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9780199948536

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Novels need mistakes in order to sustain the edgy relationship between narration and character that defines the genre. So Kent Puckett argues in his new book which is, itself, no novel, for though there is nary a misstep to be found in these tightly argued pages, Bad Form nonetheless brilliantly coheres. Perfectly balanced between theory and criticism, Bad Form illuminates the nineteenth-century novel's connections to psychology, sociology, and politics and offers alert, surprising readings of works by Flaubert, Eliot, and James. --Sharon Marcus, Columbia University Kent Puckett's Bad Form has the nerve to show us how thoroughly our lives are shaped by our terror of social mistakes. Who could forgive this effrontery? Only a reader thrilled by Puckett's dazzling demonstration of how compelling, rich, and novelistic such mistakes can be. Bad form, Puckett teaches us, makes good books, and his own Bad Form is one of the best books on the novel in years. --Joseph Litvak, Tufts University This book offers something genuinely unusual and important: a new way to understand--and to work with--literary form. Bad Form moves, with brilliant agility, from the subtle dynamics of social anxiety to the inner logic of nineteenth-century narrative, unfolding the relationship between those little mistakes that constantly take place within novels and the formal enterprise of the novel itself. --Alex Woloch, Stanford University In a series of terrific readings of Thackeray, Flaubert, Eliot, and James, Kent Puckett shows us how the social mistakes that can painfully unnerve the characters who commit them also expose the nineteenth-century novel for what it is: a grandiose form with the nerve to claim to know society up and down. Those nineteenth-century narrators hiding behind impersonal omniscience never looked so embarrassingly naked. Thanks to Puckett our understanding of the novel just got a whole lot sharper. --Jonathan Grossman, University of California,

<br> Novels need mistakes in order to sustain the edgy relationship between narration and character that defines the genre. So Kent Puckett argues in his new book which is, itself, no novel, for though there is nary a misstep to be found in these tightly argued pages, Bad Form nonetheless brilliantly coheres. Perfectly balanced between theory and criticism, Bad Form illuminates the nineteenth-century novel's connections to psychology, sociology, and politics and offers alert, surprising readings of works by Flaubert, Eliot, and James. --Sharon Marcus, Columbia University<p><br> Kent Puckett's Bad Form has the nerve to show us how thoroughly our lives are shaped by our terror of social mistakes. Who could forgive this effrontery? Only a reader thrilled by Puckett's dazzling demonstration of how compelling, rich, and novelistic such mistakes can be. Bad form, Puckett teaches us, makes good books, and his own Bad Form is one of the best books on the novel in years. --Joseph Litvak, Tufts University<p><br> This book offers something genuinely unusual and important: a new way to understand--and to work with--literary form. Bad Form moves, with brilliant agility, from the subtle dynamics of social anxiety to the inner logic of nineteenth-century narrative, unfolding the relationship between those little mistakes that constantly take place within novels and the formal enterprise of the novel itself. --Alex Woloch, Stanford University<p><br> In a series of terrific readings of Thackeray, Flaubert, Eliot, and James, Kent Puckett shows us how the social mistakes that can painfully unnerve the characters who commit them also expose the nineteenth-century novel for what it is: a grandiose form with the nerve to claim to know society up and down. Those nineteenth-century narrators hiding behind impersonal omniscience never looked so embarrassingly naked. Thanks to Puckett our understanding of the novel just got a whole lot sharper. --Jonathan Grossman, University of California,

Novels need mistakes in order to sustain the edgy relationship between narration and character that defines the genre. So Kent Puckett argues in his new book which is, itself, no novel, for though there is nary a misstep to be found in these tightly argued pages, Bad Form nonetheless brilliantly coheres. Perfectly balanced between theory and criticism, Bad Form illuminates the nineteenth-century novel's connections to psychology, sociology, and politics and offers alert, surprising readings of works by Flaubert, Eliot, and James. Sharon Marcus, Columbia University

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Kent Puckett is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley.

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