Industry Reviews
"Clear, easily readable, vigorous....A model of scholarship and editing....Highly recommended."--Choice
"Great breakdowns by sub-topics within chapters."--Rita Mignacca, SUNY College at Brockport
"A superb introduction to issues of borders and margins in American narrative production. It will figure prominently in establishing a new research agenda in US studies."--David William Foster, Arizona State University
"Not just a brilliant and lucid account of recent developments in American culture, this book, with its contentious brief for diversity, induces in the reader a kind of intellectual euphoria. It would be a curmudgeonly reader indeed who could resist Clayton's powerful, and empowering, optimism."--Margaret Homans, Yale University
"Has literature declined due to politics and multiculturalism? Jay Clayton persuasively demonstrates to the contrary, and shows how politics itself may gain a deeper sense of pluralism from the riches of contemporary novels. This book sparkles with insights small and large."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School
"Clear, easily readable, vigorous....A model of scholarship and editing....Highly recommended."--Choice
"Great breakdowns by sub-topics within chapters."--Rita Mignacca, SUNY College at Brockport
"A superb introduction to issues of borders and margins in American narrative production. It will figure prominently in establishing a new research agenda in US studies."--David William Foster, Arizona State University
"Not just a brilliant and lucid account of recent developments in American culture, this book, with its contentious brief for diversity, induces in the reader a kind of intellectual euphoria. It would be a curmudgeonly reader indeed who could resist Clayton's powerful, and empowering, optimism."--Margaret Homans, Yale University
"Has literature declined due to politics and multiculturalism? Jay Clayton persuasively demonstrates to the contrary, and shows how politics itself may gain a deeper sense of pluralism from the riches of contemporary novels. This book sparkles with insights small and large."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School
"A spirited, accessible volume refreshingly free from jargon and narrow partisanship. Clayton is a seasoned boundary-crosser, equally at home in fiction, literary theory, social and political philosophy, and feminism."--Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Women and War
"For the specialist and for the general reader this is one of the best surveys of the current literary and cultural scene in America that I have read. Clayton deftly brings off the necessary and urgent task of merging difficult theoretical and cultural perceptions with readings from an informatively wide range of contemporary fiction. He is one of the clearest and best informed commentators on the contemporary scene. He has managed to put the novel right back
in the center of cultural debate and, most of all, he makes out an infectiously positive and enthusiastic case for the multicultural agenda that is shared by many critics of the younger generation but
which has scared up so much hostile and sensationalist opposition from the older generation in recent years."--Richard Brown, University of Leeds
"The Pleasures of Babel is a unique overview of contemporary theory, fiction, ethnography, and cultural analysis--the best available account of narrative in its many current dimensions."--Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles
"If there is a critic today who can bridge the gap between the apparently closed shop of literary theory and the free market of contemporary literature, it is Jay Clayton. The Pleasures of Babel invigorates current literary criticism with an emphasis on the importance of fiction, tactically, ethically, and communally, to the shaping of a multicultural America."--William L. Andrews, University of Kansas
"The often acrimonious media coverage on issues of multiculturalism and the canon has prepared a significant general readership who should welcome Clayton because he combines lucidity and unpretentiousness with high intelligence and an extraordinary range of reference. The result is the single best brief introduction I know to American prose of the last twenty-five years."--Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh
"It's seldom that I read something that strikes me as being truly important, something that marks the next necessary step in the progress of our thinking. Clayton has written such a book. He has singlehandedly resurrected contemporary fiction as an important site for furthering, interrogating, and answering the theoretical concerns and issues that have so preoccupied us these past two decades and a half."--Michael Ryan, Northeastern University
"Jay Clayton's narrative combines superb intelligence with optimism about our multicultural era. It is a brilliantly comprehensive and clarifying story about our newest ways of understanding art and life."--Robert L. Caserio, University of Utah
"At a time when academics often narrowly limit their interests, Clayton bravely takes on one of the major societal issues facing the United States today: whether a pluralistic populace and the literature it produces offer a coherent world view. Rather than picture this world as one in which discordant voices will render us asunder, Clayton argues for the strength that comes from a vigorous competition in the market place of ideas. I recommend this book as an
antidote to those faint-hearted souls who see Babel as but one stop on the road to Balkanization."--Craig Smyser
"In American universities, and especially in the many courses in diverse fields which have been fueled by the upheavals in recent literary scholarship, The Pleasures of Babel will prove an indispensable teaching asset with its clear and insightful arguments about the state of contemporary American literature in relation to change in both American society and its intellectual culture."--George Marcus, Rice University
"With its scope, clarity, and incisiveness The Pleasures of Babel is not only an excellent introduction to contemporary American literature and theory, it opens the way for many new readings and much new theorizing."--Novel
"A superior analysis of contemporary American literature. Thought provoking and intellectually challenging."--Joe Benson, Ph.D., A&T State University, Greensboro, NC
