Volume 27, Number 5 · April 3, 1980
Love It or Leave It!
By Elizabeth Hardwick
Imagining America
by Peter Conrad
Oxford University Press, 319 pp., $12.95
O. Shenandoah, O, Niagara! In a text that bristles like the quills on a pestered porcupine, Peter Conrad, a young English critic of music and literature, fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, has written a book called Imagining America. It is easy to read, and yet a torture to unravel. This is not due to the absence of footnotes, bibliography, or to the very reduced index—that is the least of it. The most of it is a great fluency of style, a military confidence, an extraordinary range of intimidation that sweeps over the country, America, and a good many English writers, the two in collision being the subject of the book.
Review, 5698 words
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