The Half-Life of an American Essayist
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.93 (558 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1567923283 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 182 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-06-30 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Thomas Barran said Little Masterpieces in the Genre. Arthur Krystal's second collection of essays, "The Half-Life of an American Essayist," confirms the opinion of his writing that I came to after his first collection "Agitations" appeared. He has an instinctive grasp of the essay as genre and produces some of the very best contemporary examples of that misunderstood category. Now, we all wro. R.S. Cohn said This half life is a total pleasure. Here's my suggestion, put down that 600 page tome on what's happening behind closed doors at the White House, take a pass on the latest "woe is me" memoir and just sit back and let a smart, funny, and always stimulating conversationalist engage your mind with fresh insights into fascinating topics in impeccable style. It is the rare essayis. An eclectic and thought-provoking assortment Midwest Book Review Essayist Arthur Krystal's work has previously appeared in such respected publications as "The American Scholar", "The New Yorker", "The Wall Street Journal", and more. The Half-Life of an American Essayist is a selection of twelve literary essays, written in a conversational tone yet addressing both political and semiotic precepts. Topics r
Arthur Krystal is a full-time essayist, part-time editor, and sometime screenwriter. Krystal's own reviews and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Harper's, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The Washington Post Book World, The Times Literary Supplement, Sports Illustrated, and Arts & Antiques. He has e
Johnson, Hazlitt, Woolf and Orwell. The reason is simple: as Dr. Johnson noted, "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." To this one might add that there is satisfaction to be had in the effort itself. In his first book, Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature, which was heralded by such diverse crtics as Jacques Barzun and Morris Dickstein, Arthur Krystal demonstrated that the literary essay is alive and well. Conversational in tone, but capable of addressing the political and semiotic methods adopted by the academy, Krystal's clear and allusive style constituted a reprimand to the fashionable idea that literature is the theorists' domain. Whether he's examining the evolution of the typewriter, the nature of sin, the cultural implications of physiognomy, the works of Paul Valery and Raymond C
In his charming concluding essay, Who Speaks for the Lazy?, Krystal returns to justifying his underachieving ways: Let s face it, some boys and girls become writers because the only workplace they re willing to visit is the one inside their heads. Walsh, Library JournalKrystal makes a vigorous case for the virtues of old-fashioned literary criticism, twitting the navel gazers of creative nonfiction, which he dismisses as just a fancy word for memoir: Writing interestingly about Jane Austen requires more imagination than confessing to having slept with someone named Jane Austen from Beaumont, Texas. The book's title is a riff on Goethe's phrase, "Experience is only half of experience." As Krystal notes i