Pari Publishing

What people have said about the book

“Start with a high-octane intelligence, add large handfuls of irreverent wit, a capacious literary curiosity, a visceral dislike of the bogus and a lean prose that skewers at the same time it illuminates, and you have the recipe for the kind of marvelous criticism George Stade has been producing for over thirty years. Whether writing about popular fiction or the great modernists, ethology or the joys of football, Stade is never less than entertaining and provocative. It is a treat to have these essays at last collected in a single volume.”
Michael Rosenthal, Roberta and William Campbell Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University.

“Stade's essays are amusing and insightful. His criticism extracts golden nuggets from the text while it informs and delights the reader, who feels privileged to be a part of the process of discovery and who wishes Stade's best essays, like a good novel, would never end. It shows his endearing love of, and commitment to literature. The fact that these essays and reviews will enlighten and absorb their readers in the pleasure of the text is why I urge readers to read the book; they will be reminded why they love literature.”
Norman Loftis, poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and filmmaker.

“In a tour de force of wit, critical insight, and blissfully first-rate prose, Stade takes on a wide range of subjects, from Joyce and Gaddis to Stephen King and Dracula (no one has ever written better about Bram Stoker’s masterpiece), often finding the high in the low and vice-versa. He illuminates them all, the darker the better, catching the varied crafts by which the human leaves its imprint in art. Literature helps us get by, Stade says, and so does he.”
Ann Douglas, author of Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s and The Feminization of American Culture.

“George Stade is a book-lover's book-lover. He's maverick and modest, opinionated and generous, and, above all, passionate about literature. In this collection of essays and reviews he brings the works of Poe, Joyce and Plath, of Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Stephen King, to life under his eagle and erudite eye. Only a handful of critics achieve this: to transmit to their readers, through the power of their own prose, some of the life-force of the original work. This is criticism at its vigorous best.”
Alison MacLeod, author of The Wave Theory of Angels and Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction