Critical Games - by Tim Beasley-Murray (Hardcover)

About the Book

Critical Games is about the games we play, the ways we play them, and what happens when they get out of hand. With readings of a range of cultural texts, from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary auto-fiction, it pinpoints what is critical in games and game-playing.

Book Synopsis

Critical Games is about the games we play (whether we know it or not), the ways we play them (for fun, but also to win, and to gain approval from others), and what happens when they get out of hand. The book interrogates the theory of play and gaming, with a particular focus on the games played by literary authors and literary critics. Drawing on (often self-critical) autobiography, as well as readings in texts across a range of languages, Tim Beasley-Murray plays with academic conventions to highlight what is at stake in them, turning to the Game of Literature, from Kafka to Carrère, to seek models and warnings of the outcomes of taking games too seriously, or not taking them seriously enough.

From the Back Cover

'It is unusual - perhaps even shocking - to write in praise of a book in which you are one of the characters. But this book is itself so unusual that I feel authorised to commit this transgression. In its exploration of literary works, writers' poses, and what one can say about them, Critical games marries deep seriousness with a playfulness whose vivacity sometimes borders on perversity - and I know what I am talking about. Constantly personal and unpredictable, this book explodes all academic frames and expectations. One reads it with growing curiosity, occasionally with a touch of irritation, but always with the greatest pleasure.'
Emmanuel Carrère

Critical Games is about the games we play (knowingly or not), the ways we play them (for fun, but also to win, and to gain approval from others), and what happens when they get out of hand. With readings of a range of cultural texts, from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary auto-fiction, it pinpoints what is critical in games and game-playing.

Games and play are often seen as unserious, even childish. But many of our occupations and interactions are structured like games, with rules and rituals that make sense only once we agree to play them, or that seem incomprehensible if we do not realise we are already playing. This book develops and interrogates theories of play and gaming, from Huizinga to Bourdieu, with a particular focus on the games played by literary critics and literary authors.

Drawing on (often self-critical) autobiography, as well as readings in texts across a range of languages, Tim Beasley-Murray plays with academic conventions to highlight what is at stake in them, turning to the Game of Literature, from Kafka to Carrère, to seek models and warnings of the outcomes of taking games too seriously, or not taking them seriously enough.

Review Quotes

'It is unusual - perhaps even shocking - to write in praise of a book in which you are one of the characters. But this book is itself so unusual that I feel authorised to commit this transgression. In its exploration of literary works, writers' poses, and what one can say about them, Critical games marries deep seriousness with a playfulness whose vivacity sometimes borders on perversity - and I know what I am talking about. Constantly personal and unpredictable, this book explodes all academic frames and expectations. One reads it with growing curiosity, occasionally with a touch of irritation, but always with the greatest pleasure.'
Emmanuel Carrère

'This sui generis book takes us on a panoramic, topsy-turvy tour of the manifold ways that seriousness and play, wisdom and folly, are not stable opposites but intimate, entangled neighbors. This "amphibian" quality helps to define literature, but also the study of literature. In a playful and yet deeply serious turn, Beasley-Murray levels his wise-foolish, Socratic glance not just on a vast array of cultural texts but on academic life itself. The results will be revealing, and likely inspiring, for any curious reader - leaving us with a pair of dialectical spectacles, or 3D glasses, with which to gaze at the textual worlds around us, and at our own gazing selves.'
Alex Woloch, Stanford University

'Something serious, very serious, something that we usually call literary criticism is here at play, at play in that most playful of forms, the essay, allowing, as it does here, for anecdote, memoir, digression, epigram, and even fiction. This, then, is a book where criticism takes a holiday, a holiday that may yet prove almost to have been a holy-day, a day where to play is also to pray.'
John Schad, University of Lancaster

About the Author

Tim Beasley-Murray is Associate Professor of European Thought and Culture at University College London