In "What Is a Book?" David Kirby addresses the making and consuming
of literature by redefining the four components of the act of
reading: writer, reader, critic, and book. He discusses his
students, his work, and his practice as a teacher, writer, critic,
and reader, and positions his theories and opinions as products of
"real" life as much as academic exercise. Among the ideas animating
the book are Kirby's beliefs that "devotion is more important than
dissection" and "practice is more important than theory."
Covering an impressive range of writers--from Emerson, Poe, and
Melville to James Dickey, Charles Wright, Richard Howard, Susan
Montez, and others--Kirby considers the evolution of critical
theory from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth and
explores the role of criticism in contemporary culture. Drawing
from his experience writing poetry and reading to children at a
local housing project, he answers two of his four central
questions: "What is a reader?" and "What is a writer?" In the
largest section of the book, "What Is a Critic?," Kirby
demonstrates his passionate engagement with the function of the
critic in literary culture and offers both overviews and close
examinations of literary theory, book reviewing, and the historical
background of criticism from its earliest beginnings. In the final
section of the book, he addresses the question "What is a book?"
with an examination of the reading preferences of older readers.
Kirby's analysis of those responses, along with his own notions of
the literary canon, is an insightful excursion into how books are
valued.
Deeply learned and wonderfully entertaining, "What Is a Book?"
is a lucid look at the whole of literary culture. Kirby makes us
think about the books we love and why we love them.
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