Synopses & Reviews
Whether he's on Broadway or at the movies, considering a new bestseller or revisiting a literary classic, Daniel Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming emotionality, and tart wit. Now
How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken reveals all at once the enormous stature of Mendelsohn's achievement and demonstrates why he is considered one of our greatest critics. Writing with a lively intelligence and arresting originality, he brings his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and genres, from Roman games to video games.
His interpretations of our most talked-about films—from the work of Pedro Almodóvar to Brokeback Mountain, from United 93 and World Trade Center to 300, Marie Antoinette, and The Hours—have sparked debate and changed the way we watch movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches on theater and literature, from The Producers to Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, from The Lovely Bones to the works of Harold Pinter. Together these thirty brilliant and engaging essays passionately articulate the themes that have made Daniel Mendelsohn a crucial voice in today's cultural conversation: the aesthetic and indeed political dangers of imposing contemporary attitudes on the great classics; the ruinous effect of sentimentality on the national consciousness in the post-9/11 world; the vital importance of the great literature of the past for a meaningful life in the present.
How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken makes it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as Mendelsohn is, and no one practices the vanishing art of popular criticism with more acuity, humor, and feeling.
Review
“Brilliant. . . . Masterful. . . . Wise, funny. . . . A wonderful collection.” Time Out New York
Review
“An elegant collection of essays. . . . Mendelsohn reveals intellectual breadth in his ability to draw on his training as a classicist to look at contemporary culture. . . . These essays richly repay the time readers spend in their company.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
“Mendelsohn takes on contemporary culture with humor and incisive analysis.” The New York Sun
Review
"A
brilliant essayist,
[O'Hagan] constructs
sentences that pierce like pinpricks."--Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Stupendously unflinching, bursting with possibility"---Booklist (starred)
Synopsis
A stunning collection of reportage about the complicated relationship between Britain and America from the acclaimed journalist and novelist, and the "best essayist of his generation" (New York Times).
Synopsis
"A brilliant essayist, [O'Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks.” —
Publishers Weekly, starred review
For more than two decades, Andrew O’Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed, brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his working-class Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing examination of the life of William Styron. O’Hagan’s subjects range from the rise of the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe.
The Atlantic Ocean — an engrossing and important collection.
About the Author
Daniel Mendelsohn is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and many other publications. His books include the inter-national bestseller The Lost, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Prix Médicis in France. His other awards include a National Book Critics Circle Award for book reviewing and the George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism. He teaches at Bard College.
Table of Contents
The Killing of James Bulger 1
On Begging 9
The Glasgow Sludge Boat 41
The American Dream of Lee Harvey Oswald 50
Many Andies 63
Good Fibs 73
Englands Flowers 87
Saint Marilyn 106
7/7 117
Introduction to Go Tell It on the Mountain 124
On the End of British Farming 135
England and the Beatles 177
On Lad Magazines 192
Four Funerals and a Wedding 203
After Hurricane Katrina 218
Brothers 255
Racing Against Reality 296
Guilt: A Memoir 311
The Boy Who Mistook His Life for a Crime 321
E. M. Forster: The Story of Affection 328
Styrons Choice 343