Abstract: This essay offers a Deleuzian pragmatics of reading literature as a form of problematization: a critical and creative retracing of an author’s lived problematics to which his or her writing respond as so many solutions. Such a reading is affirmative and productive for it is conducted as an immanent critique, a construction of a series of problems and solutions in an encounter between the discourse of literature, Deleuze’s philosophy, and a given text or oeuvre. I discusses how and why a practice of “Deleuzian reading” is both possible and desirable, and take Israeli author David Grossman’s 1991 novel, The Book of Intimate Grammar, as its primary case. In this context, the reading’s trajectory is organized as a series of three conceptual problems in literary theory: the author as the site of the creative process; the use of language as an expression of an author’s literary technique; and the conditions for the literary enunciation. Reading as problematization is offered as a practical tool for opening up texts and theories so as to make the literary piece work for the reader. This reading also serves as a demonstration of the strengths and benefits of Deleuzian readings in extra-Anglophone and extra-Francophone contexts.

Keywords: Reading, Gilles Deleuze, David Grossman, Literary Theory, Problem.