"The role of the critic," Daniel Mendelsohn writes, "is to mediate
intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate
and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way." His latest
collection exemplifies the range, depth, and erudition that have made
him "required reading for anyone interested in dissecting culture" (The
Daily Beast). In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an
eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering
his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in
illuminating and sometimes surprising ways.
Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture's Greek and
Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works
(Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a "Greek DNA" in our
responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and
the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature,
from the "aesthetics of victimhood" in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little
Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by
Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers
pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on
recent films about artificial intelligence--a subject, he reminds us,
that was already of interest to Homer.
This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the
award-winning memoirist's personal essays, including his "critic's
manifesto" and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence
with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the
Classics.
