The winner of this week’s Gusher Award is:
“Brilliant: Unwritten law requires reviewers to use this word at least once about every Garry Wills book. How much truer this is of Lincoln at Gettysburg.”
Lexington Herald-Leader review of Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (Simon & Schuster, 1992)
Gusher Awards typically go to reviews of more recent books than this Pulitzer Prize–winner, but the Herald-Leader’s unintentionally comic line was irresistible. And it suggests what’s wrong with literary hype: Many scholars and critics regard Wills’s study of the Gettysburg Address — the greatest speech in American political history — as one of the finest Civil War books of the past two decades. But this review goes so far over the top that many of us might tune out the praise.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.
www.janiceharayda.com
Fortunately, I don’t spend a lot of time reading unwritten law, so tend to avoid those meaningless superlatives in my reviews which, I believe, is absolutely brilliant of me.
Malcolm
Comment by knightofswords — September 13, 2008 @ 1:58 pm |
Glad you can avoid the superlatives, Malcolm. It’s harder than most people think …
Comment by 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom — September 13, 2008 @ 8:26 pm |