American Talmud: The Cultural Work of Jewish American Fiction (review)
of rupture in mass culture" that "fascinated and alarmed" James reappear in the techniques of self-rupturing and ambiguity characteristic of his late style—that, in other words, "his sentences seem to explode the formal conventions of his genre" (305) in response to mass culture forms—it is not unreasonable to expect that more will be said on the formal effects of mass culture on James's influential fiction techniques (4). At all events, it is understandable that in a study this wide ranging and richly detailed, the questions raised cannot all be answered to everyone's complete satisfaction. It is, in fact, a testament to the caliber of Bentley's work that such questions will no doubt generate valuable new studies of late-century and modernist American literature and culture that may very well collectively redefine the field.