"Our Preposterous Use of Literature is a critique of summary uses of literature and encapsulating methods of reading, methods that in effect limit or destroy the texts they purport to interpret. Using the historical reception of the works of Emerson as a case study, T. S. McMillin conducts a bold inquiry into the political and philosophical nature of reading.

He examines the ways in which Emerson's texts have been read in the United States, the myriad methods by which those texts have been pillaged, picked over, and repackaged - in a word, consumed - by biographers, political apologists, self-help proponents, entrepreneurs, and academicians alike.".

"McMillin shows how a reductive, consumptive method of reading alters both the process of the textual encounter and the nature of the text itself. Our Preposterous Use of Literature proposes a new natural philosophy of reading: a method of reading at once more responsible to the texts we interpret and more closely connected to the worlds in which our interpretations take place."--BOOK JACKET.