To read or not to read seems to be the great question for literary studies of our time. More specifically, in a world of abundant literary production, how can we decide what to read and how to read it? Three recent books by Amy Hungerford, Lee Clark Mitchell, and Nicholas Thoburn have, in their own ways, turned to this problem. Certainly, these are not the only titles to pursue this question of reading in the digital age. Other works on this theme from just within the past couple of years include David Letzler’s excellent The Cruft of Fiction (2017); Zara Dinnen’s astute The Digital Banal (2018); a host of fascinating work in the digital/distant reading field, including Andrew Piper’s Enumerations (2018) and Ted Underwood’s Distant Horizons (2019); and surely many others. Yet the triad of titles under review showcases the distinctively different approaches that are being adopted in the face...
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Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels
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September 1, 2019
Issue Editors
Book Review|
September 01 2019
Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels
Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing
Making Literature Now
Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels
. By Mitchell, Lee Clark. New York
: Bloomsbury Academic
. 2017
. x, 262 pp. Cloth, $90.00; paper, $26.96; e-book, $21.56.Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing
. By Thoburn, Nicholas. Minneapolis
: Univ. of Minnesota Press
. 2016
. xiii, 372 pp. Cloth, $105.00; paper, $30.00.Making Literature Now
. By Hungerford, Amy. Stanford, CA
: Stanford Univ. Press
. 2016
. xiii, 199 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $22.95; e-book available.
Martin Paul Eve
Martin Paul Eve
Martin Paul Eve is professor of literature, technology, and publishing at Birkbeck College, University of London. He holds a PhD from the University of Sussex and is the author of five books, most recently Close Reading with Computers (2019). In 2017 Martin was named as one of the Guardian’s five finalists for higher education’s most inspiring leader award, and in 2018 he was awarded the KU Leuven Honorary Medal in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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American Literature (2019) 91 (3): 675–677.
Citation
Martin Paul Eve; Mere Reading: The Poetics of Wonder in Modern American Novels
Anti-Book: On the Art and Politics of Radical Publishing
Making Literature Now. American Literature 1 September 2019; 91 (3): 675–677. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-7722260
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