The Reader in Modernist Fiction

About the Book

Many major modernists – including Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bowen, Vladimir Nabokov and Ralph Ellison – wrote central scenes describing characters reading. In most cases, the readers depicted suffer unfortunate fates. Intriguingly, the act of reading is also often intertwined with sexual activities. The Reader in Modernist Fiction analyses the construction of fictional readers, tracing their development and transformation over the first half of the twentieth century. Brian Richardson explores how the effects of reading are represented within modernist and postmodern fiction, and studies misreading as a personal limitation, sexual invitation, aesthetic allegory and ideological critique.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: Modernist Hieroglyphics and the Implicated Reader 1. From James to Conrad and Ford: Suppressed Narratives, Subaltern Reading, and the Drama of Interpretation 2. The Fate of Reading in the Work of Joyce: Illusion, Demystification, Sexuality 3. "Books Were Not in Their Line": The Use and Abuse of Reading in Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf 4. The Dangers of Reading from Edith Wharton to Ralph Ellison 5. Reading Ruins: From Modernism to the Illegible Texts of Postmodernism and Beyond Conclusion: The Stories of Modern Fiction, the End(s) of Misreading, and the Other Reader’s Response Bibliography of Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Brian Richardson is a Professor in the English Department of the University of Maryland and former president of the Joseph Conrad Society of America. He is the author of several books, including A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-first Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019) and Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (2006). He is the editor or co-editor of ten volumes, including Narrative Beginnings: Theories and Practices (2009) and a special issue of Conradiana on “Conrad and the Reader” in 2002. He has written numerous articles and book chapters on twentieth century authors, particularly Conrad, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett, in which he discusses voice, interpretation, plot, closure, class, the reader, character and the narratives of literary history. Website: https://brianerichardson.weebly.com

Review :
...a very convincing study of an impressive number of novels belonging to an equally impressive timescale. Richardson’s overall demonstration is always clear. His work is not only on reading and readers, but also of course on misreading and misinterpreting, which are key notions in literary studies, as testified once again by this new publication. Picasso's Femme Couche', which depicts a woman reclining and reading, appears appropriately on the cover of Richardson's study of novels by major modernist writers of fiction, who develop scenes of reading in their narratives. The engagement of the reader as an active participant is central to the modernist tradition in fiction, and, without technical jargon, Richardson (Univ. of Maryland) distinguishes between surface and reparative reading in this study. While he focuses on fiction by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Ellison, he also addresses William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov, and writers beyond the English-American sphere, like Italo Calvino. The contexts for his examination of the role of "misinterpretation" in these works range from Cervantes's Don Quixote to Ian McEwan's Atonement. Richardson extends the range of the reader, as depicted in modernism, to as early as 1857 in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and sees modernist fiction as an "interpretive labyrinth." His introduction and chapter 5 can be read independently as well as interdependently among the other chapters. Richardson brings fresh insight to this aspect of modernism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. This book’s exciting discovery – the "critical reader" cultivated by modernist fiction across a vast range of texts and authors – is a timely affirmation of modernism’s cultural value as well as a welcome reminder of the profound wisdom that has established Brian Richardson as our leading authority on modernism’s narrative dynamics.