Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays on the Classics and Pop Culture

基本信息出版社:New York Review Books (2012年8月14日)精装:432页正文语种:英语ISBN:1590176073条形码:9781590176078商品重量:567 gASIN:1590176073您想告诉我们您发现了更低的价格?

商品描述内容简介InWaiting for the Barbarians, Daniel Mendelsohn--hailed byThe Economistas one of the finest critics writing in the English language today--brings together twenty-four of his recent critical essays. In this collection, Mendelsohn moves from penetrating considerations of the ways in which the classics continue to make themselves felt in contemporary life and letters (Anne Carson's translations of Sappho, the marketing of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games) to trenchant takes on pop "spectacles" such asAvatar,Spider-Man, andMad Men, a series whose success, Mendelsohn argued, has less to do with any formal excellence than with a profoundly sentimental appeal. Also gathered here are essays devoted to the art of fiction, from blockbusters such as Jonathan Littell'sThe Kindly Onesto underappreciated gems like the novels of Theodor Fontane. In a final section, "Private Lives," prefaced by his lengthyNew Yorkeressay on phony memoirs, Mendelsohn considers the lives and work of authors as disparate as Noel Coward, Susan Sontag, and Jonathan Franzen.媒体推荐Praise forHow Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken(aPublishers Weekly2008 Non-Fiction Best Book of the Year):

“A classicist by training and a critic by trade, he begins with a challenging subject and gloriously complicates it by drawing on his erudition, acumen, and passion for precision and bedrock truth. Justly awarded for his exceptionally sharp and entertaining book and drama criticism, Mendelsohn now presents a collection of critical essays spanning the last 15 years, most originally published in the New York Review of Books. Drawn to literature, theater, and films with a link to Greek and Roman culture, however subterranean, Mendelsohn reaches an exhilaratingly high level of discourse as he grapples with Oliver Stone'sAlexander,The Lovely Bones, Truman Capote, films about 9/11, and Tony Kushner's “Angels in America.” This impressive volume's poetic title is from Tennessee Williams and provides the catalyst for Mendelsohn's own profound musing over the timeless bond between the beautiful and the broken. These are works of brilliant and soulful criticism.” -- The Booklist

“His wit is invariably harnessed to a graver wisdom; the verve and sparkle to an underlying conviction, often anguished. The epigrams have a purpose other than themselves.” –Los Angeles Times

“Mendelsohn, who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for book reviewing, is a gifted and entertaining writer. His prose is gorgeous and lyrical and his subjects are smartly considered and freshly revealed, from Virginia Woolf and The Hours to Kill Bill and the Iliad.” –Vanity Fair

"Reading Mendelsohn is like being invited into the inner machinery of his mind, and while perched rather perilously there, watching him work things out. Because that is, fundamentally, what characterizes his writing: a kind of working out on the page, a willingness to reveal the scaffolding of any carefully constructed argment, to even take apart and re-build everything from the ground up before the reader's eyes."

-Astri von Arbin Ahlander, The Days of Yore

"It was writer Daniel Mendelsohn's review of the film "The Hours" a number of years ago inThe New York Review of Booksthat first awakened me to his critic's eyes, his human voice, his uncanny sense of the writer's sensibility...I then discoveredThe Elusive Embrace(Knopf, 1999), Mendelsohn's deeply fascinating, inspiring examination of "the riddle of identity." So moved by his incisive, insightful writing, I sent him a note of admiration."

-Linda Zisquit,Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature

"At first it reads like a real slam—this guy takes the show apart...But then at the end he makes a very, very interesting point which comes around to a different conclusion."

-Tina Brown's Must-Reads for NPR (Daniel Mendelsohn's critical essay of "Mad Men" for theNew York Review of Bookswas her first pick)

"An erudite scholar of formidable intelligence and gravitas, [Mendelsohn] is considered by some to be one of the greatest critics of our time."

-Andrea Crawford,Poets & Writers

"As admirers of his literary criticism (including myself) know well, Mendelsohn is a gorgeous and elegant writer..."

-Ruth Franklin,Slate Magazine

"[Mendelsohn] is a brilliant storyteller, influenced by the Greek masters he so admires..."

-The Timesof London