Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic

213 Pages·2011·0.55 MB·English

by  Arthur Krystal

PRAISE FOR
AGITATIONS: ESSAYS ON LIFE
AND LITERATURE
Arthur Krystal is an elegant subversive, an “inside agitator”
in the highest sense of the phrase. His Agitations are warmed
and illuminated by the burning candor of a bookish man
who—so he attests—has lost his appetite for books. His voice
is companionable yet blunt, graceful but trenchant, and by
turns learned, informed, witty. Best of all, he addresses serious
questions with the tools of a true essayist: a ready heart, a
sharp mind, and no preconception of the answers.
Finalist, The 2003 PEN Award for the art of the essay
Whether he is writing literary essays that wear their learning
lightly or familiar essays that breathe the spirit of Montaigne
and Hazlitt, Arthur Krystal’s work is a pleasure to read:
conversational in tone, casually provocative, and enlivened
by apt metaphors and felicitous quotations…His paradoxical
approach invites disagreement, but, to an astonishing degree,
it gives us the fl ow and cadence of someone actually thinking.
Morris Dickstein
Krystal celebrates the author compelled to write by a sense of
mortality and the critic qualifi ed to judge literature by traits of
temperament and taste … And as his vibrant, well-considered
essays reveal, Krystal has not entirely relinquished hope
that ‘’books, despite the critics’ polemics, are still the truest
expressions of the human condition.’’
Elizabeth Mary Sheehan, The New York Times Book Review
[Krystal] sees the activities of writing and reading as deeply
connected to basic human questions of life, death, religion,
value, and taste. In graceful, conversational prose, he both
argues and demonstrates his points, easily combining his
knowledge of history and philosophy with the personal to
give readers a view of an engaged mind.”
Library Journal
Arthur Krystal’s amazing essays in Agitations restore intel-
ligence, wit and sanity to the life of the mind. I regard it as
a must for the teaching of the essay. Krystal makes literature
dance again and ideas matter.
Barbara Probst Solomon
Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature is a bracing antitoxin
to the politics and theory passing for criticism in today’s
academic world… Arthur Krystal’s mind and style manage to
fl ourish in a postmodern culture where literature has—in his
fi ne phrasing—“become the center that is somehow beside the
point. His short but rangy essays now make up a book that is
uniformly stimulating and at times even noble.
Thomas Mallon
PRAISE FOR
THE HALF-LIFE OF AN AMERICAN
ESSAYIST
Krystal’s conversational prose is an instrument adaptable to
subjects as light as laziness and as serious as sin. Wide reading
and cogent arguments are leavened with wit, irony and
striking turns of phrase—altogether what essays should be.
Jacques Barzun
It is a superb book, winning the rare literary trifecta of
being well-written, well-reasoned, and well-researched. [The]
essays are not only a pleasure to read one by one—they are a
pleasure to read paragraph by paragraph.
Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts
Krystal makes a vigorous case for the virtues of old-fashioned
literary criticism, twitting the navel gazers of “creative
nonfi ction,” which he dismisses as just a fancy word for
memoir: and he’s not afraid of weighty topics: he slogs
through the notebooks of Paul Valéry, ponders different
theories of beauty and offers a defense of the seven deadly
sins.
Matthew Price, The New York Times Book Review
Arthur Krystal’s essays shine like a searchlight through the fog
of contemporary culture. Vivid, sharp, and enlightening, they
keep a steady keel through roiling waters. These essays are as
exciting about such arcana as the history of the typewriter and
eighteenth-century boxing as they are about universals such as
money, laziness, and beauty.
Edward Mendelson, Lionel Trilling Professor of the
Humanities, Columbia University
A well-crafted set of eclectic essays covering subjects ranging
from the history of the typewriter, to ex-slave turned pugilist
Tom Molineaux, to the Mid-Century Book Society. As with
his previous work, his latest output derives its strength
from Krystal’s dry wit and his seeming inability to pull
any punches…Whether you agree with him or not, this is
refreshingly good stuff.
Library Journal
Reading Krystal on beauty, sin, typewriters, laziness, death,
duelling or reading, one has no sense of what one is getting
into—beyond something one feels impelled to get more deeply
into…To read one Krystal essay is to become a Krystal reader,
and to want more than his two fi ne books, Agitations and The
Half-Life of an American Essayist.
Wyatt Mason, Harper’s Magazine
Arthur Krystal is smart, keenly observant, death on pretension,
and a prose writer of genuine style—qualities that combine to
make him a superior essayist.
Joseph Epstein
When was the last time you settled in with a collection of essays
and read straight through? … Literate, original, conversational,
witty, allusive, written for an educated general reader, the
dozen pieces brought together here range over an amazingly
wide terrain … May the tradition of writing essays such as his
never decay.
Joan Baum, WLIU Radio
Whether writing on topics such as beauty, sin or laziness,
literary essayist Arthur Krystal embodies the very best of
what the essay should be: informative, interesting and eclectic.
Elucidating his subjects by way of his literary yet accessible
style, his refreshingly snarky wit shines through in a way
that’s completely endearing.
Bibliobuffet
Arthur Krystal is the George Clooney of the essay world,
with his debonair vocabulary, utilization of complex yet lucid
sentence structure, spot-on pacing, and an understanding of
the history of the essay.
The Adventures of the Garbageman’s Daughter
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EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE
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EXCEPT WHEN I WRITE
REFLECTIONS OF A RECOVERING CRITIC
ARTHUR KRYSTAL
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