More to Say: Essays and Appreciations

Beattie (A Wonderful Stroke of Luck) collects heartfelt reflections on literary and visual arts in this thoughtful outing. She lovingly contemplates the work of such artists and writers as Andre Dubus, Sally Mann, Trisha Orr, and John Updike, unpacking, for instance, how Elizabeth Spencer uses “quibbles and qualifications” to sow doubt in her short story “The Runaways” and how photographer Holly Wright links “the amusing and the beautiful” in her images of piggy banks, blood blots, and baby rattles. Beattie’s tone brings together candor and comedy, as when she compares her writing process to painter Lincoln Perry’s and remarks that painting and writing “are not at all alike, and the day I have to maneuver the pages of a novel out my office window, I’ll play the analogy game.” In lyrical prose, Beattie considers the limits of literary criticism, such as when she touts Alice Munro’s penchant for making “the ordinary magical” in her collection, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and posits that “Munro has a Houdini-like ability to snare you in your own net of description, while the fullness of her story slips away and makes its miraculous escape.” Earnest, amusing, and contemplative, this suggests that though Beattie is known for her fiction, her nonfiction has just as much to offer. (Feb.)