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baetsie's review against another edition
4.0
Far from an ideologically coherent society with power lodged in the hands of a few, this bold advance on the New Formalism gives us a social world constantly unsettled by the bewildering and unexpected effects of clashes among wholes, rhythms, hierarchies, and networks.
As a bonus it contains a climactic discussion of The Wire.
Reading it will enable you to recognize the power and significance of these multiple forms and make strategic decisions which permit outcomes that frustrate or elude the conventional distribution of power, allowing you to become an epistemological and ethical exemplar and perform a reading of the social that is nothing other than a canny formalism.
As a bonus it contains a climactic discussion of The Wire.
Reading it will enable you to recognize the power and significance of these multiple forms and make strategic decisions which permit outcomes that frustrate or elude the conventional distribution of power, allowing you to become an epistemological and ethical exemplar and perform a reading of the social that is nothing other than a canny formalism.
roisinie's review against another edition
4.0
Actually quite riveting theory or was I hyper fixating today? Both?
loudrianvs's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, what a book to start the year with! This was an insane read, highly recommend it!!!
lbrex's review against another edition
5.0
This is certainly an intriguing book, and I know that I'm late to the party since I'm reading it now. The way that Levine talks about social forms is very compelling and will be very useful for me and for many other critics; it's good that formalism is getting greater recognition. Sometimes, though, her assessments of other critical approaches (such as New Historicism) seemed a bit simplistic. I've considered myself a New Historicist for about 12? years now, and I hadn't bought into the totalizing notion of culture that Levine critiques here. I think the sections on "Wholes" and "Networks" were perhaps the most illuminating here, and I admire the book's concision and clarity. I recommend it to other literary critics who are concerned with theory, literature and politics, or the current state of criticism. I will certainly be thinking of Levine's points and illustrations for the next few months. Also, I've started reading the 2017 issue of _PMLA_ that responds to her work, and this has helped me get a clearer sense of some of the main points of the book as well as some of its limitations.
loveat1stwrite's review against another edition
5.0
This book contains fascinating ideas about how forms present information and interact with each other, opening up the field of literary criticism. The way Levine writes is smooth and accessible, she details and contextualizes her ideas and references completely that there is no need to research outside sources because of confusion (only if she's sparked your curiosity!)
meganmilks's review against another edition
4.0
This book thinks about the social/political dimensions of forms in clear, accessible prose. I found Levine's analysis of the history of critical theory theorizing form to be particularly useful, and I'm indebted to Levine for giving me some new vocabulary for thinking about my own experiments in formalism as a writer: i.e., I am frequently exploring the "affordances" of a given form in much the way Levine articulates here--for example, my "Traumarama" piece asks what else this form can do, what are its limits, etc; and so on with new explorations in therapeutic scripts.
Maybe it's that I read her essay on the network narrative several years ago, but at the same time that these ideas seem big and important, they also seem already absorbed. I was sort of resistant to the larger claims about the newness of this new formalism; then again, this is not the conversation I'm participating in as someone doing formalist experimentation as opposed to formalist criticism.
Maybe it's that I read her essay on the network narrative several years ago, but at the same time that these ideas seem big and important, they also seem already absorbed. I was sort of resistant to the larger claims about the newness of this new formalism; then again, this is not the conversation I'm participating in as someone doing formalist experimentation as opposed to formalist criticism.