Description
Book SynopsisThis book mounts a critique of persistently romantic assumptions in contemporary literary criticism and advances an original theory of literary production. Along the way, it offers new readings of major modernist novels of Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, and Gertrude Stein.
Trade Review"Lucid and beautifully written, The Work of Difference gives us an ontology of literature that is at once theoretical and practical. Audrey Wasser not only teaches us what literature can be but also what it can do and how it works in its most groundbreaking operations. Combining profound new readings of major modernist writers (Proust, Beckett, Stein) with a sophisticated philosophical understanding of Deleuze, The Work of Difference develops an innovative theory of literary production. Equally at home in conceptual thinking and rhetorical close reading, Wasser is an important new critic to reckon with." -- -Martin Hagglund Yale University
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 1. Form and Fragmentation: Romantic Legacies 2. The Book of the World: Form and Intent in New Criticism, Revisited 3. Tyranny of the Possible: Blanchot 4. A Genesis of the New: Deleuze 5. From Figure to Fissure: Self-Correction in Beckett's Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable 6. Hyperbole In Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu 7. "How Anything Can Be Different from What It Is": Tautology in Stein's The Making of Americans Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Works Cited Index
