Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture
The most compelling reviews in Daniel Mendelsohn's very good new collection of them,Waiting for the Barbarians, are decidedly mixed. Five-thousand-word love letters require a kind of wild passion that seems foreign to Mendelsohn's coolly intelligent prose. Give him a flaw to diagnose, on the other hand, and Mendelsohn will solve it with Sherlockian elan. Mixed reviews... become intellectual detective stories, and Mendelsohn provides illuminating, elegant solutions. —David Haglund--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.