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Norman N. Holland: The Dean of American Psychoanalytic Literary Critics

Author(s) : Jeffrey Berman

Reviews and Endorsements

Jeffrey Berman has accomplished an immense task; he has written an appealing and very personal study of Norman Holland, engaging with his subject in a way that both elaborates convincingly the unusual trajectory of Holland’s career as the leading psychoanalytic literary critic of the sixties and beyond, but also takes issue with some of Holland’s positions. Meticulously engaging Holland extensive oeuvre, Berman moves through the various stages of Holland’s criticism from new critical to psychoanalytic to his final commitment to reader response theory, celebrating Holland's achievement but also pointing out Holland’s contradictions and weaknesses. Indeed, Berman analyzes Holland not only as a critic but as a person, reading for example, Holland’s interpretations of Shakespeare as projections of Holland’s own personality. Even more unusual, Berman establishes a personal relationship with Holland during the course of the book describing his own personal encounters with Holland as an undergraduate student and later as a fellow academic to whom he felt close. Finding his subject witty, engaging, insightful, playful, but also at times condescending and cutting, Berman presents an extraordinary personal and complex portrait of an extraordinary and complex critic as well as a comprehensive tour of his works.
Claire Kahane, Professor of English Emerita, University at Buffalo, USA

Jeffrey Berman’s brilliant critical biography of Norman Holland is a major contribution to the history of 20th-century criticism and should be on the desk of anyone interested in how the debates about the function and meaning of literature shifted during this tumultuous period. Comprehensive, well-written, and as engaging as Norman Holland was as a critic and a personality.
Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences, Emory University, USA, and author of Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture