About this item
Highlights
- Leonard Michaels was a writer of unfailing emotional honesty.
- About the Author: Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was the author of six collections of stories and essays as well as two novels, Sylvia and The Men's Club.
- 224 Pages
- Literary Collections, Essays
Description
Book Synopsis
Leonard Michaels was a writer of unfailing emotional honesty. His memoirs, originally scattered through his story collections, are among the most thrilling evocations of growing up in the New York of the 1950s and '60s--and of continuing to grow up, in the cultural turmoil of the '70s and '80s, as a writer, teacher, lover, and reader. The same honesty and excitement shine in Michaels's highly personal commentaries on culture and art. Whether he's asking what makes a story, reviewing the history of the word "relationship," or reflecting on sex in the movies, he is funny, penetrating, surprising, always alive on the page.
The Essays of Leonard Michaels is the definitive collection of his nonfiction and shows, yet again, why Michaels was singled out for praise by fellow writers as diverse as Susan Sontag, Larry McMurtry, William Styron, and Charles Baxter. Beyond autobiography or criticism, it is the record of a sensibility and of a style that is unmatched in American letters.Review Quotes
"The new book that dazzled me most this past year, and that I loved the most, was The Essays of Leonard Michaels. . . . [It has] some of the greatest essays I know; they will break your heart and excite your thinking at the same time. Michaels had a trenchant, elegantly forceful style that cut to the bone." --Phillip Lopate, TheMillions.com
"Leonard Michaels is much beloved by other writers--first and foremost for the angle and thrust of his sentences . . . [He] is as good as any writer you're likely to run across." --Alex Abramovich, Bookforum "Brilliant, funny, uncategorizable . . . Rather than aiming for a place beyond language, [Michaels] scratches at experience that's below it: the shivers and shakes that make us embrace, murder and argue with our fellow lonely and desiring human beings." --Laurie Stone, Los Angeles Times "Emotionally responsive and intensely intellectual . . . [Michaels's essays] are jewels of experimentation in understanding and feeling." --Gerald Sorin, Ha'aretz "A great pleasure . . . These [are] wonderful, surprising essays . . . sharp, funny, opinionated, observant, concise." --Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe "Brilliant, funny, uncategorizable . . . Rather than aiming for a place beyond language, [Michaels] scratches at experience that's below it: the shivers and shakes that make us embrace, murder and argue with our fellow lonely and desiring human beings." --Laurie Stone, Los Angeles Times "Spare and elegant . . . These are soul-baring occasional pieces by a writer's writer and a master stylist." --Publishers Weekly "[Brilliant] as an essayist . . . Michaels always brought rigorous intelligence and an understated sensitivity to his subjects. In their lightness of movement and depth of attainment, his longer essays resemble most those of Michel de Montaigne." --Wyatt Mason, Harper's Magazine Sentences Blog "A perfectly fitting introduction to the work of one the best writers of the post-WWII era . . . amoung my favorite pieces of writing in any form." --David Bezmozgis, National PostAbout the Author
Leonard Michaels (1933-2003) was the author of six collections of stories and essays as well as two novels, Sylvia and The Men's Club. His Collected Stories and novels are available as FSG Classics