Best 21st Century Literary Criticism

Since the global turn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s, all the major movements within literary studies have been diagnostic rather than interventionist in character: scholars have developed sophisticated techniques for analyzing culture, but they have retreated from systematic attempts to transform it. In this respect, the political potential of current literary scholarship compares poorly with that of earlier critical modes, which, for all their faults, at least had a programmatic commitment to cultural change. Joseph North offers a bold and counterintuitive perspective on the history of criticism: that the turn toward reading texts in cultural-historical contexts is not a sign of the radicalization of literary studies but rather the opposite. North argues for a return to criticism―defined as a concern with aesthetic education and the cultivation of subjectivity―in order to revitalize literary studies and reconnect it to social and political life. North’s style is disarmingly lucid and self-assured; his reminds me of the work produced by an earlier kind of scholar, the sort who imagined a general audience. As devastating as it is meticulous, North’s analysis is a tour de force demonstration of what close reading can bring to light and why it would be a tragedy if the discipline ever gave it up.

Ultimately, Imagining Extinction demonstrates that biodiversity, endangered species, and extinction are not only scientific questions but issues of histories, cultures, and values. Any serious-minded person with a concern for the longstanding but accelerating plight of endangered nonhuman species—and how to make sense of its history and possible futures as an urgent cultural predicament—is certain to profit from reading Imagining Extinction .”. (Lawrence Buell, Harvard University). “ Imagining Extinction shows Heise working at the height of her powers, traversing a formidable range of charged ecological-cultural issues that include mass species extinctions and rapid loss of biodiversity; global climate change; narrative ‘templates’ that structure how cultures care about, and tell stories about, other species; the rise of biodiversity databases; biodiversity laws; and animal rights. Bound by temporal division, suggests Heise, only the human imagination can seemingly inspire the kind of social and political action championed by environmentalists and scientists alike. Imagining Extinction persuasively advocates for the centrality of the literary, the anthropological, the historical, and the psychological in coding and recoding our present considerations of extinction and the Anthropocene. And yet, in the same way that I do not want the humanities reduced to a single function, I would also not want to reduce Heise’s Imagining Extinction to a single application. The hope–as Heise’s work indicates--is that it may serve as a starting point for telling different stories and imagining a better future." The author’s goal is not to understand what endangered species and extinction mean biologically but to move toward understanding what they do (and perhaps to learn what they could eventually come to) mean culturally—or, in her words, ‘how they mean culturally.’ That distinction does not and should not be taken as an indication that this book does not represent relevant reading for biologists.

A landmark book, “brilliant, thoughtful” ( The Atlantic ) and “raw and gorgeous” ( LA Times ), that fast-forwards the discussion of the central artistic issues of our time, from the bestselling author of The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead . "In his new book, Reality Hunger , David Shields makes a case that a new literary form has arrived. a work of virtuoso banditry that promises to become, like Lewis Hyde’s The Gift for earlier generations, the book that artists in all media turn to for inspiration, vindication, and altercation as they struggle to reinvent themselves against the headwinds of our time. "The driving force behind this entertaining and highly persuasive polemic is a frustration with the contemporary mainstream novel. Shields is utterly uninterested in providing intellectual comfort; he bravely, uncompromisingly delivers the news. [I am] grateful for this beautiful (yes, raw and gorgeous) book.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times “This is the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010. It’s a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go.”—Alex Pappademas, GQ “I’ve just finished reading Reality Hunger: A Manifesto and I’m lit up by it—astonished, intoxicated, ecstatic, overwhelmed.”—Jonathan Lethem. “Good manifestos propagate. It’s the humanist ideal of a dialectic writ large: ideas compete and survive by fitness, not fiat. David Shields’s Reality Hunger has just the immodest ambition and exhorter’s zeal to bring about this happy scenario.”—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal “ Reality Hunger , by David Shields, might be the most intense, thought-accelerating book of the last 10 years.”—Chuck Klosterman (on Twitter). “The subtitle of David Shields’s Reality Hunger categorizes it as ‘a manifesto,’ which is a little like calling a nuclear bomb ‘a weapon.’”—Don McLesse, Kirkus Reviews “Thrilling to read, even if you disagree with much of it.”—Zadie Smith, The Guardian “I find Shields’s book absorbing, even inspiring. The ideas he raises are so important, his ideas are so compelling, that I raved about this book the whole time I was reading it and have regularly quoted it to friends in the weeks since.”—Jami Attenberg, Bookforum “A collection of wisdoms and aphorisms, some borrowed/stolen/appropriated from others, some written by Shields himself—which layer one upon the other to shimmer with an insistence on a literature that reflects modern’s life’s many complexities and contradictions.”—Debra Gwartney, Portland Oregonian “This is the book our sick-at-heart moment needs—like a sock in the jaw or an electric jolt in the solar plexus—to wake it up.”—Wayne Koestenbaum. “It’s already become required reading in university spheres, galleys passed from one student to the next like an illicit hit of crack cocaine. I came away from Reality Hunger excited about writing my own fiction, and impatient about books that don’t offer these same thrills.”—Sarah Weinman, Flavorwire “David Shields has put a bullet in the brain of our ridiculously oversimplified compulsion to think of everything as a narrative.”—Paul Constant, The Stranger “One of the most provocative books I’ve ever read. "Thank goodness for David Shields and his new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto , which, among other things, is a literary battle cry for the creation of a new genre, one that doesn't draw distinctions between fiction and nonfiction, originality and plagiarism, memoir and fabrication, scripted and unscripted. Shields, brilliant, thoughtful, and yes, original, is calling for an 'ars poetica for the burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a variety of forms and media. "David Shields’s radical intellectual manifesto, Reality Hunger , is a rousing call to arms for all artists to reject the laws governing appropriation, obliterate the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and give rise to a new modern form." "A book that defends plagiarism, champions faked memoirs, and declares fiction dead has the literary world up in arms. You might not agree with Shields’s broadside or his hardheaded conclusions, but it’s difficult not to fall under the sway of this voracious and elegantly structured book. Reality Hunger is ultimately an invigorating shakedown of the literary status quo: recommended for readers, essential for writers. “ Reality Hunger urgently and succinctly addresses matters that have been in the air, have relentlessly gathered momentum, and have just been waiting for someone to link them together. Sam Tanenhaus: “Every once in awhile a loud shout comes from the literary world that tells us that everybody is doing everything wrong. “With an assist from others’ quotations, Shields argues that our deep need for reality is not being met by the old and crumbling models of literature.”—Editors’ Choice, The New York Times Book Review. “His complaints about the tediousness and terminality of current fictional convention are well-taken: it is always a good time to shred formulas.”—James Wood, The New Yorker. Reading Shields maybe be the first time I’ve actually liked looking at the map and learning where we are.”—Jeff Simon, Buffalo News “America is losing faith with its fictions. Such is the thesis of David Shields, whose new book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto , lays out a compelling case for the prosecution.”—Tom Shone, The Daily Beast. “As is true of any good manifesto, [Shields] clocks or locks a feeling in the air, something already everywhere, familiar but not fully formed.”—Alexandra Juhasz, The Huffington Post. “David Shields has set the culture class abuzz with his attack on an obsession with reality that doesn’t exist. Reality Hunger refuses to sit still, leaping among ideas, arguments, programmatic declarations, aphorisms, personal asides, history, and etymology. is a member of the ‘rarefied world of literary culture’ (or would like to join), Reality Hunger is a must-read.—Ryan Bigge, Toronto Star. why Shields’s self-proclaimed manifesto is making so much noise: its ostensible blast is at the fiction in every novel, but its reverberating echoes can be felt in the facts of any magazine, any newspaper.”—Rick Groen, Toronto Globe and Mail “How can we create a literature that’s urgent and vital and true to this particular here and now? “Shields is the literary equivalent of a frenetic DJ, trolling through vinyl albums, turning other people’s music into his on-stage creation. Reality Hunger is a feverish collage of insights, often paraphrased and mashed up from other writers.”—Richard Handler, CBC Canada. The fiction vs. nonfiction debate has become intense in recent years, and Shields cranks it up a notch. Bold, entertaining, contentious, it pushes us to think about the processes and future of fiction-making, as well as its relation to nonfiction. “ Reality Hunger is more than thought-provoking; it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in a long time.”—Jonathan Safran Foer.

Named to Amazon’s Best of the Year 2017 in Humor & Entertainment List An affectionate, nostalgic, and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s. Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of two iconic decades . “As important and essential to the genre as Stephen King's Danse Macabre and Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies. “Horror fiction is alive and well, and Paperbacks from Hell is a grand, affectionate, and informative celebration of the genre.”—NY Journal of Books. I grew up reading these crazy things, and Grady Hendrix gleefully excavates this rich yet overlooked vein in the horror genre. “Hendrix’s infectious zeal for killer creatures and the undead make Paperbacks from Hell truly enjoyable.”—Fine Books Magazine. “National treasure Grady Hendrix follows his classic account of a haunted IKEA-like furniture showroom, Horrorstцr (2014), with a nostalgia-soaked ghost story, My Best Friend’s Exorcism.”—The Wall Street Journal. “Take The Exorcist, add some hair spray and wine coolers, and enroll it in high school in 1988 — that'll give you My Best Friend's Exorcism… Campy. “It’s clever, heartfelt, and get-under-your-skin unnerving without succumbing to any of the more predictable exorcism story tropes — things happen in this book that you will not expect. “Sharply written...Hendrix has made strong progress as a novelist, and this book makes a convincing case for his powers as a sharp observer of human behavior, filtered through a fun genre conceit that doesn’t skimp on the spooky—or the bodily fluids.”—The A.V. “Readers who thought Heathers wasn’t quite bleak enough will find this darkly humorous horror tale—filled with spot-on 80s pop-culture references—totally awesome.”—Booklist, starred review. “[Hendrix proves his] own black-magic mettle by conjuring up an era where ill-informed paranoia (and just plain ding-dongness) turned some of the quietest corners of America into fear factories, full of deep-rooted distrust and misspent rage. “If The Exorcist had been authored by Tina Fey instead of William Peter Blatty, it might have borne an uncanny resemblance to what Grady Hendrix has accomplished with My Best Friend’s Exorcism...Fans of satire, nostalgia, dark comedy and, well, demons should read this book.”—BookPage.

A new single-volume edition of an early anti-slavery novel When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. She wrote poetry, short stories, stage plays, and political propaganda for the Tory party, as well as her great amorous and political novel, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister .

The Year of Lear sheds light on these three great tragedies by placing them in the context of their times, while also allowing us greater insight into how Shakespeare was personally touched by such events as a terrible outbreak of plague and growing religious divisions. James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia University and the award-winning author of several books, including 1599 and Contested Will.

A beautiful new clothbound edition of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge. Dumas died in 1870.

A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. Alice Wakely completed a doctoral dissertation on Samuel Richardson at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is currently at the University of York. His books include Richardson's Clarissa and the 18th Century Reader (1992), Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel (2002), and co-edited with John Mee, The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1740-1830 (2004).