Publisher's Synopsis
This book is based on the author's T.S. Eliot lectures at the University of Kent and points to a line of linguistic scepticism that runs from Emerson, through the pragmatism of Willliam James, and into the 20th century, with Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein.;Poirier activates a tradition for writers who have in fact not admitted of its existence, a tradition that in this study gives birth to a radically different understanding of how writing gets written and how it deserves to be read.;Central to the book is an exploration of what James calls "the vague". Poirier argues that vagueness deserves a privileged place in our understanding of how language holds people together, without requiring their conformity to any fixed ideas of the truth. The author offers a redefinition of individualism that is located less in aggression than in tentativeness, casualness and silence.
