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Estasi e terrore. Dai greci a Mad Men
«Sorrido sempre quando qualcuno intervistandomi mi chiede se le recensioni siano un modo per sbarcare il lunario (a differenza dei libri, che sarebbero, si sottintende, la “cosa vera”). Per me le recensioni sono il pezzo forte». Cosí si legge nel Manifesto di un critico, un saggio che è una vera, illuminante dichiarazione di poetica. Il critico serio, sostiene Mendelsohn in quelle pagine, non si limita a imporre il suo «mi piace» o «non mi piace» (come malauguratamente i social media ci abituano a fare), ma dà «a te lettore gli strumenti per farti una tua idea», condividendo la sua conoscenza, esplicitando le ragioni su cui si fonda il suo giudizio, e soprattutto cercando di trarre un senso dall’opera di cui si sta parlando. Ed è esattamente ciò che questo critico serio non manca di fare negli scritti raccolti in ognuna delle tre sezioni tematiche di cui si compone Estasi e terrore: «Miti di ieri », dedicata a testi antichi e alla vita dei loro autori, «Miti in technicolor», su film e serie televisive, e «Miti d’oggi», che accoglie temi contemporanei e di stampo autobiografico. Che si tratti del rapporto fra teatro tragico e spazio pubblico nell’antica Atene o della parabola artistica di Almodóvar dagli esordi fino a Volver, della persistenza del mito del Titanic nella cultura contemporanea o di una relazione epistolare intrattenuta per un decennio con la scrittrice Mary Renault, o di qualunque altro tema, Mendelsohn ha sempre qualcosa di nuovo da insegnarci, e riesce a trovare un significato profondo e sorprendente laddove forse non avevamo mai pensato di cercarlo. E allora questi scritti, che si potrebbero anche leggere come frammenti di un’eclettica e proteiforme autobiografia intellettuale, si impongono soprattutto come luminosi esempi di quello che andrebbe considerato un genere letterario a sé stante: la recensione seria, ovvero quella scritta da chi, ogni volta che entra in un cinema o in un teatro, ogni volta che apre un libro o ascolta un brano musicale, sente che «c’è in gioco qualcosa di straordinariamente importante».
394 pages, Hardcover
First published October 8, 2019
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1013 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Mendelsohn
46 books432 followersDaniel Mendelsohn is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large. His books include The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, and, most recently, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
March 15, 2020
Originally published over at my blog, The Grimoire Reliquary.
I don’t remember how I came across Ecstasy and Terror but I knew when I read its blurb that I would love it. Having read every one of the essays in this collection, I’ve found myself not only loving it but hungry for more of Mendelsohn’s writing. This anthology by Mendelsohn(who is Editor at Large over at the excellent New York Review of Books) has the apt subtitle From the Greeks to Game of Thrones, which might as well have added the following two words: And Beyond, and would still have been every bit as true.
Mendelsohn’s most interesting and illuminating essays draw connections to Ancient Greece and parallels to modern times; the first section, Ancients sees him exploring tragedies such as Euipides’ Bacchae and Sophocles’ Antigone, the role of the poet Sappho and her sexuality in Greek culture, the place of the Aeneid in modern society and the links between JFK’s assassination and Greek myth.
Following up is the weakest of the three sections, Moderns, which is by no means dull reading; it’s that some of the essays here speak of novels whose themes and problems hardly ever interested me. And yet Mendelsohn’s exceptional skill as a critic offers plenty to enjoy in “The Women and the Thrones: George R. R. Martin’s Feminist Epic on TV” and in “The Robots are Winning!: Homer, Ex Machina and Her“. Equally captivating was a review of an epistolary novel looking at the first emperor of Rome, Augustus. The remaining essays, while interesting to read due to Daniel’s ready supply of wit, left less of an impression, perhaps because the works examined by him pose little intrest to me at this time.
The third and smallest of the sections, titled Personals, I found as fascinating as Mendelsohn’s takes on Classical culture. Whether he spoke of his correspondence with Mary Renault, a lesbian author of historical fiction through his childhood – how her novels affected him and made him fully accept his sexuality – and early adulthood in the 70s or about the role and responsibility of the critic in the excellent piece “A Critic’s Manifesto”, this last section is stellar. It gave me a glimpse into a man whose work I’ve come to admire over the 377 pages of this remarkable collection and for that, I am all too happy.
What is there left to say? Plenty – I could speak about each of the essays, and you know what? I think I’ll make a weekly column out of it. I won’t talk about each and every one of these since, as I said before, I don’t have nearly enough to say about all of them. I’d encourage you to read Ecstasy and Terror for yourself, but in case you need more convincing, I will share with you a few of my favourite essays – what they are about, why they left an impression and what they taught me; because if there’s one thing I cannot stress enough, it is this: You will learn a lot from Daniel Mendelsohn.
Rating this anthology is a task I’m woefully underqualified for, and yet – since I will be cross-posting this to Goodreads, this is an unequivocal 5 out of 5 Stars. I cannot recommend it enough.
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I don’t remember how I came across Ecstasy and Terror but I knew when I read its blurb that I would love it. Having read every one of the essays in this collection, I’ve found myself not only loving it but hungry for more of Mendelsohn’s writing. This anthology by Mendelsohn(who is Editor at Large over at the excellent New York Review of Books) has the apt subtitle From the Greeks to Game of Thrones, which might as well have added the following two words: And Beyond, and would still have been every bit as true.
Mendelsohn’s most interesting and illuminating essays draw connections to Ancient Greece and parallels to modern times; the first section, Ancients sees him exploring tragedies such as Euipides’ Bacchae and Sophocles’ Antigone, the role of the poet Sappho and her sexuality in Greek culture, the place of the Aeneid in modern society and the links between JFK’s assassination and Greek myth.
Following up is the weakest of the three sections, Moderns, which is by no means dull reading; it’s that some of the essays here speak of novels whose themes and problems hardly ever interested me. And yet Mendelsohn’s exceptional skill as a critic offers plenty to enjoy in “The Women and the Thrones: George R. R. Martin’s Feminist Epic on TV” and in “The Robots are Winning!: Homer, Ex Machina and Her“. Equally captivating was a review of an epistolary novel looking at the first emperor of Rome, Augustus. The remaining essays, while interesting to read due to Daniel’s ready supply of wit, left less of an impression, perhaps because the works examined by him pose little intrest to me at this time.
The third and smallest of the sections, titled Personals, I found as fascinating as Mendelsohn’s takes on Classical culture. Whether he spoke of his correspondence with Mary Renault, a lesbian author of historical fiction through his childhood – how her novels affected him and made him fully accept his sexuality – and early adulthood in the 70s or about the role and responsibility of the critic in the excellent piece “A Critic’s Manifesto”, this last section is stellar. It gave me a glimpse into a man whose work I’ve come to admire over the 377 pages of this remarkable collection and for that, I am all too happy.
What is there left to say? Plenty – I could speak about each of the essays, and you know what? I think I’ll make a weekly column out of it. I won’t talk about each and every one of these since, as I said before, I don’t have nearly enough to say about all of them. I’d encourage you to read Ecstasy and Terror for yourself, but in case you need more convincing, I will share with you a few of my favourite essays – what they are about, why they left an impression and what they taught me; because if there’s one thing I cannot stress enough, it is this: You will learn a lot from Daniel Mendelsohn.
Rating this anthology is a task I’m woefully underqualified for, and yet – since I will be cross-posting this to Goodreads, this is an unequivocal 5 out of 5 Stars. I cannot recommend it enough.
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February 20, 2021
Daniel Mendelsohn is a writer and critic whose essays in this latest collection have appeared mostly in The New York Review of Books, where he is an editor, and in The New Yorker. Or else they first served as Introductions to translations, as the essays on Aristophanes or the "Introduction" to his own translation of the Collected Poems of Constantine Cavafy, the Greek poet whose great themes were ancient Greece and Rome. Entitled "Ancients," the 1st section of essays explore Sappho, Euripides, the Parthenon, and the Aeneid to get to Cavafy. What Mendelsohn is very good at is drawing parallels between the ancient world and ours. He's persuasive in making the connection between how governments from that of Augustus in Rome to the early United States referenced the Aeneid. And he explains how like the JFK funeral and national mourning were to that of epic mourning in the Iliad.
Another cross-pollenization, the blending of Herodotus with the writings of Ingmar Bergman, comes from the middle section, called "Moderns." It's reviews of contemporaries and includes essays on Henry Roth, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Karl Ove Knausgard. He continues paralleling his subjects with those in the past: Knausgard with Proust, naturally, but he also claims the current trend in robotic themes in film--Blade Runner, A. I., and Her--link with Homer. This section also contains an essay on Game of Thrones and a savage review of Hanya Yamagihara's novel of victimhood, A Little Life.
Mendelsohn saves the best for last. He concludes with 4 personal essays concerning his development as a writer and his maturity into homosexuality. His account of his epistolary relationship with Mary Renault is fascinating. He reports on a trip through Eastern Europe in search of Holocaust sites which evoked Stendhal. The final essay attempts to define the role of the critic in our current literary age while including comments on the explosion of reviewing online by ordinary readers who too casually sow stars or tomatoes like seed. He almost talked me out of writing this review.
Another cross-pollenization, the blending of Herodotus with the writings of Ingmar Bergman, comes from the middle section, called "Moderns." It's reviews of contemporaries and includes essays on Henry Roth, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Karl Ove Knausgard. He continues paralleling his subjects with those in the past: Knausgard with Proust, naturally, but he also claims the current trend in robotic themes in film--Blade Runner, A. I., and Her--link with Homer. This section also contains an essay on Game of Thrones and a savage review of Hanya Yamagihara's novel of victimhood, A Little Life.
Mendelsohn saves the best for last. He concludes with 4 personal essays concerning his development as a writer and his maturity into homosexuality. His account of his epistolary relationship with Mary Renault is fascinating. He reports on a trip through Eastern Europe in search of Holocaust sites which evoked Stendhal. The final essay attempts to define the role of the critic in our current literary age while including comments on the explosion of reviewing online by ordinary readers who too casually sow stars or tomatoes like seed. He almost talked me out of writing this review.
December 27, 2019
A long time ago in a galaxy so far away its light is yet to reach Earth, I briefly dated a woman who loved opera. I have little interest in the genre but when I listened to her describe her favorites, I wanted to see them and feel what she felt. I feel the same regarding Daniel Mendelsohn, who has broadened my perspective, made me consider things I’d never considered before, and reconsider things that I thought I knew.
I imagine I first came across the author in the New York Review of Books but I don’t recall with any certainty. Regardless of where I met Mendelsohn, it led me to his first two essay collections: Waiting for the Barbarians and How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken.
This third is recommended as strongly as I would those. It’s divided into three broadly linked parts. “Ancients” collects essays dealing with our Graeco-Roman heritage and its continued relevance. “Moderns” focuses on modern culture, though Mendelsohn can’t resist bringing in the occasional reference to Homer or Augustus. “Personals” are four autobiographical pieces and one apologia for the critic’s art. The author’s interests and piercing intellect range across all media – literature, theater, art, movies & TV, and politics. And because he takes his critical role seriously, he brings his passion and erudition to everything he publishes.
As an example, I would point to “Reading the Aeneid in the Twenty-First Century.” I remember having to teach the Aeneid as a TA. I hated it because I never liked or (more importantly) appreciated the text. How different those sessions might have been (and more profitable for my hapless students) if I had had the kind of guidance that the author’s essay gives. I’m almost convinced to dig up a decent translation and read it again:
Similarly, Mendelsohn almost – almost – makes me want to reread the extant volumes of Martins’ Song of Ice & Fire after reading “The Women and the Thrones.”
In “Homer, Ex Machine, and Her”, Mendelsohn raises the point that the tables appear to have turned between human and machine: As I watched that scene [in reference to the film Her], it occurred to me that in the entertainments of the pre-smartphone era, it was the machines, like Rachael in Blade Runner and David in A.I., who yearned fervently to be ‘unique,’ to be more than mechanical playthings, more than merely interchangeable objects. You have to wonder what Her says about the present moment – when so many of us are, indeed, ‘in love’ with our devices, unable to put down our iPhones during dinner, glued to screens of all sizes, endlessly distracted by electronic pings and buzzers – that in the latest incarnation of the robot myth, it’s the people who seem blandly interchangeable and the machines who have all the personality. (pp. 263-4)
And in reference to Ex Machina: “The film’s final moments show Ava engaged in a reverse striptease, slowly hiding away her mechanical nakedness, covering up the titanium and the cables as she prepares to enter the real world. The scene suggests that there’s another anxiety lurking in Garland’s film. Could this remarkably quiet work be a parable about the desire for a return to ‘reality’ in science-fiction filmmaking – about the desire for humanizing a genre whose technology has evolved so greatly that it often eschews human actors, to say nothing of human feeling, altogether? Ex Machina, like Her and all their predecessors going back to 2001, is about machines that develop human qualities: emotions, sneakiness, a higher consciousness, the ability to love, and so forth. But by this point you have to wonder whether that’s a kind of narrative reaction formation – whether the real concern, one that’s been growing in the four decades since the advent of the personal computer, is that we are the ones who have undergone an evolutionary change: that in our lives and, more and more, in our art, we are in danger of losing our humanity, of becoming indistinguishable from our gadgets.” (pp. 266-7)
“A Critic’s Manifesto” explains why a critic is critical to understanding the role and meaning of culture in our lives: “The role of the critic, I repeat, is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” (p. 373)
This collection and anything written by Mendelsohn is unreservedly recommended. Why aren’t you rushing to the bookstore or getting online to get a copy?
I imagine I first came across the author in the New York Review of Books but I don’t recall with any certainty. Regardless of where I met Mendelsohn, it led me to his first two essay collections: Waiting for the Barbarians and How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken.
This third is recommended as strongly as I would those. It’s divided into three broadly linked parts. “Ancients” collects essays dealing with our Graeco-Roman heritage and its continued relevance. “Moderns” focuses on modern culture, though Mendelsohn can’t resist bringing in the occasional reference to Homer or Augustus. “Personals” are four autobiographical pieces and one apologia for the critic’s art. The author’s interests and piercing intellect range across all media – literature, theater, art, movies & TV, and politics. And because he takes his critical role seriously, he brings his passion and erudition to everything he publishes.
As an example, I would point to “Reading the Aeneid in the Twenty-First Century.” I remember having to teach the Aeneid as a TA. I hated it because I never liked or (more importantly) appreciated the text. How different those sessions might have been (and more profitable for my hapless students) if I had had the kind of guidance that the author’s essay gives. I’m almost convinced to dig up a decent translation and read it again:
“Months later I was back home teaching Greek and Roman classics again, it occurred to me that the difficulties we have with Aeneas and his epic cease to be difficulties once you think of him not as a hero but as a type we’re all too familiar with: a survivor, a person so fractured by the horrors of the past that he can hold himself together only by an unnatural effort of will, someone who has as little of his history left that the only thing that gets him through the present is a numbed sense of duty to a barely discernible future that can justify every kind of deprivation. It would be hard to think of a more modern figure.
“Or, indeed, a more modern story. What is the Aeneid about? It is about a tiny band of outcasts, the survivors of a terrible persecution. It is about how these survivors – clinging to a divine assurance that an unknown and faraway land will become their new home – arduously cross the seas, determined to refashion themselves as a new people, a nation of victors rather than victims. It is about how, when they finally get there, they find their new homeland inhabited by locals who have no invention of making way for them. It is about how this geopolitical tragedy generates new wards, wars that will, in turn, trigger further conflicts: bella horrida bella. It is about how such conflicts leave those involved in them morally unrecognizable, even to themselves. This is a story both the Old and New Worlds know too well; and Virgil was the first to tell it. Whatever it meant in the past, and however it discomfits the present, the Aeneid, alas, always anticipated the future.” (pp. 117-8)
Similarly, Mendelsohn almost – almost – makes me want to reread the extant volumes of Martins’ Song of Ice & Fire after reading “The Women and the Thrones.”
In “Homer, Ex Machine, and Her”, Mendelsohn raises the point that the tables appear to have turned between human and machine: As I watched that scene [in reference to the film Her], it occurred to me that in the entertainments of the pre-smartphone era, it was the machines, like Rachael in Blade Runner and David in A.I., who yearned fervently to be ‘unique,’ to be more than mechanical playthings, more than merely interchangeable objects. You have to wonder what Her says about the present moment – when so many of us are, indeed, ‘in love’ with our devices, unable to put down our iPhones during dinner, glued to screens of all sizes, endlessly distracted by electronic pings and buzzers – that in the latest incarnation of the robot myth, it’s the people who seem blandly interchangeable and the machines who have all the personality. (pp. 263-4)
And in reference to Ex Machina: “The film’s final moments show Ava engaged in a reverse striptease, slowly hiding away her mechanical nakedness, covering up the titanium and the cables as she prepares to enter the real world. The scene suggests that there’s another anxiety lurking in Garland’s film. Could this remarkably quiet work be a parable about the desire for a return to ‘reality’ in science-fiction filmmaking – about the desire for humanizing a genre whose technology has evolved so greatly that it often eschews human actors, to say nothing of human feeling, altogether? Ex Machina, like Her and all their predecessors going back to 2001, is about machines that develop human qualities: emotions, sneakiness, a higher consciousness, the ability to love, and so forth. But by this point you have to wonder whether that’s a kind of narrative reaction formation – whether the real concern, one that’s been growing in the four decades since the advent of the personal computer, is that we are the ones who have undergone an evolutionary change: that in our lives and, more and more, in our art, we are in danger of losing our humanity, of becoming indistinguishable from our gadgets.” (pp. 266-7)
“A Critic’s Manifesto” explains why a critic is critical to understanding the role and meaning of culture in our lives: “The role of the critic, I repeat, is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” (p. 373)
This collection and anything written by Mendelsohn is unreservedly recommended. Why aren’t you rushing to the bookstore or getting online to get a copy?
January 23, 2021
A collection of essays ranging from what ancient literature may have to say about modern moments (JFK, the unclaimed body of terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev), reviews of books and poetry (with a scathing critique of A Little Life, which I particularly enjoyed), and finally some touching personal essays. Living in Charlottesville, I enjoyed his piece about his long friendship with the so-called “countess of Charlottesville,” and I was also moved by his essay about his multi-decades correspondence with novelist Mary Renault. It is not an especially outstanding collection, but it is solid and well-written.
August 11, 2024
Non avrei comprato questo libro se non avessi letto l’entusiastica recensione di Alessandro Piperno sul Corriere. Non l’avrei comprato perché l’idea di un libro costituito da una raccolta di recensioni critiche mi dà in genere l’impressione di una pubblicazione costruita per sfruttare il nome dell’autore. In realtà questi scritti occasionali contengono delle vere e proprie gemme (soprattutto nella prima parte, ma non solo.
Si rimane estasiati dalle pagine altissime dei saggi “Estasi e terrore” e “Un fallimento di proporzioni epiche?” Ma altri scritti risultano folgoranti per lo humor brillante (“Una cotta non ricambiata”) e altri ancora commoventi per la connessione tra mondo letterario e mondo vissuto dallo stesso DM. Particolarmente degne di nota sono anche alcune stroncature inaspettate (come quella di “Una vita come tante”).
Alcuni saggi sono magari meno felici (soprattutto nella parte mediana del libro: ho trovato un po’ stucchevole il saggio su Almodovar, per esempio). I motivi di interesse sono però nettamente prevalenti.
Si rimane estasiati dalle pagine altissime dei saggi “Estasi e terrore” e “Un fallimento di proporzioni epiche?” Ma altri scritti risultano folgoranti per lo humor brillante (“Una cotta non ricambiata”) e altri ancora commoventi per la connessione tra mondo letterario e mondo vissuto dallo stesso DM. Particolarmente degne di nota sono anche alcune stroncature inaspettate (come quella di “Una vita come tante”).
Alcuni saggi sono magari meno felici (soprattutto nella parte mediana del libro: ho trovato un po’ stucchevole il saggio su Almodovar, per esempio). I motivi di interesse sono però nettamente prevalenti.
January 21, 2020
Na het grootscheepse Een Odyssee gidst Mendelsohn ons als essayist op vijftien korte queesten naar uiteenlopende vakgebieden: van robots tot de Titanic. De Amerikaan excelleert wanneer hij via de dichteres Sappho dicht bij zijn beminde Oude Grieken blijft en als hij de jeugdige ontdekking van zijn eigen homoseksualiteit blootlegt. Jammer dat zijn analyses van populaire TV-series en boeken van Hanya Yanagihara en John ‘Stoner’ Williams propvol spoilers zitten en te vaak afdwalen richting -godbetert- recensies.
December 25, 2019
Daniel Mendelsohn is a name that whenever and wherever it appears, I will read what he has written. I know I will get a thoughtful, educated, serious examination of whatever topic, book, film, TV show, whatever it is. I will learn something new, be shown something in a new light, and will seek out new things to read or to look at. This collection comprises primarily essays previously published in the NY Review of Books or the New Yorker; so the material may not be new to subscribers, but many were new to me. And there is not a clinker in the bunch.
A classicist by training, Mendelsohn often manages to tie his ostensible subject (the Boston Marathon bombers, Game of Thrones, robots...) to issues and dramas plumbed back in ancient Greece or Rome, in ways that enlighten both and serve to underscore the universalities and humanity across the millennia. He is a master (and staunch defender, god love him) of the art of the negative review: even when he is critical, it is expressed with patience, serious attention, concrete examples, and careful reasoning. There is a lovely, poignant piece on his long epistolary relationship with the novelist Mary Renault, whose stories set in the ancient world lit up his attraction to the classics and his sexuality as a teenager. (Sad to say, not ONE of her books is owned by my local affluent, educated, suburban public library, so I must search farther afield.) His lengthy (necessarily...) piece on Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume "autofiction" oeuvre is an insightful consideration of that monument of weirdly compelling (at least some of the time) self-absorption. He concludes, pithily and brilliantly, that Knausgaard (as does Hitler in his own "Struggle") tends to focus entirely on the "I" and the "they" of his writing, leaving no room for "you"... the reader. The final piece, "A Critic's Manifesto," made me want to stand up and cheer: everything I had intuited, sought, and admired in Mendelsohn's work turns out to be exactly what he aims and strives for. Well done, sir. Please hurry up and write more. My brain is waiting for a blast of oxygen.
A classicist by training, Mendelsohn often manages to tie his ostensible subject (the Boston Marathon bombers, Game of Thrones, robots...) to issues and dramas plumbed back in ancient Greece or Rome, in ways that enlighten both and serve to underscore the universalities and humanity across the millennia. He is a master (and staunch defender, god love him) of the art of the negative review: even when he is critical, it is expressed with patience, serious attention, concrete examples, and careful reasoning. There is a lovely, poignant piece on his long epistolary relationship with the novelist Mary Renault, whose stories set in the ancient world lit up his attraction to the classics and his sexuality as a teenager. (Sad to say, not ONE of her books is owned by my local affluent, educated, suburban public library, so I must search farther afield.) His lengthy (necessarily...) piece on Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume "autofiction" oeuvre is an insightful consideration of that monument of weirdly compelling (at least some of the time) self-absorption. He concludes, pithily and brilliantly, that Knausgaard (as does Hitler in his own "Struggle") tends to focus entirely on the "I" and the "they" of his writing, leaving no room for "you"... the reader. The final piece, "A Critic's Manifesto," made me want to stand up and cheer: everything I had intuited, sought, and admired in Mendelsohn's work turns out to be exactly what he aims and strives for. Well done, sir. Please hurry up and write more. My brain is waiting for a blast of oxygen.
October 17, 2020
This is an uneven collection, but it is united by one fact--that Mendelsohn is a reactionary critic. The first section, "Ancients," is smart, and relatively well-done, in that Mendelsohn offers us glimpses of his own training in Classics, and uses that to navigate the works he is discussing. There is something of his being "one-note" in that his best criticism links Greek or classical tropes to contemporary cultural production, but this is forgivable as long as it's done well.
In the second section, this is not done well, when it is done at all. It also holds the misogynistic review of Hanya Yanagihara's book A Little Life, one whose misogyny is no doubt affected by racism as well. That Mendelsohn uses this review to opine on the sensitivity and victimhood of contemporary students--well, that's not surprising at this point, is it?
The personal essay section is fine. It wasn't particularly illuminating, but it was pleasant enough to read. I do spiritedly agree with the Critic's Manifesto, though I don't think Mendelsohn always abides by it.
In the second section, this is not done well, when it is done at all. It also holds the misogynistic review of Hanya Yanagihara's book A Little Life, one whose misogyny is no doubt affected by racism as well. That Mendelsohn uses this review to opine on the sensitivity and victimhood of contemporary students--well, that's not surprising at this point, is it?
The personal essay section is fine. It wasn't particularly illuminating, but it was pleasant enough to read. I do spiritedly agree with the Critic's Manifesto, though I don't think Mendelsohn always abides by it.
June 14, 2020
Fascinerende en vaak persoonlijke essays over literatuur, film en televisie.
August 8, 2020
A great collection of essays that illustrate convincingly that the past is not even past
November 18, 2021
I don’t know if I’ve read a book of essays before, but this collection, each of which appeared first in The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books (two of my favorite publications), hit a lot of my sweet spots. Fellow Classics majors may have detected my over-long sentence as evidence that I read a lot of Greek epic poetry when I was young and learning to write. And Daniel Mendelsohn was a Classics major too, and he even got a PhD, for which I praise him because I just couldn’t do it myself. He has Classical takes on modern creativity from a recent translation of the Aeneid to Blade Runner, which I greatly appreciated because it touched on so many themes that I had already silently perceived, although he beautifully articulated them and fleshed them out in ways I never could. I also enjoyed reading about his correspondence with Mary Renault- what gay Classicist of our generation could not? I would actually have given it 4.5 stars; there were a few essays I might have altered or left out, such as the second to last about his French friend- seemed a bit naive to me- but I understand that the nature of criticism is that not everybody will agree with each other- which he outlines beautifully in the last essay (which I might have moved to the front of the book?). Anyway, I loved it, and I encourage it for lapsed Classicists like me.
January 12, 2023
It is often a challenge to review a collection of essays because, almost inevitably, you will react differently to the various pieces. And my challenge complicated in this case because I started the book several months ago....
A collection of essays doesn't command your attention the same way a novel does.
There were some pieces here I found trying to read. It seems those were mostly pieces about books the author also felt trying to read.
But one particular piece, a personal piece stood out to me. And I wonder if it is because of "The American Boy: An Author, a Young Reader, and a Life-Changing Correspondence" that I readily give this book five stars. Daniel Mendelsohn and I are very similar men, but have had very different experiences, both gay Jews who grew up in American suburbs, only a few years apart in age, who loved to read and had literary aspirations.
In his early adolescence, that Daniel like me, discovered an author whose works would shape his life, rushing to the library after finishing one book to check out the next said writer wrote, later buying the books. Only Mary Renault was alive when he discovered her. J.R.R. Tolkien had died by the time I discovered him.
It was with that author of historical fiction that Mendelsohn began his life-changing correspondence. And as I read and delighted in hearing his story of their (literary) relationship, I wondered how my own life would have changed had I had such an exchange in my teen years...
I can't answer that.
But I can appreciate this: at the same time as that essay re-opened one of my deepest wounds, I felt a thrill of joy for Daniel Mendelsohn. He had something I would have wanted. And yet I didn't feel any envy. If Mendelsohn hadn't corresponded with Mary Renault, I might not have been reading this book (as well as two other works of his I very much enjoyed).
Not just that.
There is a sense of gratitude that pervades these pages. Daniel Mendelsohn appreciates how much the people he has met, the men and women who have mentored him, have shaped him as a writer and a man. And since he closes the book with his "Personals," he leaves you, well, at least he left me, with a warm feeling. He's not just a good writer, he's a good man.
A collection of essays doesn't command your attention the same way a novel does.
There were some pieces here I found trying to read. It seems those were mostly pieces about books the author also felt trying to read.
But one particular piece, a personal piece stood out to me. And I wonder if it is because of "The American Boy: An Author, a Young Reader, and a Life-Changing Correspondence" that I readily give this book five stars. Daniel Mendelsohn and I are very similar men, but have had very different experiences, both gay Jews who grew up in American suburbs, only a few years apart in age, who loved to read and had literary aspirations.
In his early adolescence, that Daniel like me, discovered an author whose works would shape his life, rushing to the library after finishing one book to check out the next said writer wrote, later buying the books. Only Mary Renault was alive when he discovered her. J.R.R. Tolkien had died by the time I discovered him.
It was with that author of historical fiction that Mendelsohn began his life-changing correspondence. And as I read and delighted in hearing his story of their (literary) relationship, I wondered how my own life would have changed had I had such an exchange in my teen years...
I can't answer that.
But I can appreciate this: at the same time as that essay re-opened one of my deepest wounds, I felt a thrill of joy for Daniel Mendelsohn. He had something I would have wanted. And yet I didn't feel any envy. If Mendelsohn hadn't corresponded with Mary Renault, I might not have been reading this book (as well as two other works of his I very much enjoyed).
Not just that.
There is a sense of gratitude that pervades these pages. Daniel Mendelsohn appreciates how much the people he has met, the men and women who have mentored him, have shaped him as a writer and a man. And since he closes the book with his "Personals," he leaves you, well, at least he left me, with a warm feeling. He's not just a good writer, he's a good man.
February 19, 2020
Highlights:
• the long and lovely essay on Mendelsohn's teenage pen-pal correspondence with Mary Renault, which ties together most of the themes that run through this essay collection: ancient history, contemporary fiction, and Mendelsohn's identity as a gay man. As he says, "The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron."
• intelligent criticism of my dearest Patrick Leigh Fermor is always welcome to me. I also enjoyed the essay on Brideshead Revisited —perhaps Mendelsohn ought to write more frequently about English authors of the Waugh/Leigh Fermor generation
• nearly all of the essays in the first section, "Ancients," in which Mendelsohn discusses Classical topics (Greek tragedies, Sappho, The Aeneid , the Parthenon) in a lively and engaging way for a contemporary audience, are terrific
Lowlights:
• the final "Ancients" essay, on Constantinos P. Cavafy, is written in a tendentious and pompous style unlike that of the rest of the book
• I thought I would love the autobiographical essay "The Countess and the Schoolboy," which begins with the unforgettable sentence "In the early spring of 1985, after failing miserably at the first and only regular job that I have ever tried to hold, I left New York City to return to the Southern town where I’d gone to college, and was there rescued from depression, or worse, by a French lady I knew who used to party with liveried monkeys," but it doesn't go as deep as the Renault essay and sort of pales beside it.
• the long and lovely essay on Mendelsohn's teenage pen-pal correspondence with Mary Renault, which ties together most of the themes that run through this essay collection: ancient history, contemporary fiction, and Mendelsohn's identity as a gay man. As he says, "The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron."
• intelligent criticism of my dearest Patrick Leigh Fermor is always welcome to me. I also enjoyed the essay on Brideshead Revisited —perhaps Mendelsohn ought to write more frequently about English authors of the Waugh/Leigh Fermor generation
• nearly all of the essays in the first section, "Ancients," in which Mendelsohn discusses Classical topics (Greek tragedies, Sappho, The Aeneid , the Parthenon) in a lively and engaging way for a contemporary audience, are terrific
Lowlights:
• the final "Ancients" essay, on Constantinos P. Cavafy, is written in a tendentious and pompous style unlike that of the rest of the book
• I thought I would love the autobiographical essay "The Countess and the Schoolboy," which begins with the unforgettable sentence "In the early spring of 1985, after failing miserably at the first and only regular job that I have ever tried to hold, I left New York City to return to the Southern town where I’d gone to college, and was there rescued from depression, or worse, by a French lady I knew who used to party with liveried monkeys," but it doesn't go as deep as the Renault essay and sort of pales beside it.
August 30, 2020
I am a fan of Daniel Mendelsohn. I'd say his work is based on empathy. He is humane and compassionate. He is honest. His criticism is contains open reflections on his own life experience. His writing always sits on a foundation of hard work, scholarship, depth of knowledge, and sensitivity. His knowledge of Greek and Roman world comes from long study and a career in teaching at Bard College. Mendelsohn's outlook is sometimes that of an opera lover. He is not scared by exaggeration or the offbeat. Rather, he finds meaning in it. In this respect, see the essay on Game of Thrones. He also sees meaning in literature arising out of personal experience -- like that of his students or in his own family. In this respect, read his book on the Odyssey.
The essays in Ecstasy and Terror do not disappoint. The piece on Cavafy is particularly nice for me in how Mendelsohn can see the whole man (insofar as that is possible) -- the late maturity of his poetry, the meaningfulness of his sometimes obscure topics, the humdrum of his daily life and job, the hidden life. But Mendelsohn has also made me want to read Knausgard's My Struggle. And I would love to test my reading of Knausgard (whose journalism I have loved) against Mendelsohn's own views. (Note that Mendelsohn does not shy away from any topic, witness his appreciation of Knausgard's long passage on Hitler's Mein Kampf or his review of The Kindly Ones which is sadly not included in this collection). But there is more: His great reviews of the robot movies like Ex Machina and of Game of Thrones.
Check it out!
The essays in Ecstasy and Terror do not disappoint. The piece on Cavafy is particularly nice for me in how Mendelsohn can see the whole man (insofar as that is possible) -- the late maturity of his poetry, the meaningfulness of his sometimes obscure topics, the humdrum of his daily life and job, the hidden life. But Mendelsohn has also made me want to read Knausgard's My Struggle. And I would love to test my reading of Knausgard (whose journalism I have loved) against Mendelsohn's own views. (Note that Mendelsohn does not shy away from any topic, witness his appreciation of Knausgard's long passage on Hitler's Mein Kampf or his review of The Kindly Ones which is sadly not included in this collection). But there is more: His great reviews of the robot movies like Ex Machina and of Game of Thrones.
Check it out!
November 15, 2025
Overall very enjoyable! I was surprised when I laughed out loud multiple times at various moments of snark. While this collection was published in 2019 (over half a decade ago!) I found that many of the essay were still especially prescient today. For instance, all I could think of while reading "The Robots are Winning!: Homer, Ex Machina, and Her" was Mendelsohn would say of our current AI climate.
Similarly, I was very interested in his review of "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara (Smithie shoutout!) which was originally written in 2015. I first started hearing about the book around 2020 when it picked up traction on Booktok and over the course of about six months went from seeing nonstop, effusive, if tearful, praise of the novel to seeing the conversation turn to a debate of whether "A Little Life" was just dressed up trauma porn. Turns out Mendelsohn has been arguing the latter long before the book-tockers. I'm sure it must have been deliberate, but I appreciated the homage to the infamous cover of Yanagihara's novel in the cover of Ecstasy and Terror.
Similarly, I was very interested in his review of "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara (Smithie shoutout!) which was originally written in 2015. I first started hearing about the book around 2020 when it picked up traction on Booktok and over the course of about six months went from seeing nonstop, effusive, if tearful, praise of the novel to seeing the conversation turn to a debate of whether "A Little Life" was just dressed up trauma porn. Turns out Mendelsohn has been arguing the latter long before the book-tockers. I'm sure it must have been deliberate, but I appreciated the homage to the infamous cover of Yanagihara's novel in the cover of Ecstasy and Terror.
June 26, 2024
While not all of these essays were of interest, I discover books like this so seldom that I read most of them quite closely. Mendelsohn is a classicist whose PhD is on Greek tragedy. He translates works from Greek. He writes essays and critical reviews of books and films and is editor or chief contributor to a wide range of publications. Look him up.
The essays here range from discussions of tragedy to a mini-bio of an old friend. He writes of learning about how to be gay and his long correspondence with the novelist Mary Renault. One essay is about Game of Thrones.
I liked most of this very much although I know nothing about Cavafy, who is one of Medelsohn's specialities so I skipped ahead. My only complaint about the book is its cover which is a closeup of a marble called "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa". It's beautiful but with the book title directly beneath it, I felt I had to turn the book face down when strangers were around.
The essays here range from discussions of tragedy to a mini-bio of an old friend. He writes of learning about how to be gay and his long correspondence with the novelist Mary Renault. One essay is about Game of Thrones.
I liked most of this very much although I know nothing about Cavafy, who is one of Medelsohn's specialities so I skipped ahead. My only complaint about the book is its cover which is a closeup of a marble called "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa". It's beautiful but with the book title directly beneath it, I felt I had to turn the book face down when strangers were around.
August 29, 2024
A sparkling collection of essays, mostly of an Hellenistic bent. I remember having read several of them in “The New Yorker”; particularly the essays on Patrick Leigh Fermor (I wish Mendelsohn could have brought himself to refer to his subject as “Paddy” instead of constantly referring to him as “Leigh Fermor”), and his article on the Parthenon, which kept bringing to my mind that time on “QI” when Stephen Fry fought an epic struggle with the phrase “They say of the Acropolis where the Parthenon is…”, which phrase prima facie actually makes no sense, but was five minutes of belting television.
February 12, 2025
As soon as I started reading this essay collection, I could not put it down. The breath and depth of Daniel Mendelsohn's knowledge of his subjects is impressive: from his discussion of the modern relevance of the Aeneid to his insights regarding the decline of meaningful judgment and "serious engagement" in current cultural criticism. His writing is both edifying and engaging. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in understanding culture whether it be classical or modern (preferably both).
February 29, 2020
A collection of reviews of movies and books. Thought-provoking, but not exactly light reading. I think I'd have liked it a lot more if I were not always trying to read it in bed when already exhausted.
June 2, 2020
Having read Mendelsohn's Odyssey, I wanted to see more of what he had to say. These essays are consistently thoughtful, not to say brilliant, and I found myself either motivated to read something new, revisit something I read years ago, or in one case avoid an author altogether.
August 15, 2025
Interesting analyses of movies, tv-series and book. My favourite chapter was the last as it talks about Mendelsohn's personal connection to Mary Renault, detailing his correspondence with her as he comes of age
February 12, 2020
This book of essays on cultural topics ancient and modern, from the Parthenon to the Game of Thrones, is educational, stimulating, thought-provoking, and a pure pleasure to read!
Read
February 23, 2020So very good. Every essay is like going to class and being treated to a witty, erudite, and personal lecture from a professor who really knows what he's doing. Highly, highly recommend.
March 29, 2020
I can’t remember the last time I learned so much from a book/collection. Excuse me as I’m now off to seek out and read anything and everything Mendelsohn has ever written.
April 18, 2020
I expected this book to be good, but remain surprised at just how good this book is. It surprises me to see myself rating a book of essays with 5 stars.
The essays in this book touch on subjects ranging from classical Greek subjects (Sappho, the Parthenon, ...) to modern themes such as Bergman, George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones), Blade Runner, and much more. The end of the book contains several essays that are more personally oriented.
What all theses essays have in common is compellingly clear prose and a writer's stance that is very balanced and fair. Even essays that are critical of their subject do so with criticism that discusses positive elements. There were a couple of essays that meant little or nothing to me, but most of the book was educational, entertaining, and insightful. The author is clearly someone with whom one could have very interesting discussions.
The essays in this book touch on subjects ranging from classical Greek subjects (Sappho, the Parthenon, ...) to modern themes such as Bergman, George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones), Blade Runner, and much more. The end of the book contains several essays that are more personally oriented.
What all theses essays have in common is compellingly clear prose and a writer's stance that is very balanced and fair. Even essays that are critical of their subject do so with criticism that discusses positive elements. There were a couple of essays that meant little or nothing to me, but most of the book was educational, entertaining, and insightful. The author is clearly someone with whom one could have very interesting discussions.
August 19, 2020
The essays that I was interested in were great, but the others (only a handful) were a bit too esoteric for me. Well written just the topics sometimes were meh.
December 27, 2022
I vibed with some essays, while others were niche or incredibly specific. Hard to recommend to most people.
August 27, 2023
Onevenwichtige bloemlezing
April 23, 2025
Giuro Daniel questa non è la ennesima vuota e incompetente recensione di una raccolta di saggi critici, ma solo un plauso a quanto sei bravo. Mi servirà a ricordarmi i libri che valgono la pena.
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