Sharp Hardcover – April 10, 2018

Author Michelle Dean could herself be the 11th entrant in this book of ten ‘sharp’ women writers of the last century. Her erudition, insight, and synthesizing acumen make the book both an education and a delight.Part biography, part literary criticism, part social history (with more than a dollop of well documented gossip), Ms. Dean weaves together differing and at times prickly threads (uh, think Hannah Arendt and Pauline Kael) into a coherent and engaging narrative.I wanted to read Sharp because (shame on me) although I recognize all the names here, I knew little of the ten writers profiled (make that eleven if you count a short chapter - short shrift? - on Zora Neale Hurston). True, if I was really motivated I could have read the wikipedia articles and surfed the web, but Ms. Dean’s book held out the promise of a comprehensive overview coming from an an informed and engaged writer who has spend some time with her topic.I wasn’t disappointed. I learned enough to whet my appetite, and I plan to read both Mary McCarthy and Joan Didion for sure. That Ms. Dean brings together a bit of cultural history and the feel of the times adds an invaluable context for her subjects.I am not sure I buy the feminist angle - and neither did some of these writers - but happily it is applied with a lighter than usual touch. All of the 10 are most worthy and all achieved more than a modicum of success.True, at times Ms. Dean’s narrative becomes embroiled in long past literary feuds which were of interest only to an in-crowd even then, and some of the presumed significance of the New York literary scene itself is excessively reverential, nevertheless there is not a lot to skip over here.I hope Ms. Dean is not offended when I say her book is a great place to start for those coming to these authors for the first time. No previous knowledge is needed, no critical background, just a willingness to learn about some great writers and their work.Let me end with a personal preference for the sharpest of the sharp: Dorothy Parker. The oldest of the ten, and the one with the least formal education (she never finished high school). Maybe she didn’t deal with the big issues but she sure had the keenest of insights. Yup, a lot of her work is dated and much of her light verse is dead on the page. But when she was good, she was very, very good. So good that when Ms. Dean quotes a picture caption written for Vogue at the beginning of Parker’s career, the wit is piercing and still hysterically funny.

Yes, this is a very well-researched book about several women writers who were dominant in the American cultural scene from the 1920s on (Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Zora Neal Hurston, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, Janet Malcolm, and a sidebar about Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy) but my caveat is that Michelle Dean does not differentiate about the type of writer each woman is. When she wrote her essay "The Making of THE GROUP", Pauline Kael discussed Mary McCarthy as a "culture heroine" who had brought women's experiences out in the open, but to a select crowd (the Partisan Review set) but that THE GROUP made her into a different type of writer, a best-selling author! Kael (for example) was a "popular" journalist, while Renata Adler was not (not even when she was the movie critic for The New York Times) which is why Adler's take-down of Kael in The New York Review of Books was irrelevant: people didn't read Pauline Kael for the niceties of her style but for her passionate defense of movies. And this book keeps missing the point! But it's well written and should let readers look into more of the work of these women.

I remember now why, after first loving it, I ended up not liking a class on Literary Criticism. For me, it’s to ethereal, too removed from everyday life. Despite its “sharpness,” what it achieves is just not worth the work of plowing through it. I may return to reading some of the writings of the women covered, but reading about the times in which they lived may prove more rewarding.

The book starts out a bit slow; the first chapter reads as though there will be separate chapters for each woman. After that, however, the author illustrates the interactions, positive and negative, among them. Lots of interesting facts about them all. A very good read for anyone interested in the literary women of recent times.

My 3-star review is perhaps random because I ended up picking and choosing which chapters I wanted to read. I was more interested in some of the women over others. But I love the research that went into each chapter, the pulling of them all together...bravo. I never would have known what I know now about the fabulous women portrayed in this book.

It isn’t a perfect book, but it is an important one. By highlighting a number of highly intelligent and verbose women, willing to have an opinion even if it was “sharp”, it paints a wonderful history of femininity and intelligence at a time when the intellectual woman was emerging as a true force. Inspirational and punchy, even with it’s flaws.

Enjoyable, but not as educational or as personal as I would have liked.

I wanted to like this book, but didn't. Our book club chose it for our June book. We all decided the author didn't care for her subjects or chose to portray them in the worst light possible.

I've been using it as extra reading and discussion in Cambridge Proficiency Preparation classes

An informative book, with insights from several women writers who led the walk of feminism way before and paved the way for several other people. Simply strong and fearless women whom we should acknowledge and look upto

Habla sobre personajes increíbles en su época (y que ahora también lo serían) Lenguaje muy periodístico y lleno de anécdotas y referencias de la época