Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America by Merve Emre


Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America
Title : Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 022647397X
ISBN-10 : 9780226473970
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 304
Publication : Published November 16, 2017

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 Merve Emre’s tongue-in-cheek term, “bad” readers. They read fiction and poetry to be moved, distracted, instructed, improved, engaged as citizens. How should we think about those readers, and what should we make of the structures, well outside the academy, that generate them?
We should, Emre argues, 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, Paraliterary 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.
 

Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America Reviews

  • Kristin

    An engaging discussion of "bad reading" in postwar America as a form of international communication. Captivating argument even if the prose is unnecessarily complicated and jargony.

  • Colton

    I found this to be fascinating and surprisingly so, mostly because I have been looking for a way to think about why it is that people seem to be reading all the time and thinking about none of it.

    Emre's analysis feels similar to Marilynne Robinson's discontent with the way humanities departments kowtowed, in the 20th century, to competing interests, in order to somehow place the university, and other private and public institutions, in a more lucrative or "useful" position.

    These places have forgotten the fact that the humanities had great strengths as a practice, strengths that have now been largely abandoned.

    I think some criticisms could be made of Emre's monograph, in the way that its canvas was rather too large for its paint, but by the end I was more impressed with the wealth of examples on what it means to be paraliterary. Think of each chapter as weight applied to a total, not so much as a mosaic to be filled in.

    This is a very niche book, but if anyone is looking for a starting place in academic thinking about the many problems with the reading and study of literature in the 21st century, or even in the way people read literature at home or with their friends, or at the public library, this is a great place to start.

    Though it reads like a thesis turned book at the tail end (or beginning) of one's academic career, it is far and away better than anything I might have done back when I was in school. I'm looking forward to whatever Emre does next, as I'm just as much interested in her style of thinking as in her prose.

  • Elizabeth

    Not quite what I was expecting or looking for but there’s some good stuff in the intro + the Henry James chapter