A look at the National Book Critics Circle nominees - Criticism

One would be hard pressed to find a book of any genre with a more sweeping range than this collection of sharply insightful essays by an acknowledged master of prose. Gass literally seems to know everything. He jumps from Gilbert and Sullivan to Foucault and Carlyle; from nursery rhymes and Nick Hornby to Dante and Kafka. In the course of an essay, he'll switch fluidly between witty repartee and literary analysis, between linguistics and history. This is one volume where you might actually wish there were footnotes. Gass's wide-ranging subjects include the literary canon, censorship, and a horrific Depression-era crime involving an old woman who cooked and ate children. His essay on Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" - "prose elevated to poetry without the least sign of strain" - provides fresh insights into how poetry, history, and imagination intersect to shape our view of the world. Where too many critics rely on jargon and tired phrases, Gass's writing is unwaveringly alive. His frequent digressions can get old, and he can be a bit of an elitist, but for the most part these essays are fresh showcases of verbal vigor and mental alacrity. "Minds, it turns out, are as peculiar as toenails," Gass writes in "The Test of Time." His own is testament to that. (319 pp.) By Amanda Paulson

Reviewing Seamus Heaney's masterful first book of poetry, "Death of a Naturalist," in 1966, Christopher Ricks noted: "What he praises is to be praised in his own work." Of Ricks we might say the same, a quality amply illustrated by the 50 brief pieces that comprise "Reviewery," a collection drawn from criticism he's written for publications ranging from the Times Literary Supplement to the New Republic over the past four decades. A wonderful literary stylist, Ricks compliments the wonderful literary style of Henry James with a comely phrase of his own: "Even when his prose is plump, it has a genial warmth." If such enthusiasms can be contagious, his condemnation of the ever-popular Bloomsbury group - "They created a corporate limited-liability self-importance" - is as apt as it is courageous. Alas, Ricks shows considerably less talent for reviewing books by the likes of social psychologist Stanley Milgram or literary theorist Stanley Fish, nitpicking at trivialities as nimbly as he dissects lines of Heaney's poetry, yet shunning ideas of breadth greater than his own clever epigrams. What he praises ought certainly to be praised in his criticism, yet, conversely, what interests him least is, in this book of reviewery, least of interest. (386 pp.) By Jonathon Keats

To truly appreciate classical music, one must listen carefully - and that's not always as easy as it sounds. So says world-renowned pianist Charles Rosen, whose latest work, "Piano Notes," itself demands much from his audience. To read the book from cover to cover is to sit through Beethoven's daunting Hammerklavier without pause: One feels it's worthy of ovation but, exhausted, one can barely rise to the challenge. Throw in an intimidating repertoire of technical terms - glissando, due corde hammering, dodecaphonic passages - and the musically illiterate reader may break into a cold sweat. Yet, despite the acute attention his writing requires, Rosen has managed to create a volume of fascinating breadth in which he explains how the piano works, how it has changed over the centuries, what to look for when listening to various composers, and why the profession is increasingly demanding for performers. Too bad his best writing appears parenthetically or in the footnotes (Rosen is a storyteller, not an essayist). But just as a piano well cared for improves with age, so might "Piano Notes." One certainly turns the last page with a gratifying sense of accomplishment. (235 pp.) By Elizabeth Armstrong

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