
See What Can Be Done
Essays, Criticism, and Commentary
Lorrie Moore(Author)
Faber & Faber (Publisher)
Published on 3. May 2018
Book
Hardback
432 pages
978-0-571-33992-1 (ISBN)
Description
When in 1999 I began writing for The New York Review of Books ... my stance became that of the ingenuous Martian who had just landed on a gorgeous alien planet ... Montaigne's que sais-je. A little light, a little wonder, some skepticism, some awe, some squinting, some je ne sais quoi. Pick a thing up, study it, shake it, skip it across a still surface to see how much felt and lively life got baked into it. Does it sail? Observe. See what can be done.
Lorrie Moore has been writing criticism for over thirty years, and her forensically intelligent, witty, and engaging essays are collected together here for the first time. Whether writing on Titanic, Margaret Atwood, or The Wire, her pieces always offer elegant and surprising insights into multiple forms of art. Crucially, Moore is a practitioner who writes criticism; her discussion of other people's work is based on her understanding of what it really takes to make something out of nothing: of what it takes to make art. This lends her encounters with books, films, and paintings the uniquely intimate quality which has made them so immensely popular with readers.
In sparkling, articulate prose - studded with frequently hilarious insights - Moore's meditations are a rare opportunity to witness a brilliant mind thinking things through and figuring things out on the page.
Lorrie Moore has been writing criticism for over thirty years, and her forensically intelligent, witty, and engaging essays are collected together here for the first time. Whether writing on Titanic, Margaret Atwood, or The Wire, her pieces always offer elegant and surprising insights into multiple forms of art. Crucially, Moore is a practitioner who writes criticism; her discussion of other people's work is based on her understanding of what it really takes to make something out of nothing: of what it takes to make art. This lends her encounters with books, films, and paintings the uniquely intimate quality which has made them so immensely popular with readers.
In sparkling, articulate prose - studded with frequently hilarious insights - Moore's meditations are a rare opportunity to witness a brilliant mind thinking things through and figuring things out on the page.
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
695 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-571-33992-1 (9780571339921)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2018
Faber & Faber
€13.99
Available for download
Person
Lorrie Moore is the award-winning author of five story collections, three novels, and a children's book. Her most recent novel, A Gate at the Stairs, was shortlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize, and she has received numerous accolades from the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After serving for almost three decades as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Moore is now the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.