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“How far can I go?” It is a question (memorably posed by Neil Hertz) of what we might call interpretive tact: what will your readers or listeners accept? How far can you take them with you as you enter into the interpretive possibilities that have come to matter to you, that you believe to be true, meaningful, important, interesting . . . When, eyes slowly unfocusing, do they start drifting away? That most of the critics we read are determinedly tactful is an occasionally dismaying thought. This seminar, by contrast, will engage the issue of interpretive tact by reading critics who might be thought to violate it. I’d like to think about the issue with a collection of interested students. Among the potentially tactless works we might discuss are Stanley Cavell’s essay on King Lear, Laura Kipnis’s Against Love: A Polemic T.J. Clark’s The Sight of Death, Michael Fried’s Flaubert's "Gueuloir," Avita Ronnell’s Telephone Book (or perhaps her less extreme Stupidity), Roland Barthes’ S/Z, Garrett Stewart’s Reading Voices, Franco Morretti’s Distant Reading, Lauren Berlant’s Desire/Love, William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, Lee Edelman’s No Future, Barbara Johnson’s “Bringing Out D. A. Miller” I’d be open to other suggestions by seminar members.