Where I'm Reading From
The Changing World of Books
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Why do we need fiction? Why do books need to be printed on paper, copyrighted, read to the finish? Do we read to challenge our vision of the world or to confirm it? Has novel writing turned into a job like any other? In Where I’m Reading From, the novelist and critic Tim Parks ranges over decades of critical reading—from Leopardi, Dickens, and Chekhov, to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Bernhard, and on to contemporary work by Peter Stamm, Alice Munro, and many others—to upend our assumptions about literature and its purpose.
In thirty-seven interlocking essays, Where I’m Reading From examines the rise of the “international” novel and the disappearance of “national” literary styles; how market forces shape “serious” fiction; the unintended effects of translation; the growing stasis of literary criticism; and the problematic relationship between writers’ lives and their work. Through dazzling close readings and probing self-examination, Parks wonders whether writers—and readers—can escape the twin pressures of the new global system and the novel that has become its emblematic genre.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this lively collection of 37 essays, novelist (Painting Death) and translator Parks, who is also one of the most eloquent and provocative critics, explores a range of topics in contemporary literature and publishing in essays with titles such as "Do We Need Stories?," "The Dull New Global Novel," "Does Money Make Us Better Writers?," "Why Readers Disagree," and "Translating in the Dark." Parks ponders the ways that translating a text challenges both readers and translators, observing that the act of moving a text from one language to another allows for better understanding of it. Elsewhere, he points out that creative writing programs seldom serve the function of teaching students how to write, instead advancing their careers by introducing them to established writers so they can make valuable professional connections. In a brilliant take on copyright, he notes that the concept is not "essentially driven by notions of justice or theories of ownership, but by a certain culture's attachment to a certain literary form." As the character of the printed word and the nature of reading continue to change, Parks's essays probe the positive and negative effects of these changes for our reading lives.
