Recovering Your Story

November 28, 2005
Weinstein, a professor of comparative literature at Brown, sets out to open up some of the great works of 20th-century fiction to the general reader. His decades in academia show: this is a teacherly account of the authors covered, and although the prose is mostly accessible and shies away from academic jargon, a reader must come to the book with some knowledge of concepts not usually discussed in general conversation: epistemology, jouissance
and the Southern Code, to name a few. At first blush, the thesis of the book seems both restricting and reductive: that these novels help us discover "our story, our consciousness of things," as if the only reason to read were a narcissistic project of self-betterment. In fact, though, Weinstein's vision is far more generous. His claim, with other lovers of literature, is that fiction teaches nothing less than "how the heart lives, and how it dies. That is why we have art." At the heart of the project lies a very personal essay on the works of Virginia Woolf that both illuminates the methods and meanings of her novels while at the same time illustrating how they can speak to an individual reader's soul.

Starred review from January 15, 2006
Noted critic Weinstein (comparative literature, Brown Univ.) makes some of the most difficult authors of the 20th century accessible to the general reader in a volume that demonstrates not just knowledge but wisdom and sensitivity. Firm in his belief that reading is essential to the discovery of self, he focuses on eight novels of five eminent modernists: Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, and Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved. Weinstein brings much of himself to his readings of these works, and, in turn, he believes that art is not merely a reflection of life but a means by which we live more fully. As a result, his work is far removed from the typical guidebook that readers might expect. In fact, one need not have read these works at all to appreciate Weinstein's piercing ponderings. But one is infinitely more likely to want to read one of these admittedly complex narratives after being exposed to Weinstein's brilliant overture. An essential addition to all academic libraries and recommended for larger public libraries as well." -Anthony Pucci, Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2005
Weinstein accepts as irretrievable the loss of the hospitable relationship that once linked novelists to their readers. Yet it grieves him that the daunting techniques of the modernist masters (Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner) and of their most accomplished heir (Morrison) separate most ordinary readers from their works. The works of these gifted writers, Weinstein insists, can still function as Stendhal's "walking mirror" once did by giving today's readers a telling reflection of the deep interior of their own lives. For it is within intensely private thought and feeling, not in external events, that all of the authors here inscribe the meaning of their unsettling narratives. True, the novels do force their readers to discern a personal mosaic in the scattered shards of experience and to do so unguided by an omniscient narrative voice. But despite the contrary doubts of post-structuralist critics, Weinstein asserts that fictional protagonists and real-life readers alike can still recover the authentic story of their lives from a hiding place deep inside consciousness, even when scarred by trauma or deadened by routine. Rarely has literary scholarship spoken more cogently to general readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)