Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller

Reading Theory Now explores movements in critical thinking through a host of radical theorists, and channels those movements through the work of one of the most influential proponents of critical interpretation in the world today, J. Hillis Miller. It enables its readers to see how and why theoretical models of reading are of use only in the practical event of reading literary and philosophical texts, that the politics and poetics of interpretive paradigms are constantly shifting, changing and evolving as present day perspectives transform those traditions unalterably. it seeks to invite its readers to challenge the concept of the paradigm, the school, the movement, even the sequence, by presenting them with a choice to read in their own way, to "dip" in and out of singular events of interpretation from A to Z. In this respect Reading Theory Now invites its audience to decide for him/herself where they begin and end their own critical analyses. Reading Theory Now also contains: *A Preface by J. Hillis Miller which comments on the significance of reading as an event and the centrality of political and ecological issues in his most recent work. *An Afterword by Julian Wolfreys which tackles these issues in Miller's latest books. *A select annotated bibliography which will help students coming to Miller's work for the first time to find their own way into his vast critical corpus.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: "Exergue: Miller from A to Z, Or: Miller on Dunne on Miller" by J. Hillis Miller Introduction: "Excursus, Excursus" A (Anacoluthon) B (Beginnings) C (Character) D (Decision) E (Exegesis) F (Figure) G (Graph) H (Hypertext) I (Intersubjectivity) J (Joy) K (Kiss) L (Line) M (Middle) N (Nachträglickeit) O (Others) P (Promise) Q (queer) R (Responsibility) S (Surd) T (Topography) U (Uncanny) V (Virtuality) W (Writing) X (X) Y (Yarn) Z (Zero)Afterword: "ABCing you: Raising the Stakes of/for Reading or, Miller's Tale" by Julian Wolfreys Annotated BibliographyIndex

About the Author :
Dr Éamonn Dunne is a teacher of English at Coláiste Chraobh Abhann school in Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. He is the author of J. Hillis Miller and the Possibilities of Reading: Literature after Deconstruction (2010) and has research interests in pedagogy, popular culture, queer theory and narratology. He is currently co-writing a third book on queer theory and literature with Michael O'Rourke. J. Hillis Miller is one of the leading American literary critics of the past half-century. Together with Paul de Man, Harold Bloom, and Geoffrey Hartman he was part of "The Yale School" of deconstruction, which heavily influenced and popularized deconstruction in contemporary literary criticism. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Irvine, USA. Julian Wolfreys is a Professor of Modern Literature and Culture with the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University, UK. The author and editor of numerous books and articles, his most recent publications are Writing London III: Inventions of the City (Palgrave) and Transgression: Identity, Place, Time (Palgrave).

Review :
It would not be unfair to say that Eamonn Dunne knows Hillis Miller better than the eminent critic and literary theorist knows himself. This is another invaluable addition to the secondary literature on Miller. With it Dunne reminds us of the essential nature of Miller's writing for the study of literature today. Reading Reading Theory Now I am persuaded by Dunne that Miller remains our most vital and remarkable thinker of literature; without a familiarity with Miller any training in reading literature would be incomplete. Perhaps, it is where that training should begin. Dunne has rendered us all a great service once more. Good, good-this is so good a reading of good reading, an alphabetical living out of the good life that is reading. This life has just got better, stranger, strange as ABC. Eamonn Dunne's ABC, his second book about J. Hillis Miller, operates a kind of a jouissant reading (J is for Joy!), and in that it comes to the proximity of Barthes and Derrida's works on the originary affirmation of reading: both in its conceptual lucidity, and its performative ecstasy. Each letter, each entry from A to Z, feels like a strip of film through which the work of J. Hillis Miller is screened, amplified, projected, embellished, 'seasoned,' sublated and illuminated. Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller is a unique book. The author has grasped the essentials of J. Hillis Miller's theoretical doctrine, critical thinking, and reading strategy. […] Readers badly need such a book to guide them to have a good reading and correct understanding of Miller's works. In this sense, Reading Theory Now has been published at just the right moment. [...] [T]his book undoubtedly serves as the best guide both to enable those who are already familiar with Miller's works to have a systematic and deeper understanding of his entire works and to encourage those who are just interested in Miller's works to read more of his books. […] When we read the book, we cannot help feeling as if we are, together with the author and the commentator, having dialogues with Miller. […] Dunne's book has filled a gap in Miller studies in a comprehensive way. It responds to the pessimistic ideas that theory is dead and that literature is dead. But after reading this book, we cannot help feeling that literature is not dead at all. Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller not only reads Miller reading, but also includes Dunne's own reading of texts. Dunne executes what he attempts to enable his readers to do: he defines the close reading tools Miller uses and shows us how to use them. This double move of reading and application earns praise from Miller himself, who, in a Preface to Dunne's book, lauds Dunne for putting together “the best introduction I know to my work”.