The Trial of Curiosity: Henry James, William James, and the Challenge of Modernity
"An altogether worthwhile, serious, and original approach to the Jameses."--Choice"An erudite and engaging book....[A] remarkable achievement. Posnock...reminds us that our conceptual experience of modernity owes as much to Henry James as to his brother."--Journal of American History"A brilliant study--a remarkable synthesis of cultural history, close reading, and theoretical speculation.  It will make an important contribution to James studies, and an equally significant contribution to our understanding of American culture, to debates on modernity, and to discussions of the possibilities and problems of cultural criticism itself."--Jonathan Freedman,Yale University"This is a major work of criticism, a...brilliant reconfiguration of literary culture and of literary modernism at the turn into the 20th century, and it offers some of the best interpretations I have ever read of Henry and William James, and of many attendant figures like Howard Sturgis, Santayana, and Adorno."--Richard Poirier,Rutgers University"Posnock manages to provide an intellectual as well as an ideological context for the challenge of modernity. The result is a rich mosaic of quotations and commentary, inlaid with diverse elements from psychology, fiction, philosophy, literary history, autobiography, and cultural theory."--AmericanLiterature