Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly

Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Memoir. WORDS, WORDS, WORDS is a wide-ranging collection of literary essays that astonish the reader with their candor, insight, and generosity. They echo everywhere with a kind of cosmic laughter that never lets us forget we are constructs of our own capacity to see through language—that at a most fundamental level, what we think about our selves is inevitably an extension of what we learn in our reading of others. Neither precious...
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Nonfiction. Literary Criticism. Memoir. WORDS, WORDS, WORDS is a wide-ranging collection of literary essays that astonish the reader with their candor, insight, and generosity. They echo everywhere with a kind of cosmic laughter that never lets us forget we are constructs of our own capacity to see through language—that at a most fundamental level, what we think about our selves is inevitably an extension of what we learn in our reading of others.

Neither precious nor shy, their subjects range from the sublime to the ridiculous—from the inarticulate nature of grief to a modest proposal for the uses of the dead. Bowering shares with us what he has learned in a lifetime of exercising his craft—even including what constitutes bad writing.

He constantly reminds us that the first and most important rule of life is: pay attention.