Except When I Write: Reflection of a Recovering Critic, Arthur Krystal 2011
A new outstanding, essayist! Krystal, whom I first came across in the Best American Essays, 2011, writes primarily in the NYT and Harper’s but had sailed under my radar. He evidently has managed to do so more widely as well—no Wikipedia entry, no photograph, and nothing on Google except for a couple of book reviews, but the blurbs are good and the essays are excellent. Touching on duels, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s screenwriting, his time as a night watchman in a NYC apartment hotel, the aphorisms, Edgar Allen Poe and the detective story, Jacque Barzun, the 60’s and the Depression, Krystal brings a new and discerning eye, a clever sentence, and a broad erudition to his craft. I want more of these.