Customer Reviews

Precious Nonsense: The Gettysburg Address, Ben Jonson's Epitaphs on His Children, and Twelfth Night

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Honesty requires a disclaimer. Booth is a friend and colleague. But I would react similarly if I didn't know the author. If there were six stars, I would award them to Precious Nonsense. Booth takes familiar texts that seem all too clear and obvious and makes us see a multitude of things going on beneath their surfaces. His discoveries are startling and sometimes you want to argue with him, but because he puts his cards on the table he makes argument possible. What he shows demonstrates the difference between great prose and verse and ordinary writing, and reveals the similarity between the operation of literary art and that of music. Booth is phenomenally sensitive and deeply learned, and he has a terrific memory. A bonus is his style: he , in making us see how much goes on in such art that we are never is clear, convesatonal, and often funny, This is a revolutionary book.