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Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative

Seduced by Story: The Use and Abuse of Narrative

by Peter Brooks

New York Review Books ·2022 ·176 pages ·Culture
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About This Book

"There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can defeat it." So begins the scholar and literary critic Peter Brooks's reckoning with today's flourishing cult of story. Forty years after publishing his seminal work Reading for the Plot, his important contribution to what came to be known as the "narrative turn" in contemporary criticism and philosophy, Brooks returns to question the unquestioning fashion in which story is now embraced as an excuse or explanation and the fact that every brand or politician comes equipped with one. In a discussion that ranges from The Girl on the Train to legal argument, Brooks reminds us that among the powers of narrative is the power to deceive.


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Reviews

"Seduced by Story turns out not to be the condemnation of narrative that I thought would follow from Brooks's complaints in its early pages, but rather a potent defense of attentive reading and its real-world applications."

Jennifer Szalai· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"However, readers who stay the course will find this is a thoughtful and revelatory analysis of what's lost when story trumps all."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Even readers who are not yet familiar with Proust or Faulkner will find stable footing in these essays despite their many erudite digressions throughout the canon ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

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