Critical mass: four decades of essays, reviews, hand grenades, and hurrahs

"From his early seventies dispatches as a fledgling critic for The Village Voice on rock 'n roll, movies, and television, to the literary criticism of the eighties and nineties that made him both feared and famous, to his must-read reports on the cultural weather for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott has had a career as a freelance critic and an intellectual nearly unique in our time. This collection features the best of Wolcott in whatever guise-connoisseur, intrepid reporter, memoirist, and, occasionally, hit man-he has chosen to take on. The result is a treasure trove of sparkling, high-octane prose and a portrait of our life and cultural times over the past four decades"--