A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life

by Arnold Weinstein

“For too long we have been encouraged to see culture as an affair of intellect, and reading as a solitary exercise. But the truth is literature and art are pathways of feeling, and our encounter with them is social, inscribing us in a larger community.... Through art we discover that we are not alone.”

So writes the esteemed Brown University professor Arnold Weinstein in this brilliant, radical exploration of Western literature. In the tradition of Harold Bloom and Jacques Barzun, Weinstein guides us through great works of art, to reveal how literature constitutes nothing less than a feast for the heart. Our encounter with literature and art can be a unique form of human connection, an entry into the storehouse of feeling.

Writing about works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Munch, Proust, O’Neill, Burroughs, DeLillo, Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, and others, Weinstein explores how writers and artists give us a vision of what human life is really all about. Reading is an affair of the heart as well as of the mind, deepening our sense of the fundamental forces and emotions that govern our lives, including fear, pain, illness, loss, depression, death, and love.

Provocative, beautifully written, essential, A Scream Goes Through the House traces the human cry that echoes in literature through the ages, demonstrating how intense feelings are heard and shared. With intellectual insight and emotional acumen, Weinstein reveals how the scream that resounds through the house of literature, history, the body, and the family shows us who we really are and joins us together in a vast and timeless community.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Education

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Dr. Arnold Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching for over 35 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Among his many academic honors, research grants, and fellowships is the Younger Humanist Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award as a visiting professor at Stockholm University, Brown University's award as best teacher in the humanities, Professeur InvitÈ in American Literature at the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and a Fellowship for University Professors from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Weinstein is the author of many books, including Fictions of the Self: 1550ñ1800 (1981); Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo (1993); and A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (2003). Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman (Princeton University Press, 2008), was named one of the 25 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic. Professor Weinstein chaired the Advisory Council on Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is the sponsor of Swedish Studies at Brown, and is actively involved in the American Comparative Literature Association.

Reviews

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weinstein's passion for the various works he covers in this book is infectious. His belief that art allows us the opportunity to understand ourselves and see ourselves in the larger context of humanity's quest to find meaning in its existence, is aptly expressed. Highly recommended for anyone who gets excited about the creative process and its effects.

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a "life-hack" book. There are no easy bullet point takeaways nor simple conclusions. In the modern time where everything seems to be condensed into a twenty-minute talk, this book is a conversation between a teacher and his audience through many days and hours of well argued and considered readings of literatures.

The ideal reader of this book should come in at least with some preparatory reading, at least the standard Literature 101. Better yet, it requires life experience beyond the academic life, some rumination about the somatic aspect of human life including illness and observation of death.

I am thrilled to finish the book on the analysis of Hamlet in the light of death and depression. The conventional analysis on Hamlet being a failure for indecisiveness has never been satisfactory to me. Now it gives me more understanding when watching Kenneth Branagh's interoperation of the hyperactive and voluble madness of Hamlet in his 1996 movie version.

I shall return to this book again in a few years to review since it is impossible to state this book's scholarship, its intelligence, and its instructive value. As the author aptly put: "... art and literature provide for us a unique means of travel, of vicarious experience, of seeing the world with new lenses, of vacating— at least for a bit—the cramped quarters where we keep house."

Cramped quarters, indeed. But one can strive to see the world through works such as this.

Book info:
Weinstein, Arnold (2007-12-18). A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (Kindle Locations 6448-6449). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book that people who love analyzing literature would enjoy, or anyone wanting to take their understanding to a deeper level. The author details several major themes that appear in literature, ranging from the silent scream in our daily existence to the plague to death to depression. Using as examples many works of literature, he unpacks the varied ways these themes open up windows into our lives. As a person who is used to reading literature through an archetypal lens, I found it interesting since it opened my eyes to new motifs to look for. That said, I know this book wouldn't be a casual reader's cup of tea. Still informative.

[Rūta Kazlauskaitė · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is to be read slowly, allowing the insights that this text offers to sink in. I think the central message of this book is that great art stores experiential knowledge which is available to each one of us if only we enter a conversation with it.

[Ena Rusnjak Markovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most well written, poignant and beautiful book about why we make art, and why we engage with art, ever written.

[Sonya Dutta Choudhury · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What Literature Teaches us about Life ' is a book I wish I could have read years ago, as I studied English Literature at Delhi University. I'm glad to be able to read it now , as I start to teach B School students on why Literature is so important for good leadership.

Weinstein writes beautifully- his analysis is incisive, his examples are drawn from " throughout history from Sophocles to Harrison, passing through such exemplary figures as Hamlet, the prophetically dysfunctional prince, or depictions of death and dying in the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and in the prose of Tolstoy, Proust, and Joyce; from the renditions of trauma and injury in Kafka to full-scale accounts of warfare and abuse in Pat Barker and Toni Morrison, from the evocation of disease as both private secret and urban disaster in Defoe and Dickens to recent work such as Tony Kushner's play about AIDS, Angels in America. Not all is cosmic and extreme; art also conveys the mystery and pathos of the mundane and the quotidian: puberty and old age"

Through all of this, he keeps the reader firmly anchored to the over arching theme - that literature is "a bloodstream that connects us to the world, as a mirror for our emotions; and as a magic script that allows us both to sound our own depths and also to enter the echoing storehouse of feeling that goes by the name of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, Munch, Proust, and all the great writers and artists whose work exists to nourish us."

I found the book extraordinarily gripping and very thought provoking.

[Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of art.

[Damian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Arnold Weinstein's lectures on American literature, so I thought I'd try this out. Often, I could hear his voice when I was reading it. It's a thought-provoking, if sometimes overly-general, way of looking at common topics that literature addresses. I often felt, however, that the "prescription" side of the picture fell by the wayside and pure "diagnosis" took over.

I also found Munch's paintings a little over-represented (we got the point after an illustration or two). The section on Hamlet, which is only a coda, was the best part of the book for me.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt the premise was a foregone conclusion but Weinstein's analysis is nevertheless first-rate. The opening pages seemed a bit overdone but the author soon engaged me with his erudition and discernment. This is a worthy read for anyone who enjoys literary criticism.

[Monica]

Anything I know about "classic literature," I know because of Prof. Weinstein.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

His commentary on Hamlet and the film The Seventh Seal are first rate.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My deceased dad used this book in an elective class he taught at a medical school (a class called literature and medicine) and when he passed I found his copy in his library and decided to read it. Honestly, if it did not have the link to my dad, I might have DNF. I am glad I finished reading it, but boy it was a slog, took months. It's not the type of book you breeze through. All in all, I did end up liking the book and am glad I persevered. Weak 4 stars from me. Really one star is for the fact my dad liked it.

The book could have been edited a lot tighter and about a hundred pages shorter. Weinstein is of the school of thought, 'why say it one way when you can say it half a dozen ways'. Really flogging a dead horse at times. I wanted to yell 'I get it! Please move on!' Other times, he said things so spot on that I had to stop and ponder the words for a while. It was a bit of a whiplash reading experience, moving from irritation to pleasure in the same page. If I never read the phrase "a scream goes through the house" it will be too soon. That phrase is not as deep and meaningful as he seems to think it is.

The main premise - art helps us comprehend our life and the world - seems very 'duh, obviously' but I guess it isn't for some people? STEM types?

I w ish I had read this before Dad died. I would have loved to talk with him about it.

Bits of the book that resonated with me:

Most of us initially encountered great works of art & literature at the wrong time and under the wrong circumstances: too young, too inexperienced, badly taught , too distracted and inundated with life.

Issues of pain are also the issues of life.

The shock of recognition that art provides...an umbilical cord that links us to others

All life choices are just strategies for containing hurt.

Our belief that our own hurt is private is challenged by art.

Many of us live in our head where the body plays little, if any, role. Everything conspires to make us think we are in the driver's seat, that our body is there to be harnessed, to serve our needs. THIS is what makes sickness and death so shocking. It reminds us how illusory our ownership is.

We never own our bodies, docile though they appear during our good days. Bodies, under sufficient pressure, explode. Literature helps us understand the eruption.

We are born in a body but want to maintain a self.

How does the treatment of our body express our ?

How does new knowledge change previous knowledge? If you feel no symptoms, then find out you are fatally ill: were you sick all along?

It's not so much what our ailments are but how we manage to live with them.

We harvest what we sow but frequently we only discover what we have sown at the moment of harvest.

Sickness and death is an entry as well as an exit.

The dead exist only in us.

Novels package time in such a way that we might retrieve it.

We cannot , we cannot even see, what we have until it is being removed.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I purchased this book because a couple of years ago I took a course from The Teaching Company taught by Dr. Weinstein that I enjoyed very much. ("Classics of American Literature" https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...)

And, at first, all was well: I experienced in print the same fluidity of words, the same directness of approach -- "you and me journeying together" -- and many of the same intriguing examples to illustrate his points.

And, yet, I found myself increasingly struggling to go on.

His main and consistent point is how reading -- indeed, how all of the arts -- changes us even as it informs us. Yes, it performs the vital function of connecting ourselves to people, ideas, and places of many times and, thus, enlarges our understanding of what it means to be human. But it also causes us to explore -- indeed, to experience -- ourselves, too.

I agree with all of this, but the book -- when all is said and done -- just didn't "work for me."

Which is not to say that it would not work for you, of course!

A key tip-o-the-hat to Weinstein is that I feel about him as was once said of Jesus of Nazareth: "But no one has ever spoken like this man."

[Abner Rosenweig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bernard of Chartres' line about seeing far by standing on the shoulders of giants comes to mind when reading ASGTTH. By analyzing many great works of Western art and literature, Arnold Weinstein stands on a tall mountain and reveals much about the territory of the human condition below. Weinstein exposes life as full of pain, enslavement, and suffering, yet shows how art and literature help us share our private agonies and feel less alone. Like eavesdropping on the lectures of a great professor, the book undulates with deep wisdom, frequently rising to glorious heights of eloquence. A pleasure to read; a necessity to re-read.

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started May 2007
This book is one of the books that I read for the learning potential instead of entertainment, not to say that it isn't entertaining.

I started this book back in May, and I'm 100 pages into the book. Of course, I haven't really read much for the month of June.

This book is interesting though, explaining somethings that happen in Liturature, plays, and art. It also goes from old, classical works to recent works.

Another book that I just stopped reading. Oh well.

-

Determined to get through this book this time around.

Made it, but wow, that was dark and heavy.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my literary analysts pantheon, two people stand out: Professor Thelma Lavine and Professor Arnold Weinstein. AW didn't disappoint in this book: "Art is that other place that can become ours, those other selves we also are. The experience of art is a precious exercise in freedom, in negotiating subjectivities and lives that are not our own." If only I could negotiate as well as he...

[Eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was good but a little more academicy than it meant to be. I sympathize, I am just saying. . .

[Albie]

A Scream Goes Through the House : What Literature Teaches Us About Life by ARNOLD WEINSTEIN (2003)