The Questions That Matter Most
Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Clear, vibrant” essays on reading and writing by the Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times–bestselling author: “A reader feels smarter just taking it in” (The Boston Globe).
From the author of A Dangerous Business, A Thousand Acres, and Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, this volume “gathers essays (and two stories) composed with wit, enthusiasm, expertise, and candor” (Booklist).
Long acclaimed as a preeminent American novelist, Jane Smiley is also an unparalleled observer of the craft of writing. In this book, she offers penetrating essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. After a personal introduction tracing Smiley’s migration from Iowa to California, she reflects on her findings in the literature of the Golden State, whose writers have for decades litigated the West’s contested legacies of racism, class conflict, and sexual politics through their work. With meticulous attention, she also dives beneath surface-level interpretations of authors like Marguerite de Navarre, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Franz Kafka, Halldór Laxness, and Jessica Mitford. Throughout, Smiley seeks to think harder, and with more clarity and nuance, about the questions that matter most.
“Valuable . . . Smiley gives educators, readers, and writers much to discuss.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Her literary criticism . . . brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. . . . Fleet-footed and smart, this delights.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sharp compendium, Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley (A Dangerous Business) brings together her literary criticism, which brims with the same keen observations, inquisitiveness, and humor as her novels. The selections contemplate canonical works of English and American literature, as in "I Am Your ‘Prudent Amy,' " where Smiley suggests that though readers often find Little Women's Amy March to be vain and spoiled, "she actually possesses the self-awareness and reflectiveness that will help her navigate her world." Lamenting that Charles Dickens's journalism is unjustly overlooked, she contends that it's full of the same "transcendent mastery of all the richnesses of the English language" that distinguishes his novels. She's less laudatory about some of her other subjects, eviscerating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for failing to square youthful adventure with the serious moral themes surrounding Jim's quest for freedom. Smiley even sneaks in some fiction, imagining a happy ending for the protagonist of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and what advice Princess Marguerite de Navarre of France might have given Othello's Desdemona ("I read with alarm that you are accompanying your husband on his campaign. Please have a care in this"). Smiley makes for great company, and her unpretentious style will appeal even to those whose eyes glaze over at the thought of revisiting these high school classics. Fleet-footed and smart, this delights.
