"The heart of the work remains the new and urgent contemporary problem of not what literature is but whether it can survive in any recognizable form in globalization, a problem that promises to tell us as much about globalization as it does about literature. . . . Wonderfully witty and readable."—Fredric Jameson, from the foreword
“A new object comes into view: The Critic as Guest. For almost thirty years now, Hillis Miller has generously offered himself for inspection by Chinese scholars as a native informant of the U.S. intelligentsia, of deconstruction, of the humanist university, of print culture. Left to our imagination are their responses—the other half of the conversation silhouetted here. But with what modesty Miller steps over the horizon! With what scruples he offers his sometimes necessarily broad and blunt reports! This not really so innocent set of talks and essays traces a bright thread through one of the great cultural exchanges of our time, the words bounced between China and America.”—Haun Saussy, University of Chicago
