Description
Book SynopsisAn examination of the ways major modernist novels use the physical book to track the passing of time in which reading necessarily unfolds, this study explores the sense of finitude and transience that the works of Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf share with and transmit to their readers.
Trade Review"The Death of the Book is an admirably detailed and unfailingly subtle meditation of the novels of Proust, Joyce and Woolf, works in which the image of the open book or the act of reading figure the relationship between the life represented within the novel and the extra-literary life of its readers." -- -Maria DiBattista Princeton University "In The Death of the Book, Lurz demonstrates serious intellectual agility, moving between his objects of study with complexity and aplomb. In this formalist-materialist account of modernism, readers are treated to a delightful set of close readings of key modernist texts that want to take the book-as-object seriously. Crisp and lucid in argumentation, The Death of the Book is a fascinating account of modernist materialism, arguing that, as critics, we need to go beyond thinking about how literature began to act like emergent technological forms and instead turn our attention to the sensuous object of the book itself." -- -Dana Seitler University of Toronto
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Opening the Book Chapter 1. The Books of the Recherche Chapter 2. The Reader of Ulysses Chapter 3. The Dark Print of Finnegans Wake Chapter 4. The Pages in Jacob's Room Chapter 5. The Binding of The Waves Coda: The Afterlives of Reading Notes Bibliography
