3.5
How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken
ByPublisher Description
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
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
, from
and
to
,
, and
—have sparked debate and changed the way we watch movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches on theater and literature, from
to Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, from
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.
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesHow Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken Reviews
3.5
“This book of Mendelsohn's collected essays took forever to get through, but god, his writing and perspective (even when I disagreed with his points) was just wonderful. Mendelsohn's classics background was just candy for me constantly throughout the book, and the diversity of his subject matter was a treat. I want to read everything he's ever done, but that would be like a year of reading in and of itself.”
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