The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age
By Robert Alter
1989
First Published
3.92
Average Rating
253
Number of Pages
“A book that ought to be placed in the hands of any person who shows the slightest interest in serious reading or in hearing a good, practical defense of high culture.” ― Wall Street Journal From one of our premier literary scholars, here is a learned and witty introduction to the “sheer vitality of literature and the satisfactions of a close, informed engagement with it” ( New York Times ). Robert Alter’s illumination of the unique power of reading literature is especially valuable at a time when we are surrounded by electronic texts that distract more than engage and when the special claims of literature are disparaged by the high priests of literary theory. Alter explores the strategies that distinguish literature―the resources of style, the dynamics of allusion, the formal design of structure, the play of perspective in narrative. He draws on copious examples from the great works of literary art―from the Book of Genesis to Shakespeare, Conrad, and Nabokov―to illustrate his analysis of what makes reading a source of complex pleasure and insight.
Avg Rating
3.92
Number of Ratings
83
5 STARS
27%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
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Author
Robert Alter
Author · 22 books
Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967, and has published many acclaimed works on the Bible, literary modernism, and contemporary Hebrew literature.
