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See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary

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See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary

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Overview

A remarkable collection of essays and reviews on everything from Philip Roth to Margaret Atwood, from race in America to the shocking state of the GOP—from the national bestselling author of Birds of America and a master of contemporary American fiction.

“The kind of book, and the kind of human, you’d want to guide you through the past few decades in letters and culture.... Moore is one of our best documentarians of everyday amazement.” —The New Yorker

This essential, enlightening, truly delightful collection shows one of our greatest writers parsing the political, artistic, and media landscape of the past three decades. These sixty-six essays and reviews, culled from the pages of The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, among others, find Lorrie Moore turning her discerning eye on everything from celebrity culture to the wilds of television, from Stephen Sondheim to Barack Obama. See What Can Be Done is a perfect blend of craft, brains, and a knowing, singular take on life, liberty, and the pursuit of (some kind of) happiness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525433859
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/05/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	1,143,678
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

LORRIE MOORE is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, as well as the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her achievement in the short story. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: The Miscellany
(Continues…)

Excerpted from "See What Can Be Done"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Lorrie Moore.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Introduction

Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983)
Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos (1985)
Malcolm Bradbury’s Cuts (1987)
Anaïs Nin, Marilyn Monroe (1987)
John Cheever (1988)
Bobbie Ann Mason’s Love Life (1989)
V. S. Pritchett’s A Careless Widow (1989)
Stanley Elkin’s The MacGuffin (1991)
Don DeLillo’s Mao II (1991)
Election Day 1992: Voters in Wonderland (1992)
Charles Baxter’s Shadow Play (1993)
Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride (1993)
On Writing (1994)
Amos Oz (1996)
Christmas for Everyone (1997)
Starr–Clinton–Lewinsky (1998)
Ann Beattie’s New and Selected Stories (1998)
JonBenét Ramsey by Lawrence Schiller (1999)
Joyce Carol Oates’s Broke Heart Blues (1999)
Dawn Powell (1999)
Best Love Song of the Millennium (1999)
Titanic (2000)
Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Passionate Minds (2000)
Philip Roth’s The Human Stain (2000)
Matthew Klam’s Sam the Cat (2000)
Legal Aide: My First Job (2001)
Frederic Cassidy (2001)
Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2002)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (2002)
Darryl Pinckney and Caryl Phillips (2002)
Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003)
John Updike’s The Early Stories (2003)
Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint (2004)
Alice Munro’s Runaway (2004)
Joan Silber (2005)
Eudora Welty (2006)
Alice Munro’s The Moons of Jupiter (2006)
Shakespeare: The Modern Elizabethan (2006)
One Hot Summer, or a Brief History of Time (2006)
Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (2007)
Peter Cameron (2007)
Donald Barthelme (2009)
Clarice Lispector (2009)
Barack Obama (2009)
The Wire (2010)
Memoirs (2011)
Friday Night Lights (2011)
9/11/11 (2011)
GOP Primary Debate (2011)
Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss (2011)
Suzzy Roche’s Wayward Saints (2012)
Lena Dunham (2012)
Wisconsin Recall (2012)
Richard Ford’s Canada (2012)
Ethan Canin’s “The Palace Thief” (2012)
Homeland (2013)
Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (2013)
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Bernard Malamud (2014)
Miranda July (2014)
True Detective (2015)
Making a Murderer (2016)
Helen Gurley Brown (2016)
Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America (2016)
Thoughts on Hillary Clinton, December 2016 (2017)
Stephen Stills (2017)

Acknowledgments

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

A New York Times Editors' Choice • A New York Times Top Book of the Year • An Irish Times Best Book of the Year • A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

“The kind of book, and the kind of human, you’d want to guide you through the past few decades in letters and culture. . . . Moore is one of our best documentarians of everyday amazement.” —The New Yorker

“Excellent. . . . Shining. . . . [This] book flooded my veins with pleasure.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Moore’s incisive, often mordant yet exhilarating pieces illuminate the trajectory of a literary artist’s aesthetic evolution, and enhance an understanding of her fiction.” —Claire Messud, The Guardian

“Impressive. . . . Her wicked wit is demonstrated by the opening sentence. . . . What sustains overall this group of essays and commentary is a continuous critical spirit that stays in touch with life.” —William H. Pritchard, The Wall Street Journal

“One of our finest fiction writers considers the work of her fellow artists. . . . [An] agile, funny, and sage take on literature and culture.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Captivating . . . . Nuanced and polished. . . . I found myself nestling into the book the way one does with the most gripping of novels.” —Daphne Merkin, The New York Times Book Review

“Moore’s writing sings at the atomic level. . . . One comes to this book not to find out what one should think, or even what Moore thinks, about Don DeLillo or Anais Nin or Alice Munro; the questions one can answer here are, instead, why one might care about them, and how a book or a story or a sentence might offer safety, companionship, sight.” —The New Republic

“A testament to the breadth of Moore's intellect. . . . ‘One must throw all that one is into language,’ she writes, ‘like a Christmas tree hurled into a pool.’. . . See What Can Be Done is not only a call to that ideal, but a fulfillment of it.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Whip-smart and thought-provoking.” —Elle

“Engrossing enough to read straight through. . . . Moore’s interest in fully revealing each work she discusses becomes a kind of guiding spirit. . . . Sublimely generous. . . . Embrace[s] elegance.” —Commonweal

“[A] brilliant and piercing collection. . . . She fearlessly tells the truth about hard things.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Sharply observed and gorgeously written. . . . Moore isn’t afraid to take a stand. . . . Moore places a premium in these pieces on the ‘resilience’ demonstrated by some of her subjects. Let’s hope she continues to exhibit the same, giving us more of the short stories for which she’s renowned—and the essays for which she should be.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Arresting. . . . Excellent. . . . Incisive, wide-ranging. . . . Marvelously nuanced.” —The Observer (London)

“This collection of 60 lucid and erudite cultural essays by the award-winning fiction writer is a treasure.” —BBC.com

“Lorrie Moore’s essays are brilliantly written, brimming with energy. . . . A generous reader of other writers, Moore is always smart, never snooty, and as in her novels and short stories, there’s a bold streak of humour.” —The Irish Times

From the Publisher

[Moore's] voice throughout is clear and informed, easily amused, psychologically nuanced and polished without being brocaded…Moore undeniably gave these pieces the same loving attention and quirky perspective that she gives her fiction. Indeed, I found myself nestling into the book the way one does with the most gripping of novels, caught up in the web of passing characters—Charles Baxter and V. S. Pritchett, Ann Beattie and Peter Cameron…and curious to read the next essay. See What Can Be Done is a captivating miscellany, one that should entice even readers who usually see fit to bypass such collections.

The New York Times Book Review - Daphne Merkin

…[Moore has] an especially intimate and approachable voice, that of an intellectual who doesn't mistake solemnity for seriousness and actually seems to be enjoying herself…The book flooded my veins with pleasure…In her introduction, Moore stresses that the title of this book should not be read as a boast. When writing teachers pass this book to their students, the title See What Can Be Done will be read as a simple command.

The New York Times - Dwight Garner

11/27/2017
Acclaimed fiction writer Moore (Bark: Stories) has compiled her nonfiction writings into a marvelous collection. The chronologically arranged selections, beginning with a 1983 review of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, include book reviews, personal essays, and cultural criticism on subjects that include Ross Perot and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential debate and the television documentary OJ: Made in America. The cumulative effect is to provide a window onto the trajectory of both late 20th-century American culture and Moore’s development as a writer. Throughout, her chief virtue as a critic is shown to be a sympathetic, generous eye, which enables Moore to reveal the unique appeal of any given work, whether it’s Ann Beattie’s novel Park City or James Cameron’s blockbuster Titanic. Her essays on politics are humorous but more critical, prophetically foreseeing “the televised flattery, the bad candy, the shifting hairstyles—the future of presidential campaigning” familiar today. However, the book’s most deeply felt entries are the meditations on Moore’s craft. In an essay aptly titled “On Writing,” Moore claims “there is nothing more autobiographical than a book review or a violin solo.” If so, then this book provides ample insight into Moore’s inner life; it is certainly a boon to any lover of smart cultural criticism. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Bernadette Dunne offers up this ample chronologically arranged buffet of Moore’s reviews, essays, and meditations. The collection is large—more than 50 pieces—and ranges widely through time. The first is a review of Nora Ephron’s HEARTBURN from 1983, and the last a reflection on Stephen Stills’s music from 2017. Topics are varied—everything from book reviews to cultural commentary on the 1992 presidential election to our nation’s fascination with the 1998 Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Dunne ably brings to life Moore’s astute critical commentary. She also captures the nuances of Moore’s shifting tone, which is by turns reflective, inquisitive, musing, playful—and always curious. Listeners who are fans of Moore’s sharp insights or interested in reflecting on our nation’s history as refracted through landmark works and cultural events will enjoy sampling this collection. J.C.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

2017-12-19
The award-winning fiction writer gathers essays written over the past three decades.Reviewing Claudia Roth Pierpont's Passionate Minds, Moore (English/Vanderbilt Univ.; Bark: Stories, 2014, etc.) offered generous praise for the collection of literary profiles: "with its unintimidated questions and explorations," the book, she wrote, "is provocative and bracing, a wizard's mix of innocence and fire." Much the same can be said of these articles, reviews, bits of memoir, and commentaries, many published in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times. The collection opens with a review of Nora Ephron's Heartburn, which Moore wrote for Cornell's literary magazine in 1983, and ends with an essay about blues guitarist Stephen Stills, whose concert Moore attended in "late-middle-aged ecstasy" in 2017. An astute, sympathetic reader, she appreciates the "friendly irony" of Bobbie Ann Mason's stories; Don DeLillo's "ability to let America, the bad dream of it, speak through his pen"; and Joyce Carol Oates' "richly witty and despairing" Broke Heart Blues. Moore defends the controversial choice of Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven, a novel as linked stories, as a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award: Silber writes like "a graceful swimmer on a leisurely swim, though her brisk, radiant prose chops the water like a sprite." Although most pieces focus on books, Moore rings in on a few TV shows, including The Wire, which she found riveting for its "admirable and unblinking look at a cursed people—America's largely black and brown urban underclass"; and the "legitimately brilliant drama" of the NBC series Friday Night Lights. On politics, Moore can be unsparing in her disdain: in 1998, during the Starr investigation of the Lewinsky scandal, she wondered at the public's apparently sudden shock and anger about a man who always seemed to her "a charming shark, a user, a yuppie, a bad actor, and a sexy, lying fool." She skewers Trump as "part Crazy Eddie, part Henry VIII, part AWOL Andrew Jackson…in it for the adventure and applause."Deft, graceful essays from a sharply incisive writer.

Kirkus Review

See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary

See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary

Paperback(Reprint)

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

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