Daniel Mendelsohn
Over the past decade and a half, Daniel Mendelsohnâ€™s reviews forÂ ,The New York Review of Books,,Â ,The New Yorker,, andÂ ,The New York Times Book Review,Â have earned him a reputation as â€œone of the greatest critics of our timeâ€ (,Poets&Â Writers,). InÂ ,Waiting for the Barbarians,, he brings together twenty-four of his recent essaysâ€”each one glinting with â€œverve and sparkle,â€ â€œacumen and passionâ€â€”on a wide range of subjects, fromÂ ,Avatar,Â to the poems of Arthur Rimbaud, from our inexhaustible fascination with theÂ ,Titanic,Â to Susan Sontagâ€™sÂ ,Journals,. Trained as a classicist, author of two internationally best-selling memoirs, Mendelsohn moves easily from penetrating considerations of the ways in which the classics continue to make themselves felt in contemporary life and letters (Greek myth in theÂ ,Spider-Man,Â musical, Anne Carsonâ€™s translations of Sappho) to trenchant takes on pop spectaclesâ€”none more explosively controversial than his dissection ofÂ ,Mad Men,.,Also gathered here are essays devoted to the art of fiction, from Jonathan Littellâ€™s Holocaust blockbusterÂ ,The Kindly Ones,Â to forgotten gems like the novels of Theodor Fontane. In a final section, â€œPrivate Lives,â€ prefaced by Mendelsohnâ€™s,New Yorker,Â essay on fake memoirs, he considers the lives and work of writers as disparate as Leo Lerman, NoÃ«l Coward, and Jonathan Franzen.Â ,Waiting for the Barbarians,Â once again demonstrates that Mendelsohnâ€™s â€œsweep as a cultural critic is as impressive as his depth.â€
Writing,Essays,Nonfiction,Criticism,Criticism,Literary Criticism,Writing,Books About Books,Culture,Pop Culture,Literature,Cultural,History
Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture