The Critical Library: Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman told Critical Mass about five books she believes reviewers should have in their libraries.

One title from her list:

Walter Jackson Bate (editor), Criticism: The Major Texts. Any critic with a scholarly bent and a modicum of curiosity about his forebears should own this anthology, from the fourth century B.C. (Aristotle) to the mid-twentieth century (Edmund Wilson) – in other words, the pre-theoretical era. What is great literature? Does it have moral obligations? How should it be read and discussed? Bate’s grand tour of classical, Renaissance, neoclassical, Romantic, and modern critical thought provides some surprisingly useful perspectives for thinking about current literature and art.

Read about Fadiman's other suggestions.

--Marshal Zeringue