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

• Mitchell'due south readings offer an accomplished and refreshing arroyo to literary works.

  Textual Practice

• In a career-long recoil from an early, maternally-induced, and curt-lived brush with Evelyn Woods' speed reading techniques, Lee Clark Mitchell has slackened the velocity, which is only to say tightened the grip, of his textual habits ever since-and the yield, as in two engrossing and indispensable chapters on Cormac McCarthy, is sampled here in readings that neither hydroplane across the surface of the literary page, nor arroyo it in programmatic slow-mo, but that let a deliberately wide diverseness of stylistic traction and density stride the ear of reading and exam the very possibilities of attention. Unostentatiously termed 'mere' (as in 'only') reading, the results are instead, in their deployment of seasoned gifts, an intense and exemplary example of sheer reading.

  Garrett Stewart, James O. Freedman Professor of Letters, University of Iowa, USA, and writer of The Act of Reading (2015)

• Remember how it felt to read books when y'all were a child? The privacy, the concentration, the wonder? At a fourth dimension when, given the challenges of new media, novels are chosen upon to be more merely useful than always before, Lee Mitchell argues that prose ought to be read at least every bit closely as poetry-every plough of syntax or figure a source of inexhaustible revelation. Not by regressing but past pushing us frontwards into e'er more than gratifyingly attentive modes of reading, Mere Reading restores us to a more truly purposeful bliss.

  James Longenbach, Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English, Academy of Rochester, USA, and author of The Virtues of Poesy (2013)

• Mere Reading sparkles with quicksilver insights that wait around every bend of Lee Mitchell's statement. He focuses less on what readers excerpt from literature and more on what they experience there. He is particularly attuned to the ways in which great stylists, from Willa Cather to Cormac McCarthy, make u.s.a., in Hemingway'southward words, feel something more we understand it. Mitchell continually reminds united states of america that what we find in the best American fiction is far messier, fresher and more puzzling than most critics are willing to admit.

  Michael Kowalewski, Lloyd McBride Professor of English language & Environmental Studies, Carleton College, USA

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Source: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/mere-reading-9781501329654/

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