Publisher's Weekly
The variety of topics covered in this collection of 27 essays is as remarkable as the proliferation of insights each contains. There are essays on somewhat general subjectssuch as the creative impulse, what it means to be a woman writer though the imagination is genderless and the abundance of ''wonderlands'' in our culture (vide Plato, Poe, Frankenstein , Lewis Carroll, Kafka et al . )and invigorating re-explorations of individual writers such as Melville, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte, R. L. Stevenson and Hemingway. There are occasional pieces on, for example, Mike Tyson, Winslow Homer's paintings and meeting the Gorbachevs; a Budapest journal; and prefaces to Oates's own novels. Oates ( Contraries , New Heaven, New Earth ) is a master of compact summary (''Only the imagery of Kafka's surfaces is dreamlike; what lies beneath is history''); and she has an almost impish ability to surprise, as when she tells us criticism is a form of storytelling, food a kind of poetry.

Library Journal
Oates's latest collection of essays (her fifth) is wide-ranging, literary, and often academic. From philosophic discussion about the nature of artand particularly of writingOates explores the works of Dickinson, Kafka, Hemingway, Charlotte Bronte, and Thoreau, among others. Her prose and opinions are marredor enlightened, depending on your viewpointby a feminist sensibility occasionally suggesting that she has a chip on her shoulder. Her tone can be mannered and self-conscious, flavored with an irony that often diminishes her well-taken points. Yet she is intellectually demanding and literate, presenting the world through the prism of a very writerly consciousness: the world as art form. Linda L. Rome, Mentor, Ohio