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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bayley is best known as the late Iris Murdoch's devoted husband, but for most of his life, he has also been a professor and literary critic in his own right. This extensive collection of criticism attests to the breadth of his knowledge, his range of interests and his generosity as a reader of the great literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this volume, Bailey proves himself endlessly curious—as he notes in the introduction, he learned to read Russian in order to read Pushkin, and then went on to tackle Tolstoy, Akhmatova and the rest. In the majority of these essays—most culled from the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement—Bayley revisits a single writer's life and oeuvre. Selected by Carey, the New Yorker's literary editor, the essays are arranged chronologically according to the writers' births rather than when the pieces were written. The result minimizes the developments in Bayley's attitudes and style, but that's a small price to pay for such erudite and enthusiastic considerations of literature. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Bayley began teaching English literature at Oxford in 1955 and soon thereafter began writing reviews, mutually beneficial pursuits that have made him an exceptionally agile reader and a graceful critic. In his introduction to this grand, beautifully titled collection of essays, Bayley details the pleasures of reviewing, and his delight in writing criticism truly is evident in each of the essays judiciously gathered here. Bayley, also the author of two striking memoirs, including Elegy for Iris (1999), his haunting tribute to his late wife, Iris Murdoch, takes on English literature with dash, revisiting Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, and Graham Greene, but he is even more passionate in his engagement with an acquired love, Russian literature, writing richly referenced and marvelously conversational assessments of Pushkin, Babel, and Chekhov, among many others. Bayley also writes incisively about key American poets and offers groundbreaking interpretations of such Eastern European writers as Milan Kundera, Witold Gombrowicz, and Paul Celan. Astute not only in matters of aesthetics but also in the ways literature mirrors, and, perhaps, effects social change, Bayley is at once worldly and companionable. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Bayley is best known as the late Iris Murdoch's devoted husband, but for most of his life, he has also been a professor and literary critic in his own right. This extensive collection of criticism attests to the breadth of his knowledge, his range of interests and his generosity as a reader of the great literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. In this volume, Bailey proves himself endlessly curious—as he notes in the introduction, he learned to read Russian in order to read Pushkin, and then went on to tackle Tolstoy, Akhmatova and the rest. In the majority of these essays—most culled from the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement—Bayley revisits a single writer's life and oeuvre. Selected by Carey, the New Yorker's literary editor, the essays are arranged chronologically according to the writers' births rather than when the pieces were written. The result minimizes the developments in Bayley's attitudes and style, but that's a small price to pay for such erudite and enthusiastic considerations of literature. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Bayley began teaching English literature at Oxford in 1955 and soon thereafter began writing reviews, mutually beneficial pursuits that have made him an exceptionally agile reader and a graceful critic. In his introduction to this grand, beautifully titled collection of essays, Bayley details the pleasures of reviewing, and his delight in writing criticism truly is evident in each of the essays judiciously gathered here. Bayley, also the author of two striking memoirs, including Elegy for Iris (1999), his haunting tribute to his late wife, Iris Murdoch, takes on English literature with dash, revisiting Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, and Graham Greene, but he is even more passionate in his engagement with an acquired love, Russian literature, writing richly referenced and marvelously conversational assessments of Pushkin, Babel, and Chekhov, among many others. Bayley also writes incisively about key American poets and offers groundbreaking interpretations of such Eastern European writers as Milan Kundera, Witold Gombrowicz, and Paul Celan. Astute not only in matters of aesthetics but also in the ways literature mirrors, and, perhaps, effects social change, Bayley is at once worldly and companionable. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
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Inside This Book Explore: Concordance | Text Stats Key Phrases - SIPs: wise children, first fee Key Phrases - CAPs: Jane Austen, Henry James, George Eliot, The New York Review of Books, Anthony Powell (more) Browse Sample Pages: Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me! |
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