Pieces of My Mind: Essays and Criticism 1958-2002
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Book Overview
Sir Frank Kermode has been writing peerless literary criticism for more than a half-century. Pieces of My Mind includes his own choice of his major essays since 1958, beginning with his extraordinary study of "Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev" and ending with a marvelous consideration of Shakespeare's Othello and Verdi-Boito's Otello. Important essays on Hawthorne, on Wallace Stevens, on problems in literary theory and analysis, on Auden, on "Secrets and Narrative Sequence," and three previously unpublished essays (including one on "Memory" and one on "Forgetting") fill out this rich and rewarding volume. Pieces of My Mind also contains recent considerations of the work of major modern writers--Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, Tom Paulin, and others. Of Kermode's last book, Shakespeare's Language, Richard Howard wrote that it was "a triumph of inauguration and the crowning action of his splendid career of criticism. It is, and will doubtless remain, the first book one should read about Shakespeare's plays, and with those plays." Pieces of My Mind has equal authority and power, and it will be equally praised.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0809076012
ISBN13:9780809076017
Release Date:September 2003
Publisher:Farrar Straus Giroux
Length:467 Pages
Weight:0.35 lbs.
Dimensions:1.4" x 6.3" x 9.1"
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
life/style
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
It's beautifully fitting that this collection of Kermode's essays begins with "Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev." Kermode moves with balletic grace and alacrity through subjects ranging from Parisian salon culture of the '20s to Don DeLillo, often using the written word (Yeats, Stevens) as a point of departure for further critical and cultural adventuring. Pieces of My Mind is a pure pleasure from start to finish -- a generous testament to Sir Kermode's love and wonder for many, many things.
Fresh, sharp, at ease
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
Kermode's collection of essays demonstrates a brilliant mind scanning the diverse subjects to which it was led by curiosity and passion. As a literary critic, Kermode is an exemplar of the creative possibilities of theory-- rather than operating in one single mode, he adopts freely as he sees fit from a range of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. These essays prove the value in a commitment to following personal interests rather than fashionable academic mandates and to wearing critical perspectives as a mask: for the sake of entertainment, flashes of enlightenment, and personal freedom. With a passion for literature, and for thinking about literature's bearing upon itself, Kermode writes beautifully and clearly. He carries literature beyond its own formal bounds, without subordinating it to 'larger', 'more serious' concerns (such as Philosophy, Politics or History) though acknowleding its interactions with these disciplines. More specifically, Kermode shows a consistent concern with hermeneutics and narrative as code, returning again and again to an interest in the New Testament that appears even before his well-known "The Genesis of Secrecy".
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