Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Notting Hill Editions (2013), 187 pagina's
User reviews
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
There is a kind of portentous playfulness that is in vogue these days. It is not the disingenuous false modesty of the calculatedly ironic. It is not the light-hearted comic jape, satisfied perhaps to be merely play. It is not the tangential take, the oblique angle that reveals much. It is not the
Autobiography is all, in the new vogue. Criticism, we’re told, is a form of autobiography. Fiction is really just autobiography. Biography? Right again, it’s also autobiography. And non-fiction – that vast bloomy everything that isn’t just a chronicle of one damn fictional thing after another – non-fiction is autobiography too. Presumably so is this brief review. It’s all about me. Or so, I suppose, David Shields might say.
Undoubtedly there is a spirited freshness about such writing. It can seem electric, if not electrifying. But its energy feels chemical, like the buzz after a short hit of some illicit drug, rather than grounded and substantial. And it quickly, for me at least, becomes tired, and all too quickly tiresome. It is, in the end, a perfect form for the Internet. But its pleasures may not extend to even a book as brief as this one.
That said, there were bits of this book that I enjoyed – a clever phrase, a wry observation here or there. Just not enough to sustain my interest, and certainly not enough either to save my life or end it.
Show More
one or two-fingered salute to the powers that be. No. It is full of regard, if only self regard. It is grand in its ambitions, or at least its statement of its ambitions. It is deathly serious, though burdened by a great fear of seriousness. And it loves more than anything to appropriate, unearned, the portentous pronouncements of others, bouncing from one to another like a log driver delicately stepping across his charges safe so long as he moves on before the log rolls.Autobiography is all, in the new vogue. Criticism, we’re told, is a form of autobiography. Fiction is really just autobiography. Biography? Right again, it’s also autobiography. And non-fiction – that vast bloomy everything that isn’t just a chronicle of one damn fictional thing after another – non-fiction is autobiography too. Presumably so is this brief review. It’s all about me. Or so, I suppose, David Shields might say.
Undoubtedly there is a spirited freshness about such writing. It can seem electric, if not electrifying. But its energy feels chemical, like the buzz after a short hit of some illicit drug, rather than grounded and substantial. And it quickly, for me at least, becomes tired, and all too quickly tiresome. It is, in the end, a perfect form for the Internet. But its pleasures may not extend to even a book as brief as this one.
That said, there were bits of this book that I enjoyed – a clever phrase, a wry observation here or there. Just not enough to sustain my interest, and certainly not enough either to save my life or end it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
David Shields is a contemporary essayist and fiction writer. His first novel, Dead Languages, is notable, as are his collections of essays. I chose to read this book with the expectation that the main focus would be on literature. I was frustrated with some aspects of the book in the early going,
Shields is as concerned with methods of construction and questions of genre as with subject, and in doing so he meters out nuggets of revelation amid explications of both classical and popular subjects, from Prometheus to Spider-Man. He uses a circuitous approach that sometimes frustrated this reader and may do so for others. However, his apparent failure to articulate the ways in which "life and art have always been everything" to him often proved fascinating to contemplate.
David Shields stuttered throughout childhood, and initially regarded writing as an ideal outlet; now, in his mid-50s with more than fifteen books to his credit, he writes “to feel as if, to the degree anyone can know anyone else,” he has connected with his readers. He uses a frequently self-deprecating yet engaging tone, while employing the act of accrual in hopes of guarding against “human loneliness,” and in doing so, creates a type of personal, modern version of a commonplace book. For readers like myself, references to authors such as Ben Lerner, E.M. Cioran, Jonathan Safran Foer, Annie Dillard, Sarah Manguso and David Foster Wallace, among others, may be interesting or even appealing. He mixes references to books while interpolating quotes as voices intersecting on the page. For readers unlike myself who are creative-writing practitioners, how Shield fashions his own anxieties and persona into brief essays provides an alternative model for writing on self-hood, revealing the his struggle in oblique ways.
The book defies easy categorization (as have others of Shields’ works): It is both a paean to the power of language and a confrontation with the knowledge that literature can't, after all, fulfill deeper existential needs. It is a work of contradictions, subversion, depression, humor and singular awareness; Shields is at his best when culling the work of others to arrive at his own well-timed, often heartbreaking lines. His list of "Fifty-five works I swear by:" is one of the most fascinating and useful sections of the book (Part 6, pp140-156). I would recommend this book for those who hope that reading literature may save your life and have the persistence or potvaliance to persevere when the book veers into unknown territory. The author always brings it back to literature.
Show More
but ultimately found Shields personal views on literature and its ability to save (or perhaps not save) his life to be challenging and valuable. Throughout the book he turns quotation, memory, anecdotes and considerations of film, literature, love and death into a collage that enables introspection.Shields is as concerned with methods of construction and questions of genre as with subject, and in doing so he meters out nuggets of revelation amid explications of both classical and popular subjects, from Prometheus to Spider-Man. He uses a circuitous approach that sometimes frustrated this reader and may do so for others. However, his apparent failure to articulate the ways in which "life and art have always been everything" to him often proved fascinating to contemplate.
David Shields stuttered throughout childhood, and initially regarded writing as an ideal outlet; now, in his mid-50s with more than fifteen books to his credit, he writes “to feel as if, to the degree anyone can know anyone else,” he has connected with his readers. He uses a frequently self-deprecating yet engaging tone, while employing the act of accrual in hopes of guarding against “human loneliness,” and in doing so, creates a type of personal, modern version of a commonplace book. For readers like myself, references to authors such as Ben Lerner, E.M. Cioran, Jonathan Safran Foer, Annie Dillard, Sarah Manguso and David Foster Wallace, among others, may be interesting or even appealing. He mixes references to books while interpolating quotes as voices intersecting on the page. For readers unlike myself who are creative-writing practitioners, how Shield fashions his own anxieties and persona into brief essays provides an alternative model for writing on self-hood, revealing the his struggle in oblique ways.
The book defies easy categorization (as have others of Shields’ works): It is both a paean to the power of language and a confrontation with the knowledge that literature can't, after all, fulfill deeper existential needs. It is a work of contradictions, subversion, depression, humor and singular awareness; Shields is at his best when culling the work of others to arrive at his own well-timed, often heartbreaking lines. His list of "Fifty-five works I swear by:" is one of the most fascinating and useful sections of the book (Part 6, pp140-156). I would recommend this book for those who hope that reading literature may save your life and have the persistence or potvaliance to persevere when the book veers into unknown territory. The author always brings it back to literature.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Paul-the-well-read
In How Literature Saved My Life, I found some interesting insights into books I’ve already read and into some that I might want to read some time in the future had I not read this book. These things are exactly what I hoped to find in the book and what I like about other similar books. But the
The first of these flaws centers around the general tone of the book. Rather than being a collection of book reviews and insights, the book is actually an extended self-congratulatory essay designed to say to readers, “Look at all I’ve read and how smart I am. I’ve managed to say interesting and frequently negative things about lots of high brow books. I’m impressed with myself and you should be impressed, too.” Thus the book is not so much about other books as it is about the author and his ego, a point he himself alludes to early in the bookand should have emphasized a lot more.
The second flaw is the larger and more serious one.
This book in its 200 pages uses more parenthesis and makes more parenthetical remarks than the combined total of such remarks found in any 15 books resting on a library’s bookshelf. It is as if in the writing course that author Daniel Shields took (apparently in an unaccredited night school), the instructor (a substitute teacher from the janitorial trade school across the street) never pointed out that good writing (that is, writing that is publishable) uses neither parenthetical remarks nor exclamation points! (!!!!)
Shields’ editor apparently took the same course Shields took and did not bother to help Shields write a good book by taking out the (gosh darned and unnecessary) parenthetical remarks.
Moreover, Shields only uses these parentheticals to amply his own commentary with further commentary (usually remarks about his own writing) (sometimes, an even further remark about his own writing). Why didn’t he just polish up his original writing so that it included his insights as parts of the narrative rather than interrupting the narrative to include them as afterthoughts?
The biggest things a reader will get from this book are: why it is important not to use parenthesis, how very smart David Shields thinks he is and how very important it is for a writer to hire a good editor.
Show More
book has some egregious flaws enormous enough to compel me to include it on my “Sorry I Bothered” bookshelf.The first of these flaws centers around the general tone of the book. Rather than being a collection of book reviews and insights, the book is actually an extended self-congratulatory essay designed to say to readers, “Look at all I’ve read and how smart I am. I’ve managed to say interesting and frequently negative things about lots of high brow books. I’m impressed with myself and you should be impressed, too.” Thus the book is not so much about other books as it is about the author and his ego, a point he himself alludes to early in the bookand should have emphasized a lot more.
The second flaw is the larger and more serious one.
This book in its 200 pages uses more parenthesis and makes more parenthetical remarks than the combined total of such remarks found in any 15 books resting on a library’s bookshelf. It is as if in the writing course that author Daniel Shields took (apparently in an unaccredited night school), the instructor (a substitute teacher from the janitorial trade school across the street) never pointed out that good writing (that is, writing that is publishable) uses neither parenthetical remarks nor exclamation points! (!!!!)
Shields’ editor apparently took the same course Shields took and did not bother to help Shields write a good book by taking out the (gosh darned and unnecessary) parenthetical remarks.
Moreover, Shields only uses these parentheticals to amply his own commentary with further commentary (usually remarks about his own writing) (sometimes, an even further remark about his own writing). Why didn’t he just polish up his original writing so that it included his insights as parts of the narrative rather than interrupting the narrative to include them as afterthoughts?
The biggest things a reader will get from this book are: why it is important not to use parenthesis, how very smart David Shields thinks he is and how very important it is for a writer to hire a good editor.
Show Less
LibraryThing member arewenotben
Veers between the enlightening and the interminable.
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
187 p.
ISBN
1907903755 / 9781907903755