How to Live. What to Do: In Search of Ourselves in Life and Literature

Focusing on some of the best-known characters in all of literature--chosen to trace the arc from childhood to old age--a brilliant psychoanalyst and professor of literature shows how our inner lives become at once stranger and more familiar when seen through the prism of fiction. In supple and elegant prose, and with all the expertise and insight of his dual professions, Josh Cohen explores a new way for us to understand ourselves. He helps us see what Lewis Carroll's Alice and Harper Lee's Scout Finch can teach us about childhood. He delineates the mysteries of education as depicted in Jane Eyre and as seen through the eyes of Sandy Stranger in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. He discusses the need for adolescent rebellion as embodied in John Grimes in James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain and in Ruth in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. He makes clear what Goethe's Young Werther and Sally Rooney's Frances have--and don't have--in common as they experience first love; how Jay Gatsb