The Reader’s Share, Davis Smith-Brecheisen, University of Texas-Dallas
This essay examines how two very different authors — James Baldwin and William Gass — reflexively mobilize the ontology of literature to exploit the tension between the work of fiction and the act of reading, highlighting an emerging conflict in the mid-sixties between the demands of art and the discourse of literary theory. In doing so, this essay begins to stake out new ground in ongoing debates how we read now and encourages us to rethink the literary period we now call postmodernism.