Transgressions of Reading

“Although the topic of alienation in postmodern criticism has a pedigree that goes back to Nietzsche, Newman revisits this concept and comes away with a fresh if disturbing perspective. With an openness matched by few current critics, he articulates an epistemology that defines the act of reading as a compulsive yet ultimately frustrated gesture. . . . Newman redefines our concepts of a series of works characterizing contemporary narrative.” - Michael Patrick Gillespie, James Joyce Quarterly

"Robert Newman's book offers an impressive range of postmodernist readings on aspects of culture work, from the collage, to horror film, to fictional narrative." - Hortense Spillers, Emory University

"This is one of the more engaging critical works I've picked up in some time. The material on Psycho was terrific, as was the section on Jim Jones, and the discussion of feminist criticism and pornography. The author is breaking new ground, reading unaccustomed but significant material in a shrewd and fresh way." - Mark Edmundson, University of Virginia

"This text has nearly everything one could want in a book of contemporary literary criticism. Newman's overall project is to argue that twentieth-century texts written or inspired by exiles produce in the reader's interpretive experience a similar state, an exile from the sort of narrative expectations that constitute a readerly `home' or site of gratification and interpretive security. He executes this task through a highly interesting list of modern texts" - Margot Norris, University of California, Irvine