How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken

by Daniel Mendelsohn

Whether he's on Broadway or at the movies, considering a new bestseller or revisiting a literary classic, Daniel Mendelsohn's judgments over the past fifteen years have provoked and dazzled with their deep erudition, disarming emotionality, and tart wit. Now How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken reveals all at once the enormous stature of Mendelsohn's achievement and demonstrates why he is considered one of our greatest critics. Writing with a lively intelligence and arresting originality, he brings his distinctive combination of scholarly rigor and conversational ease to bear across eras, cultures, and genres, from Roman games to video games.

His interpretations of our most talked-about films—from the work of Pedro Almodóvar to Brokeback Mountain, from United 93 and World Trade Center to 300, Marie Antoinette, and The Hours—have sparked debate and changed the way we watch movies. Just as stunning and influential are his dispatches on theater and literature, from The Producers to Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, from The Lovely Bones to the works of Harold Pinter. Together these thirty brilliant and engaging essays passionately articulate the themes that have made Daniel Mendelsohn a crucial voice in today's cultural conversation: the aesthetic and indeed political dangers of imposing contemporary attitudes on the great classics; the ruinous effect of sentimentality on the national consciousness in the post-9/11 world; the vital importance of the great literature of the past for a meaningful life in the present.

How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken makes it clear that no other contemporary thinker is as engaged with as many aspects of our culture and its influences as Mendelsohn is, and no one practices the vanishing art of popular criticism with more acuity, humor, and feeling.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Criticism, Literary Criticism, Art, LGBT, Classics

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Daniel 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.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

OK, so why put this on your "must read" list? To start, Mendelsohn is a brilliant critic who writes insightfully and without condescension to author, work or audience (reader, movie-goer, etc.). Even when he utterly demolishes his subject, he never descends to snark or gratuitous sniping. Many times, I got the sense of a man exasperated with how close these artists get to creating something of real meaning/value but keep missing the target.

In his introduction, Mendelsohn explains the criteria by which he judges -

(1) Meaningful coherence of form and content;
(2) Precise employment of detail to support (1);
(3) Vigor and clarity of expression; and
(4) Seriousness of purpose (p. xv)

Quite independent of Mendelsohn, I'm happy (and perhaps a bit smug) to say my own judgments have come around to these selfsame points, even regarding the "brain candy" I may read when the "big issues" get tiresome. I find it nearly impossible to read a book anymore (or watch a movie for that matter) where the author can't write, doesn't take her job seriously, or both - even when it's "just" book #347 in Space Bimbos of the Black Sun series.

Oh, but we live in a "dark age" of culture where far too often we eschew wrestling with real tragedy for sentimentalism; melodrama; and feel-good, Lifetime movie endings. This is a common theme in many of the essays found here, from the first essay on Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones through stagings of Tennessee Williams and Euripides, reviews of Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar, to Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. (Regarding the latter, Mendelsohn compares Stone's film to Aeschylus' The Persians, and makes the point that, even writing of a glorious Hellenic triumph (Marathon & Salamis), the Greek playwright chose to portray the reactions of the Persians, asking his Athenian audience "to think radically, to imagine something outside of their own experience, to situate the feelings they were having just then...in a vaster frame" (p. 452), whereas Stone's "pretty much exclusive emphasis thus far on the `good'...in these entertainments is noteworthy, because it reminds you of the unwillingness to grapple with and acknowledge the larger issues...which has characterized much of the natural response to this pivotal trauma (9/11)." (p. 451))

Mendelsohn has inspired me to try opera - a genre for which I have little liking. I don't know why. I understand neither Italian nor French but it's not like I object to subtitles - I love Hong Kong martial arts flicks. And I dated a woman who adored opera and enthralled me with her enthusiastic descriptions of the medium. Whatever the case, the author's analysis of the Met's recent staging of Lucia di Lammermoor "forced" me to check out a DVD of Joan Sutherland's version from the library, and as I write this review, listen to a CD of Ion Marin's version with Cheryl Studer and Placido Domingo. Who knows where this could lead?

And, having read Mendelsohn's reviews of Troy and Alexander - the recent "epics" based on The Iliad and the life of Alexander the Great - I was again compelled. In this case to add them to my Netflix queue if only to see how badly they failed to capture their subjects. (Mendelsohn includes his review of 300 here as well but there are limits. The trailers were stomach churning enough.)

Lastly, I'm rereading Euripides' Medea in light of Mendelsohn's review of Deborah Warner's "vulgar, loud, and uncomprehending" (p. 418) Broadway staging of the play.

At the risk of spoiling your ability to enjoy guilty pleasures like Stephanie Meyer (as I know a few of my GR friends do :-), I strongly recommend this book to one and all.

[Shannon]

So far this is awesome. I picked it out b/c the title and cover are awesome. The first essay is about The Lovely Bones and I knew how severely he trashed the book would indicate my ability to read the rest of the book. He pretty severely trashed it, I'd say. Pointing out, (accurately, I think) that the book is NOT really about "hard issues" like rape or murder, but about being happy and overcoming grief. Essentially.. sugar coating grief. Which, sas he points out, is useless because people DO grieve when things like the events int he book happen, and it's NOT okay. Ever. He mentioned that the success of the book had more to do with the emotional state that America was in at the time (wanting to be comforted) than the actual literary merit of the book. Because, you know, it basically has none. Anyway. I could go on. But I won't. Kudos to Mendelsohn for seeing the SUCK in The Lovely Bones.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mendelsohn is enjoyable to read because of the skill with which he interweaves his knowledge of classical history and drama with social commentary, while critiquing a particular film, literary work, or theatrical performance. His social commentary in particular adds an element of depth and insight to his work, which seems uncommon amongst most critics and reviewers.

Mendelsohn’s essay,Novel of the Year, is one of the best examples of his ability to methodically expose the sentimentality of a work, which is otherwise held in high esteem by the public and generally regarded as a work of serious purpose. In the essay, Mendelsohn reviews Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones, which – as he points out – sat atop the New York Times bestseller list for five months, remained on the list for more than a year, and sold over a million copies. Mendelsohn also points out that New York Times reviewer, Anna Quindlen, said that Lovely Bones “is destined to be a classic along the lines of To Kill a Mockingbird.” He provides all this information to prove the novel’s strong public appeal and to lay the groundwork for his concluding criticism of the work, as well as his commentary on the public’s reaction to it.

Lovely Bones begins with the rape and murder of a fourteen year old girl, Susie, who, after recounting her rape and murder, then narrates – from Heaven – the attempts of both her family and friends to cope with the aftermath of her death. According to Mendelsohn, the story moves through a series of tragedies on the part of the living (e.g. Susie’s mother abandons her husband and family to pursue a series of sexual affairs, Susie’s father has a heart attack, Susie’s brother has a furious confrontation with his mother, etc.), which all somehow find resolution with the family happily reuniting at the end. Likewise, the novel culminates with Susie briefly leaving Heaven, in order to inhabit the body of her friend Ruth, during sexual intercourse with their mutual childhood friend – who was also Susie’s high school crush – Ray.

At the end of his essay, Mendelsohn offers the following critique:

“Sebold’s novel, again and again offers healing with no real mourning, and prefers to offer clichés, some of them quite puerile, of comfort instead of confrontations with evil, or even with genuinely harrowing grief (pg.10)….The problem, of course, is that it [tragedy] does have to be sad and scary; that you need to experience the badness and fear – as Sebold’s characters, none more than Susie’s herself, never quite manage to do – in order to get to the place that Sebold wants to take you, the locus of healing and closure: in short, to Heaven.” (pg. 12)

Directly after the sentence above, Mendelsohn presents his social commentary and, ultimately, makes his finest points of the entire essay:

“And what a Heaven it is. In the weeks following September 11, there was much dark jocularity at the expense of those Islamic terrorists who, it was said, had volunteered to die in order to enjoy the postmortem favors of numerous virgins in Paradise. But how much more sophisticated, or morally textured, is Sebold’s climactic vision of Heaven, or indeed of death, as the place, or state, that allows you to indulge a recuperative fantasy of great sex?

That for Sebold and her readers Heaven can’t, in fact, wait is symptomatic of a larger cultural dysfunction, one implicit in our ongoing handling of the September 11 disaster. The Lovely Bones appeared just as the anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attack was looming; but by then, we’d already commemorated the terrible day. September 11, 2002 – the first anniversary of the attacks, a day that ought to have marked (as is supposed to be the case with such anniversary rituals) some symbolic coming to terms with what had happened – was not a date for which the American people and its press could patiently wait. Instead, on March 11, 2002, we rushed to celebrate, with all due pomp and gravitas, something called a “six month anniversary.” In its proleptic yearning for relief, and indeed in its emphasis on the bathetic appeal of victimhood, its pseudotherapeutic lingo of healing and its insistence that everything is really OK, that we needn’t really be sad, that nothing is, in the end, really scary, Sebold’s book is indeed timely – is indeed “the novel of the year” – although in ways that none of those now caught up in the glamour of its unprecedentedly high approval ratings might be prepared to imagine.” (pg. 13)

I wrote, what amounts to a very lengthy review of a review within a compilation of reviews (How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken), because, first and foremost, I have too much free time and I am a dork. Secondly, I wrote this review because I am forever in search of art, specifically of the tragic genre, that honestly depicts life in a frequently unforgiving world; and it is my opinion, after reading Mendelsohn’s compilation of essays – which range from critiques of the purpose of violence in Tarantino films to parallels between Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War and America’s Global War on Terror – that Mendelsohn possesses a deep understanding of the true nature of not only tragedy, but also the sublime and the beautiful. If, indeed, you are weary – as I am – of novels, films, or plays that pose as true and serious depictions of tragedy or the beautiful (think: works where the characters miraculously survive a litany of catastrophes only to conclude with the resounding message that, as Mendelsohn puts it, “everything is OK” or “everything somehow works out for the best”), then you will greatly appreciate and enjoy How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken. If nothing else, Mendelsohn will teach you that sentimental works (where, say, a golden retriever somehow survives a swim across a 30,000 foot wide frothing river only to safely fall into the arms of his joyful and relieved owners, where a blissful exchange of tongue-lapping kisses and vigorous petting ensues) certainly are not without their place in the hierarchy of entertainment, but they ought not be mistaken for serious portrayals of art and certainly not tragedy.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, this isn't a literary novel, but it includes REVIEWS of a number of literary novels, together with films and theater performances (and even an opera!) Most appeared in the NY Review of Books. I really enjoy Mendelsohn's writing - he is incredibly erudite but wears it lightly. He writes in a dry, conversational tone which is ironic without being snarky. He has a wonderful ability to be critical (sometimes deeply, fiercely critical) in a respectful way -- to take issue with some fundamental aspect of a book or artwork, yet not demolish the writer/artist.

And when something deserves demolition, he does let fly... most of his demolishing energy is saved for theatrical performances and films, where he can brilliantly explain what's wrong with an interpretation/adaptation and why it doesn't work and why it MATTERS that it doesn't work. (I'm thinking of his review of the Met "Lucia di Lammermoor," which showed deep respect for the composer and the opera's expressive style, and explained why the production betrayed the piece by not trusting the style and undermining it... also his review of several Oscar Wilde films including "Wilde," "An Ideal Husband" and "The Importance of Being Ernest".)

And then the most fun, and the closest to being exhilarating bitch-fests, are the reviews of bloated pseudo-epic films like "Troy" and "300." He just jumps in with his classicist guns blazing and explains why 2 hours of sweaty men in armor bashing each other does not suffice to make an "epic". Very entertaining - and you learn something about Aristotle along the way!

Admittedly there is a certain "shooting fish in a barrel" quality to his criticisms of "Troy" and "300" and even of novels like "The Lovely Bones." They're not really meant to stand up to such informed and passionate scrutiny. And the book probably won't age well, because many of the things he reviewed have already proved ephemeral. I'm glad I read it now, while many of the books and films were still available in my memory! A very inspiring stylist and thinker.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely not a quick read; it went slowly for me both in the sense that I had to read each page relatively slowly, and in the sense that I could not read it all in one go, but had to break it up periodically. The reason that it is slow, though, is because of how much Mendelsohn has to say, and how many things he has to say it about, and how much work the reader has to do to keep up with him. There are a lot of ideas in this book, and few of them are simple; the arguments he makes are complex and subtle and informed by a wide range of sources. There is a little bit of repetitiveness, resulting entirely from the fact that the individual pieces were written years apart; you will hear several times, for instance, about how the characters in Greek tragedy are not supposed to be regular people with who the audience can identify, but instead are there to embody and symbolize bigger, superhuman concepts. That is, however, a pretty useful thing to know, and Mendelsohn is able to apply his considerable knowledge of the classical world to a surprisingly broad stretch of culture. As I said, it is not a quick read, or a light one, but it is worth the work; if you do not feel much smarter after having read this, you are: a) really smart already; b) really dumb; or c) Daniel Mendelsohn.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Mendelsohn's collected essays is like having a conversation with a friend who is way more brilliant than you, but who would never ever make you feel bad about it. On the face of things, Mendelsohn's concern seems to be the classics--even when writing about contemporary novels or film, ancient Greece tends to poke its head in--but in reality, he's much more interested in humanity's defining characteristics: tragedy, heroism, identity, war (it helps that the Greeks wrote about these things, and Mendelsohn is a classicist by training).

The best way to read this: parcel it out. Read his review of The Lovely Bones and then reread that book in his light. Use his writing as an excuse to travel back to things we took for granted; Mendelsohn's reviews almost always defy the conventional wisdom, and their carefully considered ideas illuminate new corners of familiar rooms.

[Peter Vegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't read all the essays in here but those that I did read, I wholeheartedly enjoyed. On Hollywood's take on the Trojan war, Alexander, the Battle of Thermopylae, the "genuis" (sic) of Truman Capote, the realism of dramatizing the tragic events of 9/11 and how these movies represent a failure to look outside the own perspective, ... and some more.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great writer, but he's so whiny. A collection of a critic who likes NOTHING.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the characteristics of Daniel Mendelsohn’s criticism on display in How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken—the high expectations he has for art, the rigor with which he approaches it, and his mostly mixed evaluations—would likely madden people less inclined to examine cultural works at great length and in great depth, but I loved them. I was won over as early as the introduction, but even had I not been, I surely would have been by page six at the latest, when Mendelsohn takes a very specific jab at the misplaced and mismatched tone of gentility a book adopts, then invokes a cinematic device, then makes a self-referential comment regarding that choice before proceeding to analyze his reasons for so doing; his stylings, his critiques, his use of quotes, the structure of his arguments read as if specifically fitted to the specifications of my own mind and interests.

All of the included pieces originated in unabashedly intellectual publications, and this fact is reflected in the level of engagement that is not so much demanded as easily won by Mendelsohn’s writing. (What a delight it was to be introduced to an Italian word in one essay and to see him place enough trust in his reader’s memory, and ability to keep up, to use the noun form later on.) In addition, those same publications are ones with enough real estate to give Mendelsohn the breathing room to go on at substantial length (and to give his ideas breathing room as well), spacing segments of essays apart and even utilizing formalized section breaks. Even so, I occasionally found myself wishing Mendelsohn had even more space, even if only just a bit, so that an idea or two about a certain form or medium rather broadly could be unpacked at greater length.

This is more a testament, though, to how enormously appealing I found Mendelsohn’s style and thinking, than to any inefficiency on his part or any grudgingness on the part of his editors. Even when merely conveying a plot element, or even an aspect of craft or technique, he spins beautiful and concise sentences that capture an essential quality while also managing to be artful themselves; nowhere are there the sorts of dutiful-feeling sentences, or even paragraphs, that critics sometimes seem to feel the need to insert in order to address something basic but beneath their interest. (Indeed, no detail seems too small or too basic to be beyond Mendelsohn’s interest.) He very effectively, and efficiently, gave a full and proper sense—far beyond mere summary—even of works I hadn’t been exposed to, and was more than willing to call out drawbacks of works by which he was generally impressed, and to highlight effective segments of works that he generally found ineffective. This spirit of generosity extends to his frequent inclusion of quotes from fellow critics; in addition to bolstering one’s confidence in Mendelsohn by demonstrating that he was confident enough to share the stage, this technique gave the book the feel of an inclusive dialogue of sorts, quite fitting for one that asks that the reader engage with it deeply as well. Mendelsohn frames his examinations by guiding a questioning of the works considered, a line of inquiry that invites the reader to participate alongside contemporary critics and opinions rendered in primary (such as artists’ diaries) and secondary sources, which are quoted at length as well.

Mendelsohn critiques pieces across a wide range of media and genres—literature, academic writing, translation, theatre, opera, film—and often focuses on the intersections between more than one, on an updating of a classical play, for example, or the film adaptation of a dramatic work, or vice versa. (Because of this broad spectrum, the five cross-medium groupings of essays can seem a bit imperfect, but this is more than made up for by the elegance of echoes, callbacks, and shared references between pieces that, despite the pieces’ stand-alone origins, feels as if they must be intentional but are really just testaments to Mendelsohn’s consistency of thought and approach, and give the sequencing of the book a supremely fluid feel.) He has a deep understanding of both the material and of authorial intent, and so can offer great insight as to when adaptations betray or undercut the original text and/or creator. He is fascinated by the ways in which a different medium, and the passage of time, can shed light on the strengths, and sometimes also the weaknesses, of the originals.

Time plays a major role, even when not specifically highlighted, in his criticism, in terms of the weight of the accumulated historical past as well as the changed social, political, etc. climates and how they play against the original material. He notes works that lose their power to resonate with the audience due to missing context, and pandering by the updaters that undermines the original material, and failures to lean enough into relevant themes that are overlooked for flashier but less substantial aspects; he demonstrates how our misapprehensions about and impressions of “familiar” characters contradict their intended qualities and conflict with our proper appreciation of their roles.

Mendelsohn has a pointed interest as well in mediums and formal concerns and the way in which these intersect with, shape, and give meaning to the content of the work being presented, carefully noting how changes and choices in presentation can counteract careful structuring and styling. He focuses in on subtle shifts of perspective and reorientations such as those of subjects into objects and vice versa. He goes well beyond merely addressing works of art in isolation and seeks to provide them with as many contexts as possible; his criticism is not only strong qua criticism, but is hugely informative in so many ways. He expounds in depth upon linguistics, etymologies, and historical and biographical information(his discussion of A.E. Housman includes a particularly stunning bit of economical biography that I suspects would be no less informative in terms of actual insights than a full-length biography of typical quality); I was equally likely to underline sections for their prose quality, their insight, their biting quality, their historical disclosures, or their wordplay or word choices. (I found myself leaving some bits un-underlined that didn’t quite make the cut but that I suspect may another time; not only is the book certain to be revisited, but it’s of a depth such that it is sure to offer at least somewhat different, and likely more, pleasures the next time.) He positions and contextualizes work within its creator’s oeuvre, noting their progress and regress, echoes of other works, and increased or decreased levels of sophistication and thought.

Mendelsohn is as interested in teaching his readers as in engaging in criticism, and partly this is due to his implicit invitation to think for ourselves with the evidence he provides. He is not a critic who would be satisfied with strictly declaiming; he’s skilled enough to, but also selfless enough not to need to. He’s persuasive, but never desperate, with his opinions, and as much as he teaches his readership to question the purpose of every single choice, he doesn’t shy away from being subject to a similar line of questioning. Mendelsohn’s level of engagement, and the one that is happily imparted to the attentive reader, is a meta critical engagement that actually engages with the engagement of the artists and creators and adapters, with the very way they engaged with their material and their lives and synthesized each from the other. It’s this level of layering that adds so much texture and depth to the experience of reading How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken. One notices certain ideas that he mentions and stores them away for future use; there is a clear feeling of becoming someone not just who thinks more about things, but who thinks better about them. At the end of the book, my head was full to bursting with specific thoughts to carry forth, my mindset expanded generally but also equipped with the right kinds of things to pay attention to.

I mentioned earlier the feeling of wanting more at times within individual pieces, and it’s certainly the way I felt when I came to the end. It’s another way in which this book feels even bigger than its own expansive boundaries that it left me hankering for Mendelsohn’s thoughts on such-and-such other works (not to mention the specific works on which I craved his opinions while reading, such as sequels to discussed films, or works mentioned only in passing but never at length). I’ll be sure to seek out more of Mendelsohn’s writing elsewhere. The other impulse that the book created, and a happier one in that it leaves one feeling overflowing rather than depleted, is the desire to create, both art and criticism.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of essays from the classics to contemporary literature. There are also reviews of film and theater that are equally engaging. The section of essays on gay writers and their works, from Housman to Toibin, is exceptional. Mendelsohn is one of my favorite critics and he does not disappoint with these essays.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel Mendelsohn is much, much smarter than I am and has a sophisticated perspective on whole areas of the culture (opera, say) of which I am almost entirely ignorant, I can't imagine a critic, though, more in line with my own peculiar enthusiasms. I wouln't've thought it was possible to read someone with astute things to say about Kill Bill and Thucydides, let alone with such generous sensibility and elegant prose style. I was a little less smitten, I suppose, with this collection than with Waiting for the Barbarians , which has everything to do, I'm sure, with the order in which I read them. I was aware though, that one disadvantage of reading a collection of pieces published over time in several periodicals is that certain arguments made for different audiences in different contexts are repeated in a way that for the anthology reader seems redundant. Mendelsohn addresses the explicitly political function of theater in ancient Athens in three separate essays in HBIIHEICBB and, each time, the idea is essential to his argument about the work under discussion and he gets the reader without Mendelsohnian erudition in classics and ancient history up to speed with dispatch and without pretense (as is his wont- Mendelsohn is adept at quickly conveying complicated ideas in uncomplicated language). Nevertheless, I couldn't help feeling he was being a little insistent.
General excellence aside, one thing I really like about Mendelsohn is his generosity. In contrast with another critic whose collection collection I just read, I don't think I've read a piece of criticism by Daniel Mendelsohn in which he doesn't examine at least one thing he genuinely enjoyed in the piece under discussion. I think I value this not just because it offers the reader some tonal relief, but because it means he paid attention to the work instead of writing a self-fulfilling piece about his own rhetorical presuppositions.

[Max Tsudowood · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's an excellent collection of written take-downs of novels, plays, and films that often leave the work burned with Daniel Mendelsohn's one-lined closing zingers. Alice Sebold's wanting to tell a story about grief in The Lovely Bones is convincingly nullified where its need to convince us that everything will be OK doesn't first wrestle with the essential components of grief which are fear and pain; Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, an emotionally tragic work, being inverted by David Leveaux' maligned stage design, cast selection, and interpretation of the work that strips away the characters' pathos; Deborah Warner's disastrous removal of the political angle of Euripedes' Medea and deflation of the character's intriguing motivation in her adaptation; and Oliver Stone's Alexander reducing the biography of the world's "first celebrity" — as a fan of history, Mendelsohn's distillation of the Alexander's essence into one succinct, riveting chapter is so good that I went back to read it a 2nd time to close the book — to a series of perfunctory vignettes are some of the memorable critiques. The critic's sharp biographical skill comes to the fore on the chapters on Oscar Wilde and A.E. Housman where their legacy is deftly constructed with segments from their notable works, their lived lives, and misfires from their prominent work's recently adapted stage productions. As a specialist in Greek classics the author smartly injects the chapters with references to the classics to show their enduring significance and relevance to Western literary world such that one is sure to add them to their reading list, as I have.

5/5

[Joan Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

These unswerving essays are a pleasure to read. Mendelsohn examines the material with a jeweler’s eye to discern the real from the phony. In the first essay in this collection, he skewers the best-selling and well-reviewed “The Lovely Bones”, a book I’ve avoided which is narrated from heaven by a 14 year old murdered girl. Her ghost engineers the redemptive future of her family and friends and she even revisits and enters, like a succubus, the body of a friend to experience healing sex with a boy on whom she had a crush. Mendelsohn pierces through the appealing tale to reveal how it doesn’t reflect true emotion, but instead seeks to soothe—the very feeling that seduces the unwary reader. Art should disturb, not soothe. Many readers refuse the ugliness that is the flip-side of beauty; the appalling evil that goes hand-in-hand with innocence. How easily readers including many savvy critics can succumb to false reassurance. Mendelsohn will have none of this. He commends Michael Cunningham’s”The Hours” in part a genuflection to Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” which pleases with buried allusions, but compared to “The Lovely Bones” is a truth-seeking missile. Mendelsohn’s essays range from subjects such as Henry James and Truman Capote to Euripedes and Alexander. The plays of Oscar Wilde and films of Almodovar are examined as is the work of Ted Hughes and Housman. An unerrimg eye and provocative tongue make Mendelsohn a master critic and this collection one to relish.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

In light of Goodreads recent policy shift I would like to point out what is said in the essay “Nailed” – “. . the best literary criticism has often been a form of sadistic entertainment” (161)..
 
                This book is criticism.  At times, it meant be seem mean.  At times, you might disagree with it.  Guess what?  That happens.  Get over it.  The criticism really should be how well the idea –the thesis of the criticism – is supported. 
                Here, each In and every one is wonderfully supported.
                Of course, I could just be happy that someone else didn’t like Kill Bill and has question about Tartinto’s work.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have also been reading Daniel Mendelsohn's collection of essays and reviews How Beautiful it Is and How Easily It Can be Broken (New York: Harper and Row, 2008). A number of the essays I had read before in the New York Review of Books not recognizing or differentiating who Mendelsohn was. His approach to criticism and essay writing is heavily informed by his work in classical literature and languages and often focuses on the geneaology of words or ideas. As the world of classics remains on the periphery of my own knowledge base, save some public school greek and latin mythology, reading his reviews makes for enjoyable reading and his florid and opinionated style are a welcome breath of fresh air in a world that to often only references popular culture with other pop culture references. Mendelsohn brings a classicist's eye to modern pieces and reminds each of us that a critics job is to inform and contextualize the work they study.

[Noah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The true measure of a critic is the extent to which the reader will follow him or her into subjects for which the reader has little intrinsic interest. For me, Mendelsohn is just such a critic because he always takes a narrow subject and broadens his critique to include aspects of the larger culture.

[Blackbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking. Smart. How can I write a review of a book on reviewing?

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of reviews by this point in my life. It's a constrained art, honestly more of a craft. Without stepping outside it, Mendelsohn elevates it. He's our best critic/reviewer.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written essays, primarily about popular entertainments based on Greek myth.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Daniel Mendelsohn was 13 years old, he read two Mary Renault novels about Alexander the Great, Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, and with that became enthralled with the ancient world. “I became a classicist because of Alexander the Great…the romantic blend of the youthful hero, that Odyssean yearning, strange rites, and panoramic moments – all spiced with a dash of polymorphous perversity which all the characters seemed to take in stride – were too alluring to resist. From that moment on all I wanted was to know more about the Greeks,” he recounts in “Alexander, the Movie!,” one of 30 essays in his new collection, How Beautiful It Is And How Easily It Can Be Broken. Mendelsohn, whose critical essays appear frequently in The New York Review of Books, describes this book as “a collection of judgments,” since critics, by definition, judge everything they review. “(A) word that you might not have suspected is even remotely related to ‘critic’ – crisis, which in Greek means a separating, a power of distinguishing; a judgment, a means of judging; a trial. For what is a crisis, if not an event that forces us to distinguish between the crucial and the trivial, forces us to reveal our priorities, to apply the most rigorous criteria and judge things?” In this collection, Mendelsohn uses his classical knowledge to judge works in film, theater, fiction and poetry – works as disparate as Philip Roth’s Everyman and Oliver Stone’s aforementioned biopic, which Mendelsohn skewers. “The reason it’s exhausting, and ultimately boring, to sit through Alexander…is that while it dutifully represents certain events from Alexander’s childhood to his death, there’s no drama – no narrative arc, no shaping of events into a good story. They’re just being ticked off a list.”

[Mythili · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel Mendelsohn observes in this collection's intro that as a critic, "however random the assignments you accept, you always end up writing your own intellectual autobiography." That's one of the reasons why this volume is so interesting -- reading his careful reviews of everything from The Lovely Bones to Oliver Stone's Alexander to a Broadway staging of The Glass Menagerie starring Jessica Lange and Christian Slater, Mendelsohn's particular proclivities and preoccupations gradually emerge. Having so far read about half the essays in the collection, I'm starting to conclude that there's something a bit prissy about Mendelsohn's approach to criticism -- but that may just be my reaction to his "purist's" background as a Greek/Latin classicist (which of course brings his criticism an admirable rigor as well). And in any case, these essays are brilliant, thoughtful, deeply researched and very engaging. Mendelsohn's review of Kill Bill: Vol 1 answered some unsolved questions I had about what the bloody heck Tarantino was referencing in places; his essay on Dale Peck raises great issues on the practice and function of literary criticism; and in other reviews, he neatly fills in the blanks on the biographies of Henry James and Oscar Wilde and Alexander the Great (while weighing contemporary takes on their work and reminding the reader of the roots of these dead white guys' relevance in the first place). I know more than a few of my Goodreads buddies dig these kinds of explorations as much as I do. It took me a while to get around to picking up this book but I'm glad I finally did ... If you loathed The Lovely Bones but couldn't entirely articulate why it seemed so insidious, this book is for you.

[Ci · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a culture and art critic, the author spans this book of essays into several categories: heroines (such as various women in the movie "The Hours"), the heroics (such as movies "300" and "Troy"), closets (Oscar Wilde, Angels in America), Theater (The Producers), and lastly, war (Medea, etc). I did not read all the essays as I am not yet familiar with some of the subject matters, and would rather come to the essays when I have more than a casual acquaintances (as I know how influential a critic would be to shape the prejudice and presumptions of our initial encounter), but I did read the pieces such as "The Hours" with care.

"The hours" is both a book and a subsequent movie that I have loved and often thought about in reflection. Three women's lives, some rather trivial and tiny (the kinder word is "quotidian"), and one bigger (Virginia Woolf). The author said that The Hours is a literary novel to "investigate the large Woolf themes -- the nature of creativity, the role of literature in life, the authentic feel of everyday living". Of course, The Hours is a delicate and ventriloquizing work after Mrs. Dalloway, an equally puzzling book for my more foreign and perhaps slightly modern view of women's lives. The book and movie thus maintained a very explicit linkage to Woolf's own work and life.

This brings afore the question: what is art? From the mammoth sculptures of Henry Moore to the miniaturist curving inside a snuff box, what constitutes genuine art? Women's delicacy and their bravery in miniature social confines is still a form too refined for my own taste but I find myself constantly being drawn to them -- of which, I would chalk up as a promising beginning to see the world of the "quotidian".

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

At some point in high school (possibly multiple points), you were undoubtedly forced to read an ancient Greek play (though hopefully not in ancient Greek). And most likely, you were bored out of your mind and wondered why you reading these plays when they had nothing to do with your life.

Wrong! Although most likely not your fault. If my teachers had explained "Medea" or "Antigone" with even half the brilliance of Mendelsohn, English classes would have been a vastly different experience. A classics scholar and a critic, Mendelsohn examines a variety of subjects, from movies to plays to books, usually linking them to concepts from classical thought. And it's not all stuff high culture stuff, either: he reviews "Kill Bill" as well as Thucydides' "History." He even goes on to explain Greek theater and how it is, in fact, relevant to our culture today. Although familiarity with the topics is helpful, he always provides a summary and commentary so you can follow along.

Furthermore, "How Beautiful" shows how to write an engaging essay. Not only was I intrigued by each (okay, almost all of them) essay, I was surprised by Mendelsohn's humor countless times. I found that I wanted to go back and reread a couple of essays as soon as I had finished them. So if you want an elegant and incisive critique of modern culture, I highly recommend "How Beautiful."

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of essays by one of my favorite cultural critics of the moment. I gave it a four, but the truth is, it oscillates between a 3 and a 5. When it's good, it's nothing short of a testament to why criticism is essential to culture. When it's not great, it's worthwhile but not mind expanding. Topics of essays include: Almodovar, Oscar Wilde, Brokeback Mountain, the movie Troy, Stoppard. If you don't want to read the whole book, but you're interested in EITHER movies OR marketing OR what it means to be gay OR how liberal mainstream culture has attempted to make gay love "palatable," plant yourself in the corner of a bookstore and read the Brokeback essay.

Also, you know how you read a publication, like the New Yorker or the NY Review of Books, and you sort of note various contributors, but the names don't really stick? But sometimes you read a piece and it's so memorable that bam! the author's name is learned, feels unforgettable. Well, my brain involuntarily learned Mendelsohn's name when I read his Almodovar essay in the NY Review of Books (the essay is included in this book). I think any Almodovar fan should definitely read it.

FYI, this is the same author who got a lot of attention for his book "The Lost," which chronicles his attempt to decipher the fates six members of his family who died in the Holocaust.

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mendelsohn is a culture critic for The New York Review of Books and in this volume collects thirty essays on film, books, and theatre that deal mostly with gay themes. If you prefer well considered analysis over acerbic quips and bitchy bon mots, you’ll revel in portraits of Wilde, Williams, Coward, Capote, Almodovar and Dale Peck, as well as opinions on Angels in America, The Master, Brokeback Mountain, The Hours, Middlesex, The Invention of Love, Troy and Alexander. Reading these pieces is the only proof you’ll need that Mendelsohn more than deserved his George Jean Nathan Prize for Drama Criticism.

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

if you get a kick out of his book reviews you'd enjoy reading a lot of his book reviews in one place, in addition to stuff you would not really care about like stuff about broadway / "The Classics". i dont really care or am super interested in caring about aeschylus and all the other old dead dudes (didnt take latin in hs because i'm not a dweeb) so it can be a little tiring to constantly read every work through that lens but overall - a whole book of sunday morning reading, some mild smackdowns, and namedrops of potentially cool other books i had never heard of.

[bookish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best (if not *the* best) collections of critical essays I have ever read. Even if you don't read the entire book - which you should - the first and last essays on Alice Sebold's "Lovely Bones" and the Sept.11th movies "United 93" and "World Trade Center" are a must-read for anyone remotely interested in what a proper critical analysis of a cultural phenomenon reads like. It'll leave you in awe. Highly recommended.

[Elalma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un'analisi davvero interessante e particolareggiata su film e libri che in qualche modo hanno lasciato un segno negli ultimi anni, per lo meno negli Stati Uniti. Pieno di riferimenti, e di citazioni, ha l'enorme pregio di essere riuscito a spiegarmi perch� un film non mi era piaciuto nonostante il grande successo di critica e pubblico o di far notare aspetti importanti di un libro che erano sfuggiti.

[SA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of Mendelsohn's collected essays took forever to get through, but god, his writing and perspective (even when I disagreed with his points) was just wonderful. Mendelsohn's classics background was just candy for me constantly throughout the book, and the diversity of his subject matter was a treat. I want to read everything he's ever done, but that would be like a year of reading in and of itself.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, so I'm only on page 40 but already I know I love this book and I'll probably end up purchasing a personal copy. (I'm currently reading my library's copy.) It's a collection of essays that originally appeared in the New York Review of Books, and it's having the effect of making me want to experience each of the works -- books, film, theater -- discussed.