Anxieties of Experience

Reviews / Votes

an excellent study that succeeds both on the largest and smallest scales of analysis, in its close readings as much as in its hemispheric observations ... The book will work for readers of very different levels of expertise, as Lawrence knows how to introduce newcomers to a topic without sacrificing the level of abstraction that is to be expected of top-notch scholarship, and he is commendably careful and self-critical about his own argument and method. In short, this truly is a model of hemispheric literary scholarship * Sascha Poehlmann, Amerikastudien * An exciting, lucid reframing of the interactions between North American and Latin American literatures over the course of the past two centuries, Anxieties of Experience shows the critical and conceptual gains to be made from rethinking the hemispheric through the lens of world literature. Moving nimbly between close analysis and distant views to map the shifting, dialogic, dialectical relation between literatures north and south, the book's central concern and achievement is to reboot and reorient hemispheric literary studies; stowed-away in its coda is a thrilling supplement, a mapping of an entirely new scene of the contemporary. Lawrence's is a witty, incisive, eloquent new voice in literary and cultural criticism. * Michelle Clayton, Brown University, Poetry in Pieces: Cesar Vallejo and Lyric Modernity * Anxieties of Experience offers an exceptionally bold and mind-expanding reconnaissance of the counterpoint and interweave between distinctive traditions of U. S. and Latin American literary thought and practice over the past two centuries. Anyone seriously interested in the past, the present, and the likely future of 'hemispheric literature' will want to read this book from start to finish. * Lawrence Buell, Harvard University, author of The Dream of the Great American Novel * A massively erudite and elegantly written book, Anxieties of Experience takes its readers on a hemispheric journey through modern times, leading up to the present. Comparing and contrasting the literatures of North and South America is ultimately, for Lawrence, a means of examining whether a bookish life is a life lived to the fullest. With its sustained line of inquiry across corpora, the volume makes a valuable contribution to several fields of study-while also introducing general readers to hemispheric studies. * Hector Hoyos, Stanford University, author of Beyond Bolano: The Global Latin American Novel *