Joel Fineman was considered one of the most brilliant literary critics of his generation, gifted in doing what the Russian formalists called "making strange." His essays are among the strongest demonstrations of how structures -- whether linguistic, visual, or architectural -- generate large and elaborate systems of meaning. Using examples drawn from literature -- Chaucer, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde -- Fineman creates parables of how language has come to constitute the modern subject (ourselves) as a set of its "effects."Combining formidable learning with theoretical sophistication that is...