Three Rings by Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn's Three Rings is erudition, essayism, and memoir, made to dance together like a visible clockworksor literary scholarship such as Ricky Jay might have practiced it onstage. This little book is ruminative, humane and gorgeously precise.
This slender, exquisite book rewards on many levels” - Kirkus Reviews
“Mendelsohn’s talent with descriptive detail brings his work alive, such as repeated descriptions of Auerbach, while exiled in Istanbul, gazing through a palace window over the turquoise Sea of Marmara. Mendelsohn never fails to entertain as he takes the reader across thousands of years’ worth of literature and lives.” - Publishers Weekly
“This essay ought to become a beloved handbook for writing Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm was in its time.... [Mendelsohn] performs [the ring method] with a piece of fabulist writing which is a thrilling new mode in a career made of dramatic shifts in register, from fire breathing reviewer to meditative memoirist on desire (The Elusive Embrace, to mournful Sebaldian archivist in the face of the Holocaust (The Lost).... The ring structure allows him to be all things at once. The way this book feels so expansive in a space so small, you don’t even have to ask if the ring structure applies to things other than writing.” - Literary Hub
“Contained in the interwoven circles of this slim, labyrinthine book is a vision that encompasses the world. Part dirge, part memoir, part exegesis, all rhapsody -- Mendelsohn's anatomy of literature's subtlest pleasures is itself that subtlest of literary pleasures: a masterpiece.” - Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies
“'Three Rings,' a short but profoundly moving work, clings with the same tenacity to a belief in the regenerative power of literature. Companionably and creatively, it reaches back through eras of wars and plagues and cataclysms to offer readers a reassuringly long view of the vigor of the 'Odyssey,' the book that launched a thousand books.” - Wall Street Journal
“Memoirist and critic (and T&C contributor) Daniel Mendelsohn takes an erudite approach to the writer's dilemma in this new book, which examines the lives and work of three of history's greatest authors as well as Mendelsohn's own experience with a life of letters.” - Town & Country
“In his supple, slender book Mendelsohn links three exiled writers... [he] ingeniously turns his straying into the end of the circle, the point from which it had strayed. More than a master class in literary analysis, Three Rings is Mendelsohn’s distinctive, genre-defying inspiration.” - National Book Review
“To read Three Rings is like spending a few hours with a brilliant, captivating conversationalist whose ardor for his subjects is contagious. It’s an intellectual adventure, and a brilliant achievement. "” - Jewish Book Council
"Three Rings is a glorious celebration of multiplicity, diversity, journeys, transformations and our common humanity." - Times Literary Supplement
“Mendelsohn’s talent with descriptive detail brings his work alive, such as repeated descriptions of Auerbach, while exiled in Istanbul, gazing through a palace window over the turquoise Sea of Marmara. Mendelsohn never fails to entertain as he takes the reader across thousands of years’ worth of literature and lives.” - Publishers Weekly
“This essay ought to become a beloved handbook for writing Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm was in its time.... [Mendelsohn] performs [the ring method] with a piece of fabulist writing which is a thrilling new mode in a career made of dramatic shifts in register, from fire breathing reviewer to meditative memoirist on desire (The Elusive Embrace, to mournful Sebaldian archivist in the face of the Holocaust (The Lost).... The ring structure allows him to be all things at once. The way this book feels so expansive in a space so small, you don’t even have to ask if the ring structure applies to things other than writing.” - Literary Hub
“Contained in the interwoven circles of this slim, labyrinthine book is a vision that encompasses the world. Part dirge, part memoir, part exegesis, all rhapsody -- Mendelsohn's anatomy of literature's subtlest pleasures is itself that subtlest of literary pleasures: a masterpiece.” - Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies
“'Three Rings,' a short but profoundly moving work, clings with the same tenacity to a belief in the regenerative power of literature. Companionably and creatively, it reaches back through eras of wars and plagues and cataclysms to offer readers a reassuringly long view of the vigor of the 'Odyssey,' the book that launched a thousand books.” - Wall Street Journal
“Memoirist and critic (and T&C contributor) Daniel Mendelsohn takes an erudite approach to the writer's dilemma in this new book, which examines the lives and work of three of history's greatest authors as well as Mendelsohn's own experience with a life of letters.” - Town & Country
“In his supple, slender book Mendelsohn links three exiled writers... [he] ingeniously turns his straying into the end of the circle, the point from which it had strayed. More than a master class in literary analysis, Three Rings is Mendelsohn’s distinctive, genre-defying inspiration.” - National Book Review
“To read Three Rings is like spending a few hours with a brilliant, captivating conversationalist whose ardor for his subjects is contagious. It’s an intellectual adventure, and a brilliant achievement. "” - Jewish Book Council
"Three Rings is a glorious celebration of multiplicity, diversity, journeys, transformations and our common humanity." - Times Literary Supplement
Daniel Mendelsohn is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, where he is Editor-at-Large. His books include the memoirs An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic and The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, as well as three collections of essays and criticism, most recently Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780813944661 |
| ISBN 10 | 081394466X |
| Title | Three Rings |
| Author | Daniel Mendelsohn |
| Series | Page-Barbour Lectures |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | University of Virginia Press |
| Year published | 2020-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 128 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |