A Driftwood Altar - Professor of English Mark Ford

I can think of few more trustworthy, and few more attentive, guides to modern and contemporary letters than Mark Ford, who responds to the challenge of involuted works with prose of absolute clarity, renders judgments at once authoritative and agreeable, and sees vivid connections where lesser readers see only impassable borders. From paragons of craft to parables of estrangement, from the manic energies of F. T. Marinetti to the painstaking humility of Elizabeth Bishop, from the wholly invented Ern Malley to the stranger-than-fiction archive of Raymond Roussel, Ford's essays will tell you what you need to know, then send you off in search of the wonderful works - from France, Italy, America, Britain, Australia - which Ford's writings bring to your attention, and which, without him, you might not quite understand. - Stephen Burt