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How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken: Essays

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Readers of the New York Review of Books will be familiar with the writings of Daniel Mendelsohn, who has written dozens of reviews of literature, movies and theatre. How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken pulls together many of those reviews, covering everything from movies like "Kill Bill" and "The 300" to Broadway plays such as "The Glass Menagerie" and "The Producers" to books like "The Hours," "Middlesex" and new academic books on history.

Why would anyone want to read a book of old reviews? Well, Mendelsohn is perhaps the best example of how this form can be used as a launching pad for examining large subjects like war and its culpabilities, sex and homosexuality, and human nature. That Mendelsohn does all of this by invoking a lens of the great classicists - Euripides, Homer, Sophocles - is a feat of a great and pointed intelligence.

These are not just reviews, though they are that too. Mendelsohn is a critic, and a stringent and demanding one. Swayed by the opinions of neither the public nor other critics, he deftly, and with great care, strikes at the heart of faults of many books, plays and movies. Despite this, these reviews are not rants, nor are they petty or arrogant. Their power comes from the combination of Mendelsohn's intelligence with his great love of writing, movies and theatre. It is only with the greatest respect that he points out the failings, of both the works of art themselves, and of our culture.

You might expect essays that invoke Sophicles and Homer to be difficult. Another great talent of Mendelsohn is his ability to write of these classic subjects in a very conversational manner - to, in fact, draw in readers who are not familiar with the classics the way he is, to serve as a bridge between the great ideas of history and the popular culture of today.

As I read his essays, I found myself simultaneously intrigued, entertained, and educated - and interested in going back to read, and see, some of these books and movies again.

Armchair Interviews says: An educational and fascinating read.

OK, so why put this on your "must read" list? To start, Mendelsohn is a brilliant critic who writes insightfully and without condescension to author, work or audience (reader, movie-goer, etc.). Even when he utterly demolishes his subject, he never descends to snark or gratuitous sniping. Many times, I got the sense of a man exasperated with how close these artists get to creating something of real meaning/value but keep missing the target.

In his introduction, Mendelsohn explains the criteria by which he judges -

(1) Meaningful coherence of form and content;

(2) Precise employment of detail to support (1);

(3) Vigor and clarity of expression; and

(4) Seriousness of purpose (p. xv)

Quite independent of Mendelsohn, I'm happy (and perhaps a bit smug) to say my own judgments have come around to these selfsame points, even regarding the "brain candy" I may read when the "big issues" get tiresome. I find it nearly impossible to read a book anymore (or watch a movie for that matter)where the author can't write, doesn't take her job seriously, or both - even when it's "just" book #347 in Space Bimbos of the Black Sun series.

Oh, but we live in a "dark age" of culture where far too often we eschew wrestling with real tragedy for sentimentalism; melodrama; and feel-good, Lifetime movie endings. This is a common theme in many of the essays found here, from the first essay on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones through stagings of Tennessee Williams and Euripides, reviews of Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar, to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. (Regarding the latter, Mendelsohn compares Stone's film to Aeschylus' The Persians, and makes the point that, even writing of a glorious Hellenic triumph (Marathon & Salamis), the Greek playwright chose to portray the reactions of the Persians, asking his Athenian audience "to think radically, to imagine something outside of their own experience, to situate the feelings they were having just then...in a vaster frame" (p. 452), whereas Stone's "pretty much exclusive emphasis thus far on the `good'...in these entertainments is noteworthy, because it reminds you of the unwillingness to grapple with and acknowledge the larger issues...which has characterized much of the natural response to this pivotal trauma (9/11)." (p. 451))

Mendelsohn has inspired me to try opera - a genre for which I have little liking. I don't know why. I understand neither Italian nor French but it's not like I object to subtitles - I love Hong Kong martial arts flicks. And I dated a woman who adored opera and enthralled me with her enthusiastic descriptions of the medium. Whatever the case, the author's analysis of the Met's recent staging of Lucia di Lammermoor "forced" me to check out a DVD of Joan Sutherland's version from the library, and as I write this review, listen to a CD of Ion Marin's version with Cheryl Studer and Placido Domingo. Who knows where this could lead?

And, having read Mendelsohn's reviews of Troy and Alexander - the recent "epics" based on The Iliad and the life of Alexander the Great - I was again compelled. In this case to add them to my Netflix queue if only to see how badly they failed to capture their subjects. (Mendelsohn includes his review of 300 here as well but there are limits. The trailers were stomach churning enough.)

Lastly, I'm rereading Euripides' Medea in light of Mendelsohn's review of Deborah Warner's "vulgar, loud, and uncomprehending" (p. 418) Broadway staging of the play.

At the risk of spoiling your ability to enjoy guilty pleasures like Stephanie Meyer, I strongly recommend this book to one and all.

While Mendelsohn has a gift for critical understanding of a work, I'd say he has an even greater gift for conveying that understanding in a relevant manner to his audience.

People (often times rightfully) attack critics often for being "haters" but, as Mendelsohn demonstrates so well here, good criticism is really about a careful consideration and love.

By treating a work seriously on its terms, setting it in cultural context, and questioning its greater implications, one is not dragging down an individual work but treating a work with the dignity it deserves and honoring the intelligence of its audience and the nuances in the history of the work's medium. To do all that with clear yet conversationally-engaging language is what this book offers many times over. From Brokeback Mountain to Almodovar to Olive Stone and Alice Sebold's bestseller The Lovely Bones... Mendelsohn sees what we are too mired in ourselves to view objectively.

Now, if I could only get him to consider the cultural relevance of my book (also available on amazon.com) On Toilets. One day! :)

Great book. The reviews and essays are thoughtful and learned without pretension and what's even better you don't get those gleeful, nasty quips that critics tend to like. His criticism, when it comes, is thoughtful and right on target. Well worth your time.

What a great book! I read it as compulsively as any whodunit while painlessly expanding my understanding of a wide range of artistic endeavors. I came away far better versed in the classics and with an expanded capacity to read, view and listen critically (in the best sense). I recommend this as a college text!

Mendelsohn is a culture critic for The New York Review of Books (and author of "The Lost: a Search for Six of Six Million" and "The Elusive Embrace") and in this volume collects thirty essays on film, books, and theatre that deals mostly with gay themes. If you prefer well considered analysis over acerbic quips and bitchy bon mots, you'll revel in portraits of Wilde, Williams, Coward, Capote, Almodovar and Dale Peck, as well as opinions on "Angels in America," "The Master," "Brokeback Mountain," "The Hours," "Middlesex," "The Invention of Love," "Troy" and "Alexander." Reading these pieces is the only prrof you'll need that Mendelsohn more than deserved his George Jean nathan Prize for Drama Criticism.

Essays, huh? Being a learned gentile-man and intrepid researcher of Old World Baboons, I know, from my use of Capital-R "Reason", that "essay" the word, as it were, is wholly derived from the stepmother tongue of the French infinitive "essayer" which can be ensconced to mean "to try; to attempt." Note the semicolon. Note that although there are duplicitous meanings and derivations thereof, the word is itself wholly finite. It is linear and contained, like the Noble and Providential Destiny of trains - trains being one of Plato's most admonished forms.

And what of the forms? Essay is but one form of the TEXT, that from which we established Meaning, Reason, and given inclement weather, Indoor Patios. Nobody writes for Patios - they always switch out the 'i' for an 'h' as though they were hasty traders in some Athenian Bazaar. Have we, as humans, as men, as small children wearing Propelling Caps, forgone the innovations of our forefathers and foreuncles? Innovations that have led to nearly three million Indoor Patios being constructed *PER YEAR* ?? There is not a single, not one, not even two or five, mentions of Indoor Patios in Professor Mondosong's pithy tome. I recall, as a Wyrmling, my father Alcofribas regaling me with tales of Great Men who strove across our blighted continent, backpack full of bricks and kale, with a Orpheic gleam in their eyes: HIC SVNT PATIOS, they muttered incessantly, pausing only to sup on gamey ibex and Mulled Kale. It Was Not So Much that they SAW Patios: it was they saw where Patios were NOT and said, "No. No! This will not do!"

Professor Mondosong is an upright man, in the sense that he has yet to develop the hunchback that so capriciously ends the careers of many young & Abel Academics. I am sure of he knows of Reason & Beauty & Indoor Patios, being that he attended Institutions that which dedicated many Man-Hours and Goat-Minutes to the study of said Forms. Yet I feel as though were he to ever step foot on a southbound Train, his mind would vaporize like a Manichean in mosquito britches. I feel for Dr. Mondosong, I truly do. We have attended many Summonings together and once even ordered the same type of sandwich from Subway (Ranch BLT on 'Lotta Chibatta' type bread). His "book" as it were, however, has the terrible propensity to not go too far, but not go far enough!

Perhaps what is best for Donald (or Dungeon Don, as he is known amongst the Literati) is to take a step back from his mahogany tomes, from his leather-bound desk and fruit-scented nickel loafers, and look outside: look to his neighbor's yard, and see the workmanship involved: the brick-laying: the back-breaking devotion to pure Rectangular Reason or even {if his neighbor is truly of the Vanguard!} Octagonal Ontologies: yes, What Must Be Done for dear dear Professor Fondlethrong is to take heed of the Post-Socratics and let the Beatific Gleam of the Indoor Patio enter into his Dome! This is what I wish for him, as both a friend and former mailman.

But a wish is only a wish.

Interesting & informative essays on a number of subjects, many of them reprinted from New York Review of Books. Mendelsohn writes well, has a keen eye for detail, and informs and entertains as he appraises. Recommended.