In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Age of Unreason) Online
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TUAy2 [Read download] In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Age of Unreason) Online [TUAy2.ebook] In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Age of Unreason) Pdf Free Thomas Mallon audiobook | *ebooks | Download PDF | ePub | DOC Download Now Free Download Here Download eBook #1788704 in eBooks 2012-08-22 2012-08-22File Name: B008QLVOZU | File size: 72.Mb Thomas Mallon : In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Age of Unreason) before purchasing it in order to gage whether or not it would be worth my time, and all praised In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing (Age of Unreason): 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Nice group of essaysBy Christopher (o.d.c.)Art Cooper's GQ was probably the best magazine of its time (turn of the millennium), and Thomas Mallon was one of the regular columnists who made it great. I picked up this book (or e-book) as an antidote to the overrated The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (Modern Library Paperbacks).Personally, I think Mallon deserves the Pulitzer Prize for calling his David Guterson review "Snow Falling on Readers." Here is the opening of his review of another contemporary:NO, A Man in Full is not as good as The Bonfire of the Vanities, so why donrsquo;t we get that out of the way right here at the start, and even offer a couple of excuses. For one thing, few American novels of the last twenty years have been as good as Tom Wolfersquo;s first work of fiction (published in 1987, when he was 56), and for another, the rsquo;90s havenrsquo;t been anything so wonderfulmdash;O tempora! O mores!mdash;as the rsquo;80s. Back then we had a real presidmdash; No, let me restrain myself. Let me start over. Let me make the simple bipartisan literary point that when it comes to subject matter, the rsquo;90s have not been quite so outsize as the rsquo;80s, which is only to say that no current novel can be expected to get so gaudy a purchase on this period as Bonfire did on its own...What can I say? This is a very appealing style. Here are two quotes from an essay on Sinclair Lewis which are both spot on:... The lack of much emotional development in Lewisrsquo;s characters may make for a certain psychological realism, but it also results in narrative tedium. These very long books consist largely of characters who are constantly lapsing back into being themselves, opening and shutting like morning glories. It is odd that novels with such attitude, such thematic edge, should be so shapeless, so spasmodic and repetitious.[...]Lewis is to slang what Mark Twain is to dialect. He has a grotesque facility for reproducing it, a talent like playing the saw or cracking knuckles. The listener concedes the skill being displayed while begging the performer to stop. Whether itrsquo;s Elmer Gantryrsquo;s sermons (he has one called ldquo;Whoa Up, Youth!rdquo;) or the patter of Babbittrsquo;s little manicurist (ldquo;[B]elieve me, I know how to hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, lsquo;Say, who do you think yoursquo;re talking to?rsquo; and they fade away like loversquo;s young nightmarerdquo;), Lewis has some of the sharpest nails on the American blackboard. The British edition of Babbitt even required a glossary.The literary tour of New Orleans was a standout, and made me want to read A Confederacy of Dunces, as well as American Grotesque, which I hadn't heard of before.After the contemporary reviews, and the classical authors, come a batch of fine personal essays, and observations on the writer's life:.... The owners and small staffs of the ldquo;independents,rdquo; those unchained stores doing battle with every new Barnes Noble and Borders, not only sell books but read them, too. Theyrsquo;d rather evangelize for favorite titles than talk business, but when asked, theyrsquo;ll tell you theyrsquo;re holding their ownmdash;as long as the superstores stay fifteen miles away. You shake your head and sympathize and avoid mentioning the one thing you and most of the writers you know like about the bibliobehemoths: the way theyrsquo;ve got room to keep even your oldest, obscurest paperback displayed on their shelves. Still, your heart is with the indies during this bewildering retail revolution thatrsquo;s only begun.I'm not even sure I've chosen the best excerpts (there are so many). I like a book of essays the way some people like a cozy mystery. This was my kind of book.7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. A dynamite collection.By David M. GiltinanThis book was a delight. I had read two of Mallon's books - "Stolen Words" (on plagiarism) and "A Book of One's Own" (people and their diaries) - quite some time ago, and found them both charming and fascinating. So maybe the charm of these essays shouldn't have been a surprise. But I was bowled over, both by the breadth and depth of Mallon's coverage. Not to engage in hagiography, but he comes close to my notion of a perfect reviewer. In many instances his evaluations are a more eloquent expression of my own thoughts about a particular book or author. And in those cases where our evaluations were different, his views are expressed with a persuasive clarity that stimulates me to go back to the work in question and see what I might have missed. He's smart, erudite, witty, someone who has obviously read widely, with catholic tastes and a broad-ranging curiosity. But, refreshingly, his criticism comes squarely from the point of view of someone who obviously wants to give the writer the benefit of the doubt. Which is not to say that he pulls his punches, but there is none of the besetting sin that afflicts most critics - the cruel putdown whose primary aim is to remind you of the critic's own smartness. Nor does he ever give the sense of targeting someone solely because of their success.A good illustration of what I mean is his essay "Snow Falling on Readers", which examines the work of David Guterson. It is characteristic of Mallon's approach that, to understand the success of Guterson's biggest hit, he takes it on himself to read and discuss the author's entire work. Having done so, he ultimately finds it wanting. Characteristically, his summation is gentle, but damning nonetheless:"I must confess that the real mystery to me is not what happened to Carl Heine aboard his fishing boat but just what on earth the PEN/Faulkner jurors were thinking - and beyond that, what all the local book-group readers who have made this No.1 can be seeing. A majority of these group readers - a discerning constituency who do much to keep literary fiction alive in America - are women, and it's the female characters in Guterson's books who are flimsy to the point of mere functionality, projections of male desire and indecision."Compared with the mean-spirited hatchet job on Guterson that appears in "A Reader's Manifesto", which cannot escape giving the impression of being motivated by resentment at another's success, Mallon's evaluation reads like genuine literary criticism.Which is not to say that all is high-minded and serious. Elsewhere in the same essay he makes the following throwaway, but devastatingly on-point, remark:"I have been against homeschooling ever since that family-taught girl won the national spelling bee a few years back. This child who became such a point of pride to homeschooling parents couldn't stop shouting and jumping around and crowing about her moment of onstage accomplishment. I didn't care if she could spell 'arrhythmia' backwards; this unsocialized kid needed Miss Crabtree to put her in the corner."Essays I particularly enjoyed were those on the David Leavitt-Stephen Spender lawsuit, on Howard Norman (whose 'The Bird Artist' I have always considered the antidote to the appalling 'Shipping News'), on Will Self, on Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full". The essays on letters from his readers, on obituaries, on the ups and downs of the 'author book tour', and on the challenges of writing historical fiction are equally fascinating.But what clinched things, and what earned this book its fifth star is the essay "Enough about Me", which expresses his civilized but eloquent antipathy to the "emergence of memoir as a hot new publishing commodity". Someone who mirrors my own thoughts on the matter, and can express them far more eloquently than I could. What's not to love?13 of 14 people found the following review helpful. More smart than lovableBy Eileen G.Thomas Mallon is smart, has common sense, and demands that you sit up and pay attention to him. He is a fast talker, too. These pieces appeared in monthly popular magazines, where likely he was the resident curmudgeon/ intellectual - albeit with a deadline. As he explains, he spent enough time in academia, "stuffing myself like a Christmas goose (Dickens) from the groaning board of books on the prescribed reading list" to earn a doctorate in twentieth-century British literature and teach for awhile (at Vassar) before moving "up" and out, into a job as a writer and mainstream critic. Mallon loves language's usefulness - sometimes as weaponry - and revels in his ability to use it well. There are lots of smart bits, arcana and literary and cultural trivia.