Arnold Weinstein, a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University, has spent 50 years teaching the subject in various classrooms. In what he asserts is his final book, he reexamines those years and a life filled with literary afterlives. Weinstein (A Scream Goes Through the House; Morning, Noon, and Night) writes that literature "can be thought of as a fellowship of spirits," a fellowship that crosses time, space and experience in order to teach readers more about the world they live in.
In this volume, he describes the literary canon as an entity that "houses human lives." He considers the shared experiences of characters and their writers, and how literature "maps human dimensions." Both literary criticism and personal memoir, Weinstein's book imparts thought-provoking conversational musings that echo the lectures he gave on authors such as James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Sophocles, Mark Twain and Shakespeare, among many others. He also weaves in reflections on his experiences of teaching such authors in lectures, in large online courses, and even through the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After a long career, Weinstein contemplates how even those with depths of experience can still learn. What is found here is less hard-and-true facts about the books and authors he covers, and more a fascinating invitation to reorient oneself to what can be gained from reading and how the relationship between reader, author, character and text is constantly evolving. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer