GOOD BONES

Transitioning into a “post-literate” society.

“The sacred bones of a literary culture [are] being ground into dust by technology and AI and many other distractions,” writes essayist Allen. To help remedy this decay, she offers a set of appreciative essays on canonical European and Anglophone writers, focusing on the personalities of writers and how fictional and historical characters interact to offer lessons in living lives of beauty. Many of her writers—Samuel Butler, Somerset Maugham, Osbert Sitwell, and Ogden Nash, among others—achieved success despite hardship or criticism. “Light verse used to be a vital part of American culture, high and low,” Allen writes in her essay on Nash. Why has Sybille Bedford never escaped her status as “one of the twentieth century’s most attractive literary curiosities?” How can the plays of Horton Foote teach us that “we are all orphans wandering alone through life, and the consolations of community and family are fleeting at best?” The more you read these essays, the more you are convinced that there is something wrong with you: Distracted by modernity, you have lost grace and humor in the face of, writes Allen, “our Robespierrean practice of cancellation.” Most of Allen’s writers remain products of their own time, with their own prejudices and foibles. Can we truly get past Patricia Highsmith’s misanthropy? Can we forget Sitwell’s politics? Is Truman Capote anything other than the self-caricature he became? Many of these essays originally appeared in venues noted for their highly curated conservatism: the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today. Published over the past 25 years, they offer a road map to a reader unhappy with the way the world has turned out.

A provocative appreciation of neglected writers from a leading critic.