Dear Incomprehension

StÉphane Vanderhaeghe is associate professor at the University Paris 8-Vincennes-Saint-Denis, France, where he teaches American literature and translation. He is author of Robert Coover & the Generosity of the Page and three novels published by Quidam Éditeur, including CharØgnards, À tous les airs and most recently P.R.O.T.O.C.O.L. He is also a literary translator.

“Dear Incomprehension is our new guide to critical failure. It is a thrilling experience of the nexus between contemporary American speculative fiction and poststructuralism's realist and materialist aftereffects. Vanderhaeghe’s readings are smart, lively, perceptive, and often surprising. They turn the contradictions at the core of literary meaning, referential realism, and critical authority around in circles. The astonishing afflictions of speculation shine forth in a new light."—Zachary Tavlin is Assistant Professor, Adj. in Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of Glancing Visions: Surface and Depth in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.“Dear Incomprehension is well-written, engaging, and provides a compelling (anti)framework for reading contemporary experimental fiction. It unfolds a delightfully performative provocation of the reading and speculative practices it proposes we attend more closely to, opening up timely inquiries into the objects of literary studies today."—Laura Shackelford is Professor in the Department of English at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the co-editor ofSurreal Entanglements: Essays on Jeff VanderMeer's Fiction and author of Tactics of the Human: Experimental Technics in American Fiction.