{"product_id":"vineland-reread-rereadings-9780231185219","title":"Vineland Reread Rereadings","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVineland is hardly anyone's favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. However, for Peter Coviello, the oft-overlooked book opens up new ways of thinking about Pynchon's writing and about how we read and how we live in the rough currents of history.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003e'New \u0026amp; Noteworthy' pick * New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eHere is a mash note, a fan’s riff, a sizzling study of Pynchon’s most misapprehended book, as well as a persuasive argument for its prescience and relevance. Coviello writes with a generous spirit and vibrant clarity about the aesthetic and political stakes of \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, and of the novel in general, and traces with elegance and insight the ways Pynchon’s engagement with the central tensions of these last few American centuries shaped his narrative. But \u003ci\u003eVineland Reread \u003c\/i\u003eis also a primer on how one can be both judicious and joyful in the act of criticism; rigorous on the one hand, but brave enough to double down on your affections, too. It shows us how to love a work of art honestly, communally. We need readers and thinkers like Peter Coviello now more than ever. -- Sam Lipsyte, author of \u003ci\u003eHark\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI don’t even particularly like Thomas Pynchon! But I could read Peter Coviello rereading \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e for days, not least because I, too, return at regular intervals to a small set of novels to keep myself “attached to life,” in Coviello’s phrase. Chronicling that species of attachment, \u003ci\u003eVineland Reread\u003c\/i\u003e traces Coviello’s readerly imagination of the past and future of the United States via Pynchon’s “novel-length calibration, keyed to unresigned comedy, of acute political grief.” The result is an account of literary experience that is as ethically and politically urgent as it is sparkling, vital, and fun to read. -- Gloria Fisk, author of \u003ci\u003eOrhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith his latest work, it becomes clear that Peter Coviello has achieved something rare: a literary analysis that both historicizes its object and overcomes an alienation between the subject and the object itself.  Coviello—nearly alone among contemporary literary critics—joins in the project of his objects, making of them something more wonderful than they would be without his attention. We should be so lucky to be read by him. -- Jordy Rosenberg, author of \u003ci\u003eConfessions of the Fox\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eVineland Reread\u003c\/i\u003e is a delight. Peter Coviello tells a sweet and joyous story about how to read and reread a treasured book, about how reading is an act that makes meaning, and about how that meaning anchors our lives. This is the rare work that will please everyone––scholars of Pynchon, readers of \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, adoring fans, and hardened skeptics––with gorgeous sentences that sparkle generously as they both describe and perform the best of what criticism is and can be. -- Jordan Alexander Stein, author of \u003ci\u003eWhen Novels Were Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere’s no smarter or more generous guide than Peter Coviello to the experience of loving and living together with books and music. In this deft small volume, Coviello’s tender gregarious mind returns to \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas Pynchon’s awkward middle child of a novel. He finds there exemplary lessons in how even our first, bad readings help people build a sustaining social world. And he explains why such intimate sodalities coexist with the deep “political grief” caused by society’s submission to carceral capitalism. -- Matthew Hart, author of \u003ci\u003eExtraterritorial: A Political Geography of Contemporary Fiction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[A] penetrating and nuanced work of literary criticism. . . Coviello’s astute and passionate analysis is a pleasure to read. * Publishers Weekly *\u003cbr\u003eCoviello makes a convincing case for [\u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e]’s prescience, its subtlety, its loss-haunted history of America, and — above all, and most powerfully in this smart, funny, inventive passionate book — its syntactic joys. -- Steve Mentz * The Bookfish *\u003cbr\u003eThe richness of Coviello's understanding of \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, the product of an intense engagement with the book across decades, along with his lively and extremely readable style, entirely drew me in. . . Embracing the wilful dissonance of the joyous and grief-stricken it identifies in \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, Coviello's \u003ci\u003eVineland Reread \u003c\/i\u003eis itself by turns funny and moving. -- Joanna Freer * Textual Practice *\u003cbr\u003eCoviello openly embraces his directive to experiment with the boundaries of literary criticism  . . .  Combining [a] fresh voice with a few new points in apology for \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e certainly provides ample tools for anyone who finds themselves in the position of wanting to justify the ongoing importance of Pynchon’s fourth novel. -- Michael O’Bryan * Orbit: A Journal of American Literature *\u003cbr\u003eIn focusing on repeated readings that draw out more and more nuanced arguments as the book and its rereader grow older together, I found myself increasingly curious about \u003ci\u003eVineland\u003c\/i\u003e, a book that had never found its way into my “to read” stack before . . . In Coviello’s hands, the “Rereadings” format offers a series of arguments not only about the book in question, but \u003ci\u003efor \u003c\/i\u003eit. -- Sarah Chihaya * American Literary History *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrologue: Whatever’s Fair\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. The Great Southcoast Plaza Eyeshadow Raid (’94)\u003cbr\u003e2. They Woke, the Thanatoids Awoke (’02)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e3. Scabland Garrison State (’08)\u003cbr\u003e4. Secret Retributions (’19– ...)\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400324784471,"sku":"9780231185219","price":15.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231185219.jpg?v=1730470392","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/vineland-reread-rereadings-9780231185219","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}