Though there is evidence here and there that [Beyond Formalism: Literary Essays 1958–1970] is a kind of housecleaning before a new start, Professor Hartman has indeed rendered a "book"—a statement from mid-career, Janus-faced, a summary and a prospect. It is also a major critical statement, made with an indirectness and a sense of the problematic of all such statements that seem to be Hartman's especial contribution to the critical project: that open, tentative, endless, self-contradictory violation by the mind of the very object of its love. Beyond Formalism is a confession of American roots and European efflorescence, the statement of one critic's education in the necessity and perverseness of the word and therefore his embodiment of the paradox of man, the myth-maker condemned to unravel (demystify) his own enchantments in order to begin again.

At first glance, Beyond Formalism is a classic example of the arbitrary, an accident...