Tone

Tone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging & slippery topic for criticism. Both granular & global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of "I know it when I see it."

In Tone, a cooperative authorial voice under the name of the Committee to Investigate Atmosphere begins from the premise that tone is relational, belonging to shared experience rather than a single author, & should be approached through a communal practice. In partnership, the Committee explores the atmospheres emanating from texts by Nella Larsen, W. G. Sebald, Heike Geissler, Hiroko Oyamada, Mieko Kanai, Bhanu Kapil, Franz Kafka, Renee Gladman, & others, attending to the chafing of political irritation, the hunger of precarious & temporary work, & the lonely delights of urban & suburban walks.

This study treats a variety of questions: How is tone filtered through translation?...