It's very hard for me to be objective on this great writer-cum-scholar especially since his way of thinking has so informed my own. My first acquaintance with Robert Alter was probably a review of a Nabokov novel and then, his buoyant book (which I think should be in recommended reading for aspirants in Literature) The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age.

As I commented before, The Pleasures of Reading is primarily an introduction to the internal cohesion and multidimensional nature of literary texts. It eschews (tears apart!) the various "isms" and ideological slants of criticism. The motto is explicitly stated in the starting pages, "Damn braces, bless relaxes". I implore readers to give this one a chance.

Extra helping - For those who like long sentences which end with fabulous climaxes, this book will surely be a treat to read.

Robert Alter's judgements are always nuanced and subtle as befits an attentive reader such as himself. Some examples of his fine-tuned analysis which still hold true:

(On T. S. Eliot)

"The Waste Land is a poem of stunning virtuosity, but one has only to compare its use of the myth of death and rebirth with Milton’s handling of the same mythic materials in Lycidas to see the difference between a poet who has absorbed the tradition, can freely imagine through it, and one who consciously contrives poetry out of the tradition."

(On Flaubert)

"Through the mediation of letters, the menacing impingement of other people could be warded off, personal relations could be controlled in the apt imagery and rhythmic movement of a prose happily improvised rather than painstakingly elaborated as in his novels; and the epistolary situation could provide Flaubert ample opportunity to make himself the center of discourse, the focus of experience."

One of Alter's favourite novelists, Nabokov had long ago written a very perceptive remark, which I think holds true over a broader spectrum:

"Mr. Alter’s essay on the “Art of Politics in Invitation to a Beheading” is a most brilliant reflection of that book in a reader’s mind. It is practically flawless so that all I can add is that I particularly appreciated his citing a passage from The Gift “that could serve as a useful gloss on the entire nature of political and social reality in the earlier novel.”

And of course, his recent complete translation of the Hebrew Bible needs no further laurels, as it is an unheard of single-handed accomplishment in Literary History.

To my mind, Alter's nearest competitor would be Dr. Samuel Johnson himself in the breadth and sophistication of judgement and learning.

Robert Alter is (quite rightly) still an adherent of mimesis, of Literature's far-ranging influence in human activity. His mild temper, befits his status as a scholar of Comparative Literature or as he mentions as a subtitle to the Life of Learning lecuture, "Wandering among fields.."

And of course, much thanks to @workerbee for still updating and holding on to this writer through all these years. New books are added, of whih the highlights will be: After the Tradition, Hebrew and Modernity and the much-awaited Partial Magic.

And a lovely, well-written note to this torrent by WB himself. We have come a long way!

I would say something about the Henry Fielding addition (Fielding and the nature of the Novel, included here) but here I agree with Dr. Johnson when he dismisses Fielding to Boswell as:

"life is too short to waste time reading such a writer." (in Alter's Pleasures of Reading)

I always enjoy it when @Arzoo becomes so enthusiastic! :-D