Abstract This article wonders if what compels us to read is compulsion itself. Instead of positing reading as a scene of joyful distraction, examples and analysis from Herman Melville and Elizabeth Freeman suggest that reading may be more about anguish and inculcation.
Abstract Contemporary readers’ interest in gothic fiction signals one opportunity for understanding what aligns pleasure reading with professional reading. Drawing on the example of Shirley Jackson’s psychological horror, this article proposes attending to the formal developments shaping today’s genres and microgenres, thus updating our grasp of the heterodox pleasures animating the gothic.
