David Shields’ How Literature Saved My Life looks like a book. It has 224 pages, printed with ink forming words, and words forming paragraphs that form chapters. Knopf will publish it February 5 and those who dare read this uncategorizable form of non-fiction will speed eagerly through it—although a few readers might rip out pages in anguish. Shields’ new work wants desperately to believe in books. It posits, after all, that books contain therapeutic, even life-saving properties. But where on the bookshelf do you put a book that doesn’t trust words? Within these highly literary pages, Shields undermines words using the only tool he has: words. […]