What is a Book?

In this study David Kirby addresses the making and consuming of literature by redefining the four components of the act of reading: writer, reader, critic and book. He discusses his students, his work, and his practice as a teacher, writer, critic and reader, and positions his theories and opinions as products of ""real"" life as much as academic exercise. Among the ideas animating the work are Kirby's beliefs that ""devotion is more important than dissection"" and ""practice is more important than theory"". Covering a range of writers - from Emerson, Poe and Melville to James Dickey, Charles Wright, Richard Howard, Susan Montez and others - Kirby considers the evolution of critical theory from the 19th century to the late-20th and explores the role of criticism in contemporary culture. Drawing from his experience writing poetry and reading to children at a local housing project, he answers two of his four central questions: ""What is a reader?"" and ""What is a writer?"" In the largest section of the volume, ""What is a critic?"" Kirby demonstrates his passionate engagement with the function of the critic in literary culture and offers both overviews and close examinations of literary theory, book reviewing, and the historical background of criticism from its earliest beginnings. In the final section, he addresses the question, ""What is a book?"" with an examination of the reading preferences of older readers. Kirby's analysis of those responses, along with his own notions of the literary canon, seeks to offer an insightful excursion into how books are valued. Kirby aims to make us think about the books we love and why we love them.

After What Is a Book?, the study of a work of literature seems to me refreshed again, relevant, and full of pleasure; and the practice of writing about literature seems again public, useful, and productive. David Kirby's scholarship is impeccable, and his writing is smart, distinctively witty, and precise. I want to cheer.--David Baker "poetry editor of the Kenyon Review and Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing, Denison University", Those of us who have been saving old magazines and newspapers with David Kirby's essays and reviews can start clearing out the attic. Kirby's unique combination of learning, wisdom, and the whole range of humor from the sly smile to the belly laugh is even more gratifying and pleasurable when his articles are collected in a single volume than when encountered one by one. Through his readings of two centuries of American fiction, poetry, and criticism, Kirby answers his own question, 'What is a book?, ' with a nuanced, comic, and profound account of what it means to be human.--Edward Mendelson "author of Early Auden and Later Auden", Academically rigorous yet emotionally vigorous, these essays hit the right tone to interest general readers as well as specialists. Kirby's well-oxygenated prose ultimately clears our heads for good reading, brightening our understanding of why literature matters.--The Tennessean, Gifted with a fluid historical sensibility and a quintessentially American openmindedness, Kirby writes with nimbleness and precision about Melville and James, Charles Wright and Richard Howard, and children who love to be read to. . . . Anchored by four sparkling "what is" inquiries into the nature of the reader, the writer, the book, and the critic, this altogether enjoyable, enlightening, and reassuringly human collection radiantly celebrates our unceasing love and need for books.--Booklist, Kirby has gathered 17 essays so clear, so relevant, and far-reaching as to address all the major working parts of literature. Refreshingly witty, beautifully written, and accessible essays on topics that illustrate the nature of each of these "players" in the literary enterprise. An important and useful book that is also surprisingly pleasurable and entertaining to read; highly recommended.--Library Journal (starred review)

David Kirby is W. Guy McKenzie Professor of English at Florida State University. He is the author of many books of poetry and criticism, including Mark Strand: The Poet as No One, My Twentieth Century, and The House of Blue Light. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Southern Review, Paris Review, and other publications.