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Article: HARDCOVERS IN BRIEF
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- December 31, 1989
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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NONFICTION
Mudrick Transcribed: Classes and Talks by Marvin Mudrick, edited
by Lance Kaplan (College of Creative Studies, University of
California, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93106, $20). Until his death in
1986, Marvin Mudrick was one of the best book reviewers in the
country. Maybe even the best. For 30 years the Hudson Review
carried his essay-length appreciations (Chaucer, Mozart, Austen,
Trollope) and excoriations (Shakespeare, Tolstoy, structuralism).
"When the French get heavy," he once observed of certain contemporary
critics, "they make the Germans look like ballerinas." Addicted to
wordplay, long quotations and a belligerent humanism, he took books
almost as seriously as life. That ...