his reasoning." Daniel concluded that "The Imaginary Library, lively and readable as it is, may at least convince its readers that a widespread concern over the future of literature exists, but the choice of Bellow, Malamud, Nabokov, and Mailer hardly supports the conclusion that the days of literature are numbered. All four are serious writers fully deserving of the fame they enjoy in the world outside the universities." Judie Newman, writing in The Yearbook of English Studies, found in Kernan's book "an attractive emphasis on the major question of metamorphosis in the literary canon, and patches of perceptive local criticism generate fresh insights into the four novels. The study lacks, however, the polemical thrust of the essay, reserving until its close Professor Kernan's main point: his regret that the literary text is now being used solely as a basis for a science of interpretation, and that semiotics, reader response, and grammatology have displaced humanist works on the bookshelves." See also The Death of Literature References Sources 1982 non-fiction books English-language books Books of literary criticism