Except When I Write: Reflections of a Recovering Critic
"Arthur Krystal does what only the best writers can do: provides you with a deeper appreciation of the things you already cared about, awakens you to the things you didn't know to care about, and--on the strength of his intelligence, wit, and erudition--manages to engage you with the things you were sure you never cared about.  His essays, many of which are collected here, are among my favorite prose works in recent memory, bar none." - David Bezmozgis, author ofThe Free World and Natasha and Other Stories"Arthur Krystal is a writer whose essays I always want to read even when I'm not interested in their subjects - until I become interested by reading them. What makes those subjects interesting is Krystal's personal voice: sympathetic, alert, skeptical, comic, sometimes sharp, sometimes extravagant and with a sharply-focused moral intelligence. Duels, nights, writers, aphorisms, the Sixties: Krystal's latest and best book offers the pleasures of all of these and more." - Edward Mendelson, Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University"[Krystal is] a friendly, learned and witty companion in this collection of essays, most of which first appeared inThe New YorkerorHarper's. The collection ranges as widely as Krystal's reading."   -New York Times Book Review"Arthur Krystal's latest,Except When I Write, may be his best yet, a hedging statement I make not in an attempt to dodge making a case for the book, but because greatness unmans us. I am humbled before Krystal's virtues: clarity, variety, levity, gravity and the single trait without which all others are beside the point-humanity." -- Wyatt Mason, Contributing writer,New York Times Magazine; Senior Fellow of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics & the Humanities at Bard College"Except When I Writereflects the varied cultural interests of an intellectual son-of-a-gun. Krystal's essays and reviews are unfailingly lucid and balanced-to-a-T, as is customary for this writer (I would highly recommend this and his other two essay collections)." - The Arts Fuse