My Silk Purse and Yours

This work contends that formula critics - like the formula fiction they consider - can't tell a silk purse from a sow's ear. George Garrett can, and he isn't afraid to say so, even when his judgements aren't fashionable. "My Silk Purse and Yours" shows the combative Garrett taking on everything from New York's literary "star" system to the work of Kurt Vonnegut and John Barth. "I may be wrong," writes Garrett, "but you cannot convince me that I do not read more novels and story collections than the entire professional staffs of the New York Times (Sunday and daily) and the Washington Post (ditto) put together". The essays and reviews collected here aim to convince even the most sceptical reader of Garrett's claim. Whether he is pondering the problems and paradoxes of literary biography, taking apart the capriciousness of the publishing industry, or divulging the source of "the best Bloody Mary in England," Garrett's voice is the voice of one who knows. Garrett rarely strays from the firm grounding of his own experience as a reader. Eschewing literacy "stars," who too frequently eclipse lesser-known but often more talented artists, he explores such under-appreciated writers as Mary Johnston, Madison Smartt Bell and Reynolds Price. He champions writers who tackle subjects that will never make them popular. Of Shelby Foote's "The Civil War" he writes, "even assuming the good fortune of his living to complete his marathan enterprise and doing it tolerably well, the odds were strong, if not overwhelming, that in a time of instant attention and instant oblivion, he would find himself and his work cheerfully forgotten". Garrett writes of the Elizabethans, "their words are not only their greatest gift to us, but they are also the only true map we have to lead us to their world and safely back to our own". In "My Silk Purse and Yours" Garrett's explorations of American literary art always lead him back to his starting point. Opinionated, daring, and enlightening, "My Silk Purse and Yours" aims to be a shrewd and entertaining celebration of the lost art of reading and the troubled art of writing.