Roland Barthes’s 1967 essay, "The Death of the Author," argues against the traditional practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author into textual interpretation because of the resultant limitations imposed on a text. Hailing "the birth of the reader," Barthes posits a new abstract notion of the reader as the conceptual space containing all the text’s possible meanings. The essay has become one of the most cited works in literary criticism and is a key text for any reader approaching reader response theory.

An examination of the ways major novels by Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf draw attention to their embodiment in the object of the book, The Death of the Book considers how bookish format plays a role in some of the twentieth century’s most famous literary experiments. Tracking the passing of time in which reading unfolds, these novels position the book’s so-called death in terms that refer as much to a simple description of its future vis-à-vis other media forms as to the sense of finitude these books share with and transmit to their readers. As he interrogates the affective, physical, and temporal valences of literature’s own traditional format and mode of access, John Lurz shows how these novels stage intersections with the phenomenal world of their readers and develop a conception of literary experience not accounted for by either rigorously historicist or traditionally formalist accounts of the modernist period. Bringing together issues of media and mediation, book history, and modernist aesthetics, The Death of the Book offers a new and deeper understanding of the way we read now.

Essays on semiology

Post-structuralist attitudes to authorship as expressed by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Gayati Chakravorty Spivak with particular attention to time and death.

The Analysis of Film brings together the authors studies of classic Hollywood film. It is a book about the methods of close film analysis, the narrative structure of Hollwood film, Hitchcock's work and the role of women.

Hailed a “Best Book of the Year” by NPR, Publishers Weekly, Vulture, and the New York Public Library, Some Trick is now in paperback Finalist for the Saroyan Prize for Fiction For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a reader as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most far-reaching dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success. “Look,” a character begins to explain, laying out some gambit reasonably enough, even in the face of situations spinning out to their utmost logical extremes, where things prove “more complicated than they had first appeared” and “at 3 a.m. the circumstances seem to attenuate.” In various ways, each tale carries DeWitt’s signature poker-face lament regarding the near-impossibility of the life of the mind when one is made to pay to have the time for it, in a world so sadly “taken up with all sorts of paraphernalia superfluous, not to say impedimental, to ratiocination.”

Winner of the 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Novel From deep in the heart of his eighteenth century English manor, millionaire Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk writes mystery novels and torments his four spoiled children with threats of disinheritance. Tiring of this device, the portly patriarch decides to weave a malicious twist into his well-worn plot. Gathering them all together for a family dinner, he announces his latest blow—a secret elopement with the beautiful Violet...who was once suspected of murdering her husband. Within hours, eldest son and appointed heir Ruthven is found cleaved to death by a medieval mace. Since Ruthven is generally hated, no one seems too surprised or upset—least of all his cold-blooded wife Lillian. When Detective Chief Inspector St. Just is brought in to investigate, he meets with a deadly calm that goes beyond the usual English reserve. And soon Sir Adrian himself is found slumped over his writing desk—an ornate knife thrust into his heart. Trapped amid leering gargoyles and stone walls, every member of the family is a likely suspect. Using a little Cornish brusqueness and brawn, can St. Just find the killer before the next-in-line to the family fortune ends up dead? Death of a Cozy Writer was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as a Best Book of 2008, nominated for a Left Coast Crime award (the Hawaii Five-O for best police procedural), short-listed for the Macavity Award for Best First Mystery, nominated for the Anthony Award for Best First Novel and was a finalist for the David G. Sasher, Sr. Award for Best Mystery Novel. Praise: "Fans of English detective work will welcome Malliet's droll debut, the first in a new series."—Publishers Weekly "Malliet's debut combines devices from Christie and Clue to keep you guessing until the dramatic denouement."—Kirkus Reviews "Malliet's skillful debut demonstrates the sophistication one would expect of a much more established writer. I'm looking forward to her next genre-bender, Death and the Lit Chick."—Mystery Scene "Almost every sentence is a polished, malicious gem, reminiscent of Robert Barnard...the book is perfect for the lover of the classical detective story or the fan of great sentences."—Deadly Pleasures "In her series debut, Malliet, who won a Malice Domestic Grant to write this novel, lays the foundation for an Agatha Christie—like murder mystery."—Library Journal "An affectionate homage to the Golden Age of British crime fiction by a skilled writer rapidly attracting attention."—The Sherbrook Record "This tale cleverly adds modern touches to an Agatha Christie style classic house mystery."—Mystery Women Magazine "Wicked, witty and full of treats!"—Peter Lovesey, recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Crime Writer's Association and Malice Domestic "The traditional British cozy is alive and well. Delicious. I was hooked from the first paragraph."—Rhys Bowen, award-winning author of Her Royal Spyness "Death of a Cozy Writer is a romp, a classic tale of family dysfunction in a moody and often humourous English country house setting."—Louise Penny, author of the award-winning Armand Gamache series of murder mysteries "The connections made by St. Just are nothing short of Sherlock Holmes at his most coherent. A most excellent first mystery!"—Midwest Book Review