More Dynamite

Book excerpt: More Dynamite anthologizes a wealth of essays by a writer with one of the keenest critical eyes of his generation. Craig Raine—poet, critic, novelist, Oxford don, and editor—turns his fearsome and unflinching gaze on subjects ranging from Kafka to Koons, Beckett to Babel. He waxes lyrical about Ron Mueck's hyperreal sculptures and reassesses the metafiction of David Foster Wallace. For Raine, no element of cultural output is insignificant, be it cinema, fiction, poetry, or installation art. Finding solace in both literature and art alike, and finding moments of truth and beauty where others had stopped looking, More Dynamite will reinvigorate readers, challenge our perceptions of the classics, and wonderfully affirm our love of good writing, new and old. This extensive collection of essays is a crash course in 20th century artistic endeavor—nothing short of a master class in high culture from one of the most discerning minds in contemporary British letters.