The Story about the Story: Great Writers Explore Great Literature

In Hallman's first collection, he delivers a set of critical essays from writers on their favorites, great literature that has had lasting personal influence for influential writers and critics including Nabokov, S.H. Lawrence, Salman Rushdie and Susan Sontag. In her classic ""An Essay on Criticism,"" Virginia Woolf assesses the prejudices of critics, particularly sexism, regarding works across the spectrum of fiction; elsewhere, contemporary author Dagoberto Gilb delivers a stirring examination of his fatherless childhood, imagining a perfect stepfather through the lens of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. Hallman's collection of reader-focused criticism focuses on the spirited, positive defense (or outright celebration) of authors and works; broad in scope and full of personal, passionate writing, this volume makes a fine reader for contemporary critics and other literati.