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Brooke Allen is not just America’s finest literary critic. She is also our most delightful. In this new collection of essays from the New York Times, the Atlantic, the New Criterion and elsewhere, she trains her wry sensibility and casual brilliance on some of the most interesting and important figures from the great age of reading—a time, just now behind us, when books were of paramount importance and nearly everyone, it seemed, actually read them.
The heyday of reading is probably behind us, but in these shrewd and witty essays Brooke Allen examines the relics of the saints (and sinners) who made it what it was. Focused as much on literary lives as oeuvres, she excavates the glories of August Strindberg, George Sand, Patricia Highsmith, Anthony Powell, Truman Capote and even the late great diarist Richard Burton (who also did some acting). There are 22 essays in all, and as in her previous collections, Allen offers delight and surprise on every page. If the age of reading isn’t yet behind you, get this book in front of you.
Brooke Allen has published two previous essay collections. Her work has appeared in The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, The Hudson Review, The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. With a PhD from Columbia University, she has taught literature at Bennington College and history of thought in its prison program. She and her husband, the photographer Peter Aaron, have two daughters and live in New York's Hudson Valley.
“Brooke Allen has that amazing gift of an elegant pen at the service of an elegant mind. She is one of the country's finest literary essayists-scrupulous, discerning, utterly direct and at the same time always surprising.” — Jane Kramer
“Brooke Allen's byline is a guarantee of crisp, clear common sense-a rare and precious commodity in the fogbound world of contemporary literary criticism.” — Terry Teachout
“Over the years she has developed an odd and deeply appealing tone of voice-at once wry and exclamatory. A lively enemy of pomp and cant, conformity and confusion, Brooke Allen displays a sensibility we should all be grateful for.” — Brad Leithauser
“Smart, witty, remarkably literate, and a talented cultural historian, Brooke Allen not only places the works she writes about in their historical context, but offers us new critical insights to guide our reading.” — David Nasaw
“Her prose swaggers with an authority drawn from true learning, and she cracks her snobbery like a whip… Unlike so many critics working today, Ms. Allen works against the grain. She questions sacred assumptions and suspends judgment on all but the writing.” — John Freeman, Wall Street Journal
“She fills her writing with intelligence and equanimity, making her boldness seem really not so wild after all, but the logical conclusion of good sense and an orderly mind.” — Weekly Standard
Brooke Allen has published two previous essay collections. Her work has appeared in The New Criterion, The Wall Street Journal, The Hudson Review, The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. With a PhD from Columbia University, she has taught literature at Bennington College and history of thought in its prison program. She and her husband, the photographer Peter Aaron, have two daughters and live in New York's Hudson Valley.