What Is What Was

<strong>What Is What Was</strong> Richard Sterns fifth orderly miscellany is the first tomeaningfully combine his fiction and nonfiction. Stories such as the al... » 

What Is What Was Richard Sterns fifth orderly miscellany is the first tomeaningfully combine his fiction and nonfiction. Stories such as the alreadywellknown My Ex the Moral Philosopher appear among portraits of the sortHugh Kenner praised as almost the invention of a new genre Auden PoundEllison Terkel W. C. Fields Bertrand Russell Walter Benjamin in both essayand story Jung and Freud Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger.In the books seven sections are analyses of the Wimbledon tennis tournament asan Anglification machine of Silicon Valley at its shaky peak of James andDante as travel writers a Lucretian look at todays cosmology Americanfiction in detail and depth a thought experiment for Clarence Thomas asalvation scheme for Ross Perot a semiconfession of the writer.The book contains but isnt philosophy criticism opinion reportage orautobiography although the author says it is as much of this as he plans towrite. There is a recurrent theme the ways in which actuality is made andremade in description argument and narration fictional and nonfictional butabove all What Is What Was is a provocative entertainment by a writer whoas Philip Roth once said knows as much as anyone writing American prose aboutfamily mischief intellectual shenanigans love blundersand about writingAmerican prose. «