Purchase
How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken: Essays
Daniel Mendelsohn
Harper
August 2008
On Sale: August 12, 2008
480 pages
ISBN: 0061456438
EAN: 9780061456435
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
Whether he's on Broadway or at the movies, considering a
new bestseller or revisiting a literary classic, Daniel
Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have
provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming
emotionality, and tart wit. Now How Beautiful It Is And How
Easily It Can Be Broken reveals all at once the enormous
stature of Mendelsohn's achievement and demonstrates why he
is considered one of our greatest critics. Writing with a
lively intelligence and arresting originality, he brings
his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and
conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and
genres, from Roman games to video games. His interpretations of our most talked-about films—from the
work of Pedro Almodóvar to Brokeback Mountain, from United
93 and World Trade Center to 300, Marie Antoinette, and The
Hours—have sparked debate and changed the way we watch
movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches
on theater and literature, from The Producers to Jeffrey
Eugenides' Middlesex, from The Lovely Bones to the works of
Harold Pinter. Together these thirty brilliant and engaging
essays passionately articulate the themes that have made
Daniel Mendelsohn a crucial voice in today's cultural
conversation: the aesthetic and indeed political dangers of
imposing contemporary attitudes on the great classics; the
ruinous effect of sentimentality on the national
consciousness in the post-9/11 world; the vital importance
of the great literature of the past for a meaningful life
in the present. How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken makes
it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged
with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as
Mendelsohn is, and no one practices the vanishing art of
popular criticism with more acuity, humor, and feeling.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy