Closer Reading: Garrett Stewart's Essays in Refraction

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Perhaps the most prolific and exacting reader of his generation, Garrett Stewart offers here a first: a book of essays on close analysis, joined by a new interview that zooms in and out to account for the range and delicacy of his critical acumen.

Garrett Stewart is known for his important interventions across a number of fields, including philosophy, screen studies, and literary theory. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and winner of the International Society for the Study of Narratives prize for the best book on narrative for Novel Violence (2009), he draws on these varied fields in his narratological readings.

Closer Reading, like Stewarts work more broadly, offers close analyses of novels, literary theory, cinema, and conceptual art, including chapters on Charles Dickens, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Cavell, and John le Carr. This gives readers a single volume that covers a broad range of topics and demonstrates a sustained rethinking of the value of close reading as a methodology.

Featuring full-length essays, including important early publications and accompanied by an entirely fresh interview with David LaRocca, Closer Reading provides a deep and satisfying survey of and immersion in Garrett Stewarts amazing oeuvre.

Author Bio

Garrett Stewart is the James O. Freedman Professor of Letters at the University of Iowa, USA, having previously held teaching appointments at Boston University, University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, Princeton University, and the Universities of London (Queen Mary), Konstanz, and Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the author of nearly 20 books, including Novel Violence (2009), which was awarded the Perkins Prize for the best book on narrative (International Society for the Study of Narrative), and Between Film and Screen (1999), which was a short-listed finalist for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award. In 2010 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

David LaRocca is the author, editor, or coeditor of nearly 20 books, including Bandwidths: Reading Across Media with Garrett Stewart (Bloomsbury 2025), Attention Spans: Garrett Stewart, a Reader (Bloomsbury 2024), The Geschlecht Complex (Bloomsbury 2022), and Inheriting Stanley Cavell (Bloomsbury 2020). He has taught philosophy and cinema and held visiting research or teaching positions in the United States at Binghamton University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Ithaca College, the School of Visual Arts, the State University of New York College at Cortland, and Vanderbilt University.