Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books

Where I'm Reading From: The Changing World of Books

Why do we need fiction? Why do books needÂ to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? Do we read to challenge our vision ofÂ the world or to confirm it? Has novel writing turned into a job like any other? In Where Iâ€™m Reading From, the novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over decades of critical readingâ€”from Leopardi, Dickens, and Chekhov, to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Bernhard, and on to contemporary work by Peter Stamm, Alice Munro, and many othersâ€”to upend our assumptions about literature and its purpose.

In thirty-seven interlocking essays, Where Iâ€™m Reading From examines the rise of the â€œinternationalâ€ novel and the disappearance of â€œnationalâ€ literary styles; how market forces shape â€œseriousâ€ fiction; the unintended effects of translation; the growing stasis of literary criticism; and the problematic relationship between writersâ€™ lives and their work. Through dazzling close readings and probing self-examination, Parks wonders whether writersâ€”and readersâ€”can escape the twin pressures of the new global system and the novel that has become its emblematic genre.
Country USA
Manufacturer New York Review Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-05-12
Format Kindle eBook

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