That's unlikely "The Meaning of Life" intends to challenge its readers - not, like the Frankfurt, to provide them with the opportunity to sneer at other people (because who reads "On Bullshit" thinking it's about them?). Frankfurt's surprise success, "On Bullshit," another slim volume of intellectual nonfiction. "The Meaning of Life" is more a long essay than a full-length book, and its publishers probably hope it'll hit the same sweet spot as Harry G. If anyone can pull it off, it's probably Eagleton. He may well be the only writer capable of making some of that stuff comprehensible to the intelligent lay reader, and so the news that he has tackled a bigger problem - the meaning of life - in a book of a mere 185 pages shouldn't raise any eyebrows. The book, "Literary Theory: An Introduction," is reputed to have sold 1 million copies, chiefly on the strength of Eagleton's extraordinarily lucid prose. The British academic Terry Eagleton has the unusual - possibly unique - distinction of having written a bestselling book about late-20th-century literary theory.
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