The Fate of Reading is a new selection of Geoffrey Hartman's writings, from work published during the past five years. Many essays resume the themes of an earlier selection, Beyond Formalism …, extending their implications or exacerbating them as the mood of Hartman's mind requires. A reader who does not already know Professor Hartman's work should repair that deficiency before tackling the new book. Otherwise, The Fate of Reading would appear a random miscellany of fugitive pieces caught and held for trail merely because Professor Hartman had an interest in their capture. In fact, the book is most compelling as evidence of the range and quality of Professor Hartman's mind and of the point it has reached in a causerie set astir in his first book, The Unmediated Vision….

Two verses from Deuteronomy made an epigraph for The Unmediated Vision. Moses says to the people of Israel: "The Lord...