Play and the Politics of Reading: The Social Uses of Modernist Form
"This intelligent and high-minded book nobly seeks to prove the unlikely: that reading itself can be an exercise that will strengthen democracy, educate students to live in more open and pluralistic societies, and lead all of us (if we are as fair-minded and intellectually generous as its author) to the privileged station of being 'liberal ironists' (where we know everything is groundless yet plunge on with ideals we cannot justify). Armstrong provides close and well-reasoned essays on Henry James, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and James Joyce to show how a critic as intelligent as himself can observe four writers deploying strategies of ambiguity, flexibility, and multifaceted self-awareness—all of which can elicit from their sensitive readers the give-and-take, the shared understanding, the 'dance' of reciprocated acknowledgment, and the 'consensual relationship of mutuality' on which reading of the best sort depends, the kind of reading that once made Lionel Trilling say: 'A real book reads us.'"—William M. Chace, Common Knowledge, Fall 2006"Play and the Politics of Reading is a cogently argued contribution to our understanding of contemporary humanistic theory, modernist fiction, and important debates about pedagogy in our schools and universities. Nothing quite like it exists. Armstrong provides an original intellectual framework for reading central modernist narratives in English. Within that framework, he focuses on narration as it allows readers to respond to issues of difference, value, and power. Armstrong's commentary on A Passage to India, for example, takes full advantage of his subtle method for describing the moral and aesthetic implications of narration and the reader's role in modernist fiction."—John Paul Riquelme, Boston University