The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays
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ISBN10: 0374608091
ISBN13: 9780374608095
Hardcover
368 Pages
$35.00
CA$47.00
Joan Acocella was “one of our finest cultural critics” (Edward Hirsch), and she had the rare ability to examine literature and unearth the lives contained within it—its authors, its subjects, and the communities from which it springs. In her hands, arts criticism was a celebration and an investigation, and her essays pulse with unadulterated enthusiasm. As Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “Hers is a vision that allows art its mystery but not its pretensions, to which she is acutely sensitive. What better instincts could a critic have?”
The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays gathers twenty-four essays from the final decade and a half of Acocella’s career, as well as an introduction that frames her simple preoccupations: “life and art.” In agile, inspired prose, she moves from J. R. R. Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf to the life of Richard Pryor, from surveying profanity to untangling the book of Job. Her appetite (and reading list) knew no bounds. This collection is a joy and a revelation, a library in itself, and Acocella is our dream companion among its shelves.
Reviews
Praise for The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays
"There are a handful of perfect foods, like yuba, which possess all the essential nutrients (Buddhist monks took it on their pilgrimages.) Rarer, perhaps, are perfect mind foods, like The Bloody Nightgown, whose essential nutrients—wit, depth, variety, beauty, humanity—could sustain you even on a desert island. With each rereading, these essays surprise and reward you anew." Judith Thurman, author of A Left-Handed Woman
"Joan Acocella has always been one of our country’s sharpest critics. She manages to write at the highest intellectual level and make it read like fun. This collection is endlessly entertaining. It also grapples with the central issues of art, literature and life."—T. M. Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real
"From Gilgamesh and Beowulf to Elmore Leonard and Richard Pryor, a brilliant critic unpacks centuries of artists and their works . . . [Acocella's ] wit and insight make anything worth reading about . . . A top-notch collection full of information, elegance, and humor."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Essayist Acocella shines in this splendid anthology of literary criticism . . . Smart and accessible, this is a blast."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Reviews from Goodreads
BOOK EXCERPTS
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THE BLOODIED NIGHTGOWNDracula
“Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London,...