Research Catalog

Title

Paraliterary : the making of bad readers in postwar America / Merve Emre.

Author

Emre, Merve

Publication

• Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

286 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

Literature departments are staffed by, and tend to be focused on turning out, "good" readers--attentive to nuance, aware of history, interested in literary texts as self-contained works. But the vast majority of readers are, to use the author's tongue-in-cheek term, "bad" readers. They read fiction and poetry to be moved, distracted, instructed, improved, engaged as citizens. The author of this book argues that we should think of such readers not as non-literary but as paraliterary--thriving outside the institutions we take as central to the literary world. She traces this phenomenon to the postwar period, when literature played a key role in the rise of American power. At the same time as American universities were producing good readers by the hundreds, many more thousands of bad readers were learning elsewhere to be disciplined public communicators, whether in diplomatic and ambassadorial missions, private and public cultural exchange programs, multinational corporations, or global activist groups. As we grapple with literature's diminished role in the public sphere, she suggests a new way to think about literature, its audience, and its potential, one that looks at the civic institutions that have long engaged readers ignored by the academy.

Alternative Title

Making of Bad readers in postwar America

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Books and reading > United States > History > 20th century
• Books and reading > United States > Sociological aspects
• Literature and society > United States
• Reading > Philosophy
• Communication in international relations > United States
• HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
• LITERARY CRITICISM / American
• Books and reading
• Books and reading > Sociological aspects
• Communication in international relations
• Intellectual life
• Literature and society
• Lesefähigkeit
• Literarischer Text
• Literaturwissenschaft
• Universität
• United States > Intellectual life > 20th century
• United States
• USA

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-277) and index.

Contents

Introduction: pop quiz -- Reading as imitation -- Reading as feeling -- Brand reading -- Sight reading -- Reading like a bureaucrat -- Reading like a revolutionary -- Conclusion: retracing one's steps.

ISBN

• 9780226473970
• 022647397X
• 9780226473833
• 022647383X
• 022647402X
• 9780226474021
• 9780226474021 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2017016749
• 40027692159

OCLC

• ocn975855860
• 975855860
• SCSB-8911885

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library