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Melding her experiences as reader and critic, Davidson opens new vistas onto works by Jane Austen, Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Pynchon; adds richer dimension to critiques of W. G. Sebald, Alan Hollinghurst, Thomas Bernhard, and Karl Ove Knausgaard; and allows for a sophisticated appreciation of popular fictions by Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Lionel Shriver, George Pelecanos, and Helen DeWitt. She privileges diction, syntax, point of view, and structure over plot and character, identifying the intimate mechanics that draw us in to literature's sensual frameworks and move us to feel, identify, and relate. Davidson concludes with a reading list of her favorite titles so others can share in her literary adventures and get to know better the imprint of her own reading style.
List of contents
1. The Glimmer Factor: Anthony Burgess's
99 Novels2. Lord Leighton, Liberace, and the Advantages of Bad Writing: Helen DeWitt, Harry Stephen Keeler, Lionel Shriver, George Eliot
3. Mouthy Pleasures and the Problem of Momentum: Gary Lutz,
Lolita, Lydia Davis, Jonathan Lethem
4. The Acoustical Elegance of Aphorism: Kafka, Fielding, Austen, Flaubert
5. Tempo, Repetition, and a Taxonomy of Pacing: Peter Temple, Neil Gaiman, A. L. Kennedy, Edward P. Jones
6. Late Style:
The Golden Bowl and
Swann's Way7. Disordered Sentences: Georges Perec, Roland Barthes, Wayne Koestenbaum, Luc Sante
8. Details That Linger and the Charm of Voluntary Reading: George Pelecanos, Stephen King, Thomas Pynchon
9. The Ideal Bookshelf:
The Rings of Saturn and
The Line of Beauty10. The Bind of Literature and the Bind of Life:
Voices from Chernobyl, Thomas Bernhard, Karl Ove Knausgaard
Notes
A Reading List
Index
About the author
Jenny Davidson teaches in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She has published two books on eighteenth-century British literature, including
Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century, and four novels. She blogs at
Light Reading (jennydavidson.blogspot.com).
