Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller

Abstract

Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller is a unique book. The author has grasped the essentials of J. Hillis Miller's theoretical doctrine, critical thinking, and reading strategy. As Miller says in his preface, “Éamonn Dunne has understood my writings extremely well, almost too well for comfort. This wonderfully witty, subtle, and perceptive little book is the best introduction I know to my work” (3). I do not think that Miller is merely flattering Dunne, although Miller has always been kind to scholars of the younger generation. As Miller sums up, the book has four features: the acute, the arbitrary, comparison and contrast, and diversion (3–9). I quite agree with him, although I will add something more in this review. Also, as Miller points out, the book is “full of such ironic plays on words”: for example, the innocent word glossary turns into the more threatening “critico-glossolalia” (4). Dunne's research areas include speech act theory, narratology, contemporary Continental philosophy, and twentieth-century movements in literary theory and criticism, which follows closely what Miller has been doing since he started his academic career decades ago. Miller has so far published some thirty books and hundreds of articles or essays, with many of them translated into quite a few languages. Readers badly need such a book to guide them to have a good reading and correct understanding of Miller's works. In this sense, Reading Theory Now has been published at just the right moment.I have always found reading Miller's works to be a great pleasure, not only because he often gives insightful ideas for you to understand canonical literary works and contemporary cultural phenomena as well as the most cutting-edge theoretical trends, but also because he writes in a very eloquent and fluent style. Dunne also writes his book in a Millerian style. As the book description tells us, it “enables its readers to see how and why theoretical models of reading are of use only in the practical event of reading literary and philosophical texts, that the politics and poetics of interpretive paradigms are constantly shifting, changing and evolving as present day perspectives transform those traditions unalterably.” Indeed, Miller's works cover a wide range of disciplines and many branches of learning, which finds particular embodiment in his thirty or so books dealing with almost all the important Western writers or theorists: from such canonical writers as Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Wallace Stevens to some contemporary postmodern and postcolonial writers; from such eminent Continental philosophers as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, Maurice Blanchot, Geoffrey Bennington, J. L. Austin, and Derek Attridge to his American colleagues such as M. H. Abrams and Paul de Man. As a former student of physics, Miller pays particularly keen attention to advanced technological innovations and even deals with their impact on literature and critical theory in his writings. That is why he always writes in a border-crossing and interdisciplinary way.As a Chinese scholar and reader, I have had personal interactions with Miller since I became acquainted with him in the beginning of the 1990s. Whenever I get hold of a book by him, I always feel great joy in reading it. But Miller's books are too many for me to collect or read. Sometimes, I also advise my students to read his books if they want to enhance their reading ability. But even so, I am perhaps one of the very few Chinese readers who have read most of his books and articles and am definitely most indebted to him personally, as well as to his writings. I have even supervised a Ph.D. student of mine who told me that she would write exclusively on Miller's critical theory for her dissertation, as she found his works truly fascinating. Apart from his writing, Miller is also a marvelous speaker, speaking at almost all the international conferences I have organized in China since the beginning of the century. Undoubtedly, he is the American literary scholar and theorist, together with Fredric Jameson, who is most familiar to Chinese literary scholarship and who has had the greatest influence on contemporary Chinese literary theory and criticism.When I started to read Dunne's book, I had no difficulty finding that the author has similar ideas. What particularly impressed me is that writing in a Millerian style, Dunne tries to put Miller's books in alphabetical order, with each letter representing either one of his books or an important concept. It is both interesting and arbitrary but makes it difficult for me to introduce one chapter after another. The twenty-six letters of the English alphabet exactly cover Miller's twenty-six published books. So the publication of this book undoubtedly serves as the best guide both to enable those who are already familiar with Miller's works to have a systematic and deeper understanding of his entire works and to encourage those who are just interested in Miller's works to read more of his books. It is worthy of being called the “ABC” of reading Miller's works, as well as the ABC's or essentials of his works proper.Unlike many of his fellow literary scholars, Miller is particularly keen on Theory, a concept that takes us far beyond literary theory. He always writes between literary and cultural theories, between literary and cultural critical studies. He is also a theorist, not the one always sticking to the abstract deduction of metaphysical theory but, rather, one especially good at applying various theoretical doctrines, chiefly Derrida's deconstructive theory combined with Poulet's phenomenological theoretical doctrine, to the practical reading of both literary and theoretical works. So in this sense, this book is no doubt worthy of being called “reading theory.”Since Miller has published extensively, how to read his works and grasp his major achievements? This is what Dunne tries to tell us. Although the main title of the book is Reading Theory Now, it does not merely stick to theory in a monologic way. It is written in a dialogic way, not just between the author and Miller but among three people, since the book has a wonderful afterword by Julian Wolfreys, which “tackles these issues in Miller's latest books.” When we read the book, we cannot help feeling as if we are, together with the author and the commentator, having dialogues with Miller. So its full title is appropriate: Reading Theory Now: An ABC of Good Reading with J. Hillis Miller.As we know, Miller is extremely good at reading, reading not only literary works but also theoretical works. To him, “each reading is a putting into question of the theoretical apparatuses that Miller himself has brought with him to those texts” (155). If we say that Derrida was a very meticulous reader, whom nothing could escape as a reader, then Miller has really mastered the technique of reading in a deconstructive way. For him, “understanding good reading … is to understand that each reading is in its own way inaugural, disruptive, unforeseeable. Reading in this way causes us to understand that there is no single theory capable of predicting what will happen when a given text is read at a given time” (155).Miller's deep attainment in theory finds embodiment in his three books published in 1990 and 1991. In Theory Now and Then we read essays on the phenomenological criticisms of the Geneva school and Georges Poulet, as well as on deconstruction and pedagogy; possibly Miller's most famous single essay, “The Critic as Host,” as well as essays on de Man, Nietzsche, and Stevens; and the presidential address for the 1986 Modern Language Association conference, “The Triumph of Theory, the Resistance to Reading, and the Question of the Material Base.” Even in dealing with theoretical issues, Miller never forgets to find literary elements in theoretical works. So for Miller, reading theory is no doubt a pleasure rather than a heavy burden.On Literature is nothing short of a passionate defense of literature's continuing influence on our lives and a wonderful exemplification of the intense pleasure Miller derives from reading literary works. Dunne holds that the book might be described as a miniscule “open sesame” into the workings of Miller's own particular concerns with reading literature and theory (167). In this book, Miller advocates a sort of “good reading”: slow, close, critical attention to detail. With this method of reading, one can certainly enjoy the aesthetic pleasure of literature (167): “Reading theory in this way alerts us to the way that theoretical texts themselves must be read as scrupulously and rhetorically as literary texts. If we are responsive to or responsible in our readings we will come to see that theory is not the end of reading, but its beginning” (23).For Derrida originally aimed to pay tribute to Miller's long-standing friend Jacques Derrida. Dunne tries to argue that, however paradoxically, the only way to talk sensibly about Derrida is to “avoid generalizing about these key terms, to dispense with the hearsay and the cant, and to go back to the texts themselves, something Miller has been doing consistently since 1965 in the original French” (171).Readers may well agree that Miller is a superb reader and interpreter of both literary and theoretical works who expresses his ideas in a fluent and elegant style. Perhaps this is why he could be more welcome among the broad reading public both in the West and elsewhere. But unfortunately, Reading Theory Now does not elaborate this aspect further. Another point I want to mention is this: as we know, Miller is a very productive author, whose recent articles and essays express his worry about the future of literature in the age of globalization under the regime of telecommunication technologies. As for this, Reading Theory Now only focuses on his books rather than on those miscellaneous articles and essays published in journals. As Dunne admits, “Any list-like rendering of recurring topics in J. Hillis Miller's work is bound by that very procedure to be exclusive and somewhat arbitrary” (12). To the author, “Reading Theory Now is likewise a title that comes to me as a necessity, a strategy and an adventure” (19). So Dunne warns readers that if they want to have a deep understanding of Miller's works, it is “not enough to read Miller reading. You have to go back to the texts themselves” (28).In any event, the publication of Dunne's book has filled a gap in Miller studies in a comprehensive way. It responds to the pessimistic ideas that theory is dead and that literature is dead. But after reading this book, we cannot help feeling that literature is not dead at all. Nor is theory, which functions effectively in interpreting various literary and critical works. It has full reason to have the title Reading Theory “Now,” when theory is said to be no longer so fascinating as it used to be. But theory will still help us to have a more profound understanding of literary works and of various cultural phenomena in this age of globalization. This is the great value of this small but forceful book.