Nobody Here But Us Chickens

Book excerpt: Nobody Here But Us Chickens is a virtuoso display of literary and hiNobody Here But Us Chickens is a virtuoso display of literary and historical portraiture by Marvin Mudrick, whom the Washington Post called a “literary curmudgeon, randy iconoclast, and a delight.” Mudrick believed that in books, as in life, people matter, and that it matters in books, as it does in life, whether people are decent or not. Sticking to this plain common sense, Mudrick assembles an eye-opening hall of fame and rogues gallery that includes devastating, satirical attacks on Shakespeare, Jesus, and Flaubert, as well as a wide-ranging meditation on heroism. Mudrick devotees will know that he favors Chaucer, Jane Austen, and D. H. Lawrence, all of whom appear here, but we also get to know what he thinks about Coriolanus, Van Gogh, and Solzhenitsyn. Readers unfamiliar with the daring of Mudrick’s opinions and the special texture of his prose will come away from Nobody Here But Us Chickens wishing that critical biography was always this much fun.storical portraiture by Marvin Mudrick, whom the Washington Post called a "literary curmudgeon, randy iconoclast, and a delight."