It's a Yale Open Courses class so there are YouTube videos, but I found Fry's speaking style so grating I decided to buy the book. There are 26 chapters, and most chapters have you read two or three outside essays, which are fairly easy to find on today's internet, and fairly difficult to read because (as I should have guessed from the book’s title) it turns out the class is less about literature and more about philosophy (I would describe reading philosophy as equivalent to drinking out of a container labeled "HEADACHE JUICE".) You'll span hermeneutics, modes of formalism, semiotics and structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalytic approaches, Marxist and historicist approaches, theories of social identity, and neo-pragmatism (and that's just what's written on the back cover, and also, hardly scratching the surface) which turns out is a lot for the brain to soak in when not spread out over 13 weeks. But, considering the density and breadth of the material, Fry does a pretty good job of keeping the class focused on its core ideas, even as he's seemingly steering everyone off-course. Would I say I got what I was expecting? Well, no. Was I exposed to far more ideas than I was expecting, far more than I ever needed? God, yes. Did I retain most of them? No—seemed like any new information I learned would push whatever previous information I learned out of my brain. Lucky I was taking notes. Four stars.

Even though this is very much an academic book, I feel the nagging need to highlight it. Have you heard of University of Chicago Neo-Aristotelian literary theory?* It's apparently preoccupied with the form of literature, in other words, a story's unity and shape. So, say, rather than spotlight Jhumpa Lahiri's multicultural provocations or her feminist/political intentions, the formal theorist is much more concerned with the functions of her story structure, and how that structure affects reader experience. This critical practice, apparently, disassembles form and its components at such off-putting scientific lengths it didn't gain much traction even among the erudite lit crowd (though, between you and me, people seem to have a weird disdain for academics based in the American Midwest.) So, basically, this book here is an accessible, easy-to-read, highly discerning explainer of Neo-Aristotelian theory, centering on "the formal principle". Austin, in fact, has a great knack—for lack of better phrasing—for answering "stupid" questions (questions like, Must Henry James really write like that?) But that's not the real reason I believe this deserves a shoutout. The real reason, basically, is: NO ONE EVER FUCKING TALKS ABOUT FORM!!!—if there had been more of a focus in school on how novels are constructed and why (as opposed to the overwhelming focus on my sweet, sensitive, little feelings) then maybe I wouldn't have found myself staring at a copy of The Sound and the Fury sometime in my 20s, thinking: "What in the holy fuck am I reading?!" The form of that novel, along with the forms of The Portrait of a Lady, Invisible Man, and Pale Fire are all examined here, as four closing proofs of concept, demonstrating how asking yourself questions of form can lead to less gooey speculation when it comes to meaning. I suppose the one thing I can say that might make such abstract a notion as literary form more clear is: Why do those four novels feel so richly satisfying even if none of them end on traditional notes of closure? It must have something to do with the peculiar and complex ways those novels are built. Does that help? I sure hope so, because that's the best I think I can do. Four stars.

*Wright explains in a 1998 essay: "Chicago formal theory gave primary attention to the larger structural features of a work, such as plot or sequence or unifying principle of progression. It was interested in beginning, end, and the movement between those two points. It dealt freely with elements like action and events and characters, discoveries, thoughts, feelings, and effects, because these play their important parts in the hierarchical structure of the whole."