eBook

Reading as Therapy

Timothy Aubry

2006,2011

Overview

Why do Americans read contemporary fiction? This question seems simple, but is it? Do Americans read for the purpose of aesthetic appreciation? To satisfy their own insatiable intellectual curiosities? While other forms of media have come to monopolize consumers' leisure time, in the past two decades book clubs have proliferated, Amazon has sponsored thriving online discussions, Oprah Winfrey has inspired millions of viewers to read both contemporary works and classics, and novels have retained their devoted following within middlebrow communities. InReading as Therapy, Timothy Aubry argues that contemporary fiction serves primarily as a therapeutic tool for lonely, dissatisfied middle-class American readers, one that validates their own private dysfunctions while supporting elusive communities of strangers unified by shared feelings. Aubry persuasively makes the case that contemporary literature's persistent appeal depends upon its capacity to perform a therapeutic function. Aubry traces the growth and proliferation of psychological concepts focused on the subjective interior within mainstream, middle-class society and the impact this has had on contemporary fiction. The prevailing tendency among academic critics has been to decry the personal emphasis of contemporary fiction as complicit with the rise of a narcissistic culture, the ascendency of liberal individualism, and the breakdown of public life.Reading as Therapy, by contrast, underscores the varied ideological effects that therapeutic culture can foster. To uncover the many unpredictable ways in which contemporary literature answers the psychological needs of its readers, Aubry considers several different venues of reader-response-including Oprah's Book Club and Amazon customer reviews-the promotional strategies of publishing houses, and a variety of contemporary texts, ranging from Khaled Hosseini'sThe Kite Runnerto Anita Shreve'sThe Pilot's Wifeto David Foster Wallace'sInfinite Jest. He concludes that, in the face of an atomistic social landscape, contemporary fiction gives readers a therapeutic vocabulary that both reinforces the private sphere and creates surprising forms of sympathy and solidarity among strangers.

• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Subject: Bibliotherapy / Books & Reading / Books and reading / Books and reading -- United States / Fiction / Fiction -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc / History and criticism / Language & Literature / LITERARY CRITICISM / Literature and society / Literature and society -- United States / Psychological aspects / Reading / Reading -- Psychological aspects / Reading, Psychology of / Theory, etc / United States
• ISBN: 9781587299551, 1587299550, 9781587299568, 1587299569