Lexington Books Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading: Textual Dangers

Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading explores how selected American and European literary texts, from the classic to the contemporary, represent reading as a dangerous endeavor. It investigates how the texts being read or the conditions of reading may produce danger and considers the various qualities of the dangers depicted: literal or metaphorical, real or imagined, minor or mortal. Whereas readers can readily imagine being depressed or bored by a book, or even perhaps corrupted in some moral fashion, readers typically assume that the mere words on a page cannot directly affect their health. Nevertheless, literature can and does stage readings in which readers suffer actual harm from the magical or supernatural qualities of a given text. Such impossibly dangerous reading fascinates, the author argues, by exaggerating the dangers that may inhabit certain real experiences of reading. Review In Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading: Textual Dangers, Kevin R. West demonstrates that foremost among the pleasures of the text are the dangers it poses--including both dangers to the reader's own inclinations and susceptibilities and to the reigning social order. Drawing from an encyclopedic range of authors (from Homer and Rousseau to Eco and Hemingway) and bounding across a range of genres (from memoir to sci-fi to the Bible), West explores why reading, quite possibly evolution's greatest gift to human beings, has so continuously terrified us. Whether a book wreaks literal magic and mayhem or incites more philosophical fears about how language casts a spell, storytellers and authorities alike demonstrate persistent worries over the threat of narrative. As a worthy successor to Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading makes a fine argument for why so many literary authors across the centuries depict texts as the runes by which we divine the power of human perception.--Kirk Curnutt, Executive Director, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Kevin R. West turns the common notion of finding comfort in reading a book on its head. His elegant and accessible examination of dangerous reading spans an impressive range of genres, time periods, and countries. This thought-provoking study is supported by impeccable research and provides an innovative approach to world literature.--Anthony J. Grubbs, Michigan State University About the Author Kevin R. West is professor at Stephen F. Austin State University.