War of the Words: 20 Years of Writing on Contemporary Literature

The Village Voice Literary Supplement has long been a high profile yet casual meeting place for writers ranging from the avant-garde to the reactionary to the canonical. War of the Words: The VLS Anthology of Writing on Contemporary Literature, assembled by current Voice literary editor Joy Press, features dozens of critical essays by mostly renowned writers on even more renowned writers. Michele Wallace observes that Zora Neale Hurston ""rejected the racial uplift agenda of the Talented Tenth on the premise that ordinary bloods had something to say, too."" Mark Dery zeroes in on Amok Press's edgy (often disturbing) material, Bharati Mukherjee on Salman Rushdie's apocalyptic tragicomedy. The lit-crit crowd speaks up, too: Scott Malcomson discusses whiteness and anthropology vis- -vis several cultural studies; Thulani Davis examines a handful of buppie writers. A great opportunity for revisiting quasi-fringe literary happenings (many of which have since become establishment) of the past 20 years. (Oct.)