New Book by Helmut M眉ller-Sievers: The Novel Experience
The Novel Experience听introduces new approaches to the study of narrative fiction, for scholars, critics, teachers, and readers. At the heart of this concise book is a conception of experience that is influenced by the musings of third-century Buddhist thinker N膩g膩rjuna on the fictionality of truth and the emptiness of reality. Combining this insight with Nietzsche鈥檚 method of intellectual genealogy and William James鈥檚 transformation of emotion into 鈥減ure experience,鈥 Helmut M眉ller-Sievers proposes a way to talk about the experience of reading a novel that suspends the rush to judgment and ever-new 鈥渢urn鈥 in modes of interpretation. In its meditative corporeality, it is also beyond the grasp of any AI.
For M眉ller-Sievers, every experience is novel and every novel is an experience. He explicates this parallelism through philosophical works that privilege experience over knowledge (without denying the importance of understanding). Interspersing analyses of N膩g膩rjuna, Nietzsche, and James with personal essays about the lived experience of reading works like Ralph Ellison鈥檚 Invisible Man and Heinrich von Kleist鈥檚 The Marquise of O, The Novel Experience shows that reading about experiences in novels has a transformative effect on the reader鈥檚 understanding of what it is to experience. Teachers and readers should attend to these changes, acknowledging their singularity while creating a community within which they can abide.
