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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
After just missing Vivian Gornick at AWP last weekend, I hungrily read this book on the plane home from Boston. If there is a smarter critic than Gornick, I'd like to meet, or better yet, read her. Yes, I did write "her." Gornick is one of my favorite authors because she writes a beautiful sentence and her intellect stuns. Her love of reading, writing, and discussing literature shines in these wonderful essays of literary criticism.
Whether or not one agrees with her observations on literature I cannot imagine anyone not acknowledging Gornick's brilliance She has written some of my favorite pieces of cultural criticism (though our politics differ wildly.) Gornich is stunningly well-read and has the ability to see what literature says about America. This collection is brilliant. My personal favorite essays are the one on Saul Bellow and Philip Roth (anyone who struggles with the misogyny of these extraordinary writers will want to read this) and the essay on Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford. With respect to many of the male authors covered here Gornick does a great job of burrowing into their perceptions of and reflections on women and what it says about them and about their historical moment. This is a brief volume that I tucked in and out of over a series of months and I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone who loves literature, especially 20th century literature.
One may wonder how an author who is usually remembered as a radical feminist decided to write a book about the men in her life. But don't get it wrong, this is an outstanding book about literature and some of the male authors who helped shape Gornick's style. In her own words,
If, indeed, criticism is autobiography, this book, then, is a collection of essays written in appreciation of the working lives of literary men by a woman whose critical faculties have been shaped by a passion for literature, a hard-won knowledge of inborn anxiety, and a compelled devotion to liberationist politics. It is this last, I think, that is most responsible for the perspective vital to the making of these essays. The re-awakening in my late youth of the centuries-long struggle for women’s rights clarified the intimate relation between literature, emotional damage, and social history; made evident to me the organic nature of all that is meant by the word “culture.” It is my great hope that the reader will experience the development of this perspective as I have: as an enrichment of the writing and reading experience.
Since I read Gornick's The odd woman and the city, I simply fell in love with her capacity of writing about complex themes in such beautiful prose, mixing her analyses with her memories, with such wisdom, but also a candor hard to see these days. She is someone who has eyes to see and thus see, ears to hear and thus hear, mouth to speak and thus speak, a great mind and thus express herself. Believe me: these are not easy to achieve for quite a while for most people. Vivian does it with profoundness and beauty.
If, indeed, criticism is autobiography, this book, then, is a collection of essays written in appreciation of the working lives of literary men by a woman whose critical faculties have been shaped by a passion for literature, a hard-won knowledge of inborn anxiety, and a compelled devotion to liberationist politics. It is this last, I think, that is most responsible for the perspective vital to the making of these essays. The re-awakening in my late youth of the centuries-long struggle for women’s rights clarified the intimate relation between literature, emotional damage, and social history; made evident to me the organic nature of all that is meant by the word “culture.” It is my great hope that the reader will experience the development of this perspective as I have: as an enrichment of the writing and reading experience.
Since I read Gornick's The odd woman and the city, I simply fell in love with her capacity of writing about complex themes in such beautiful prose, mixing her analyses with her memories, with such wisdom, but also a candor hard to see these days. She is someone who has eyes to see and thus see, ears to hear and thus hear, mouth to speak and thus speak, a great mind and thus express herself. Believe me: these are not easy to achieve for quite a while for most people. Vivian does it with profoundness and beauty.
medium-paced
Leí este libro con la intención de motivarme a salir de mi racha de leer a puras mujeres y sí funcionó :)
No, it's not a romantic novel. Gornick writes about male authors who have meaning for her, some she re-reads annually. The essays on H.G.Wells, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and V.S. Naipal are particularly insightful.
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
informative
reflective
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced