A virtue of [Dean's] book is that it shows how each woman, by wielding a pen as if it were a scalpel or a scimitar, confounded the gender norm of niceness and placed her analytical prowess front and center. Among 20th-century intellectuals, "men might have outnumbered women, demographically," Dean writes, but "in the arguably more crucial matter of producing work worth remembering, the work that defined the terms of their scene, the women were right up to par—and often beyond it." I agree with her…Positioning herself not as a scholar breaking new ground (many of these women have been well covered in biographies, memoirs and academic studies) but as a missionary championing her subjects' "oppositional spirit," Dean artfully shepherds the reader through the professional and personal ups and downs of each life, keeping an eye on the affinities—a taste for battle, an ethic of intellectual honesty—that made some of them allies (McCarthy and Arendt, Arendt and Adler) and drove others apart (McCarthy and Sontag, Adler and Kael).
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
Narrated by Bernadette Dunne
Michelle DeanUnabridged — 11 hours, 34 minutes
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion
Narrated by Bernadette Dunne
Michelle DeanUnabridged — 11 hours, 34 minutes
Overview
Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm-these brilliant women are the central figures of Sharp. Their lives intertwine as they cut through the cultural and intellectual history of America in the twentieth century, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the sexist attitudes of the men who often undervalued their work as critics and essayists.
These women are united by what Dean terms as "sharpness," the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit, a claiming of power through writing rather than position. Sharp is a vibrant and rich depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slanging matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books as well as a considered portrayal of how these women came to be so influential in a climate where women were treated with derision by the critical establishment.
Mixing biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, Sharp is an enthralling exploration of how a group of brilliant women became central figures in the world of letters despite the many obstacles facing them, a testament to how anyone not in a position of power can claim the mantle of writer and, perhaps, help change the world.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Sharp:
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
New York Times Book Review Paperback Row
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR’s “Fresh Air”, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by BuzzFeed
“[A] timely new book . . . a group biography of sorts, tracing a dozen female writers—from Dorothy Parker to Janet Malcolm—whose reviews, essays and other works compose a rough history of American thought from the 1920s to the ’80s . . . Dean deftly and often elegantly traces these women’s arguments about race, politics and gender . . . The book is consistently entertaining and often truly provocative—especially for anyone who makes or loves art or literature . . . urgent in its own right.”—Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times
“In Sharp, Ms. Dean has pulled off a much rarer achievement: She’s written an entertaining and erudite cultural history of selected female thinkers who ‘came up in a world that was not eager to hear women’s opinions about anything.’ Indeed, Ms. Dean herself performs the work of a public intellectual by doing justice to the substance of her subjects’ work, while also conveying—through her own wit and lively opinions—why their work matters. This is a book designed to stir up discussion and dissension in its readers, beginning on the very first page of its preface . . . There’s so much more to savor, ruminate on, learn from and, certainly, argue with in this splendid book. Sharp embodies the work of its subjects and manages the difficult intellectual and narrative feat of linking a bunch of disparate women writers, not via their topical interests, but by their sensibility: that of writers, with one foot in the mainstream of the American intellectual culture that men made, and one foot outside, sometimes by their own decision, and sometimes not. And each one of them, in this wonderful telling, is very much an intellectual and a writer to be heard.”—Maureen Corrigan, Wall Street Journal
“Sharp is a dinner party you want to be at . . . Dean’s literary bash is as stimulating and insightful as its roster of guests. She not only encapsulates their biographies and achievements with remarkable concision, but also connects the dots between them . . . Sharp is a wonderful celebration of some truly gutsy, brilliant women.”—Heller McAlpin, NPR
“[Sharp] is, of course, a compliment with an edge . . . A virtue of [Dean’s] book is that it shows how each woman, by wielding a pen as if it were a scalpel or a scimitar, confounded the gender norms of niceness and placed her analytical prowess front and center . . . As a missionary championing her subjects’ ‘oppositional spirit,’ Dean artfully shepherds the reader through the professional and personal ups and downs of each life . . . Dean traverses the intellectual landscape of the 20th century at an easy gallop—the boozy cocktail parties; the plotting of editors in their offices; the literary and political trench wars, aggressive essays thrown across the breach like grenades. She is frank, giving us the skinny.”—Laura Jacobs, New York Times
“I never considered that these writers were not in the center of our shared intellectual history. But if anyone needed convincing, this work of readable scholarship should do it. Dean proves a sharp writer and critic herself.”—Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Exceptional . . . Dean is a master of the art of summation, briskly anchoring readers who may be unfamiliar with these writers before moving on to make connections between them. But it is the connections that make this book . . . [Dean] weaves a gorgeous spiderweb of connections between lives touching lightly at points, to create a strong and satisfying analysis of the collective experience of these extraordinary women who led the way for us.”—Meg Waite Clayton, San Francisco Chronicle
“For aspiring writers especially, these women are required reading.”—Christian Lorentzen, New York
“Both deeply researched and uncommonly engrossing. Indeed, Sharp’s pacing and wealth of anecdote compel one to consume the book like a novel . . . Dean’s feat of intellectual wrangling is as impressive for what it holds together—the exquisite, creaking tension of ten arch individualists—as for what it deconstructs.”—Dustin Illingworth, Paris Review
“An engaging look at 10 influential women—Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag and Nora Ephron among them—who ‘made an art of having an opinion,’ often in the face of male dismissal.”—People
“A riposte to this systematic decentering, providing a counter-narrative to the well-worn tales of American literary critical fathers and sons . . . Meticulously traces the intricate webs, both institutional and personal, that bound these women together and kept them afloat.”—Ellen Wayland-Smith, The Millions
“Shrewd . . . The strength of Sharp lies in the way Dean stands up for the ‘individual personality’ of each of her subjects. And they were individuals, all.”—Matthew Price, Newsday
“In a happy case of it takes one to know one, Michelle Dean has delivered a penetrating book about penetrating American writers . . . Drawing on close readings of their works and other sources, Dean succinctly charts how these women broke into public discourse and how they were viewed and received . . . Dean serves one incisive sentence after another.”—Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“A sagacious, stylish survey of 10 female essayists, critics, scholars and memoirists . . . Not just a tribute to 10 remarkable women but to virtues that all writers—male and female alike—can aspire to: toughness, tenacity and clear-headed thinking.”—Peter Tonguette, Columbus Dispatch
“A beautifully written, well-researched and much needed correction to criticism’s historical record . . . [Dean] navigates from one layer to the next with grace. It amazes to think that this is her first book.”—Amy Brady, Dallas Morning News
“Gracefully combining biography and cultural criticism, Sharp is a long overdue examination of a literary history largely still seen as having been dominated by male writers.”—Chicago Review of Books
“Skillfully braiding critical insight with lively anecdote and biographical detail, Sharp doubles as a history of American literary-intellectual life in the twentieth century—and will undoubtedly leave readers pondering why the work of these writers has aged better than that of many of their contemporaries. It’s a timely book that exemplifies the same qualities Dean finds in her subjects.”—Library of America
“An ode to sharp-tongued women . . . Dean’s book comes at a time of renewed attention to the history of feminism, and the most fascinating parts of the book deal with the complicated relationship these women bore to the movement.”—In These Times
“Michelle Dean’s Sharp is partly an effort to constellate the stars whose influence bears on the present generation of essaying American women . . . Dean is perceptive and revealing about the paths by which women were able to establish themselves as critics and essayists in the decades after the war . . . A timely and acute book.”—Brian Dillon, 4Columns
“Ambitious . . . A useful introduction not just to [Dean’s] writers’ careers, but to the legendary literary establishments and institutions of the 20th century that they worked within and against . . . Dean can deliver a zinger as sharp as those of any of her subjects.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Award-winning literary critic Michelle Dean has written a fascinating cultural history of 10 American women writers, including Dorothy Parker, Susan Sontag, and Pauline Kael. The (male-dominated) literary establishment of their time branded these women as too political, too lightweight, and too opinionated, but they persevered. The eye-opener: how vicious literary feuds could be and how critical many of these women were of other women writers.”—Christian Science Monitor
“Sharp is a good quality in knives. It’s a better quality in people . . . Dean manages to fit together the story of 10 lives in a compact, readable book. How very sharp of her.”—Refinery29
“[Sharp] is a recalibration of the center of gravity of 20th-century intellectual history, of women writing in defiance of social hierarchy . . . Some chapters don’t so much end as hang, with an invisible narrator’s cocked eyebrow that suggests treasure ahead and an immediate turning of the page.”—Globe and Mail (UK)
“In Sharp, Dean, a journalist and literary critic, recenters the New York intellectual world around its women . . . An insightful book that works well to introduce its subjects to newcomers while containing enough of Dean’s analysis to be interesting to readers already familiar with them.”—B.D. McClay, Weekly Standard
“I have to recommend Michelle Dean’s Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion, a delicious cultural history that comes out in April. It brings together some of the most influential social critics of the 20th century, including Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag and Joan Didion, and shows how these glamorous iconoclasts forged their singular careers. Dean makes the convincing argument that women’s voices—if not necessarily feminist ones—did far more to define the last century’s intellectual life than we realize.”—Michelle Goldberg, New York Times
“Few readers could fail to be impressed by both the research behind and readability of this first book by Dean . . . [A] stunning and highly accessible introduction to a group of important writers.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“By portraying intrepidly and eloquently opinionated and highly influential women writers, journalist and critic Dean brings a uniquely intellectual slant to the current renaissance in women’s history via group biographies . . . With the word ferocity appearing with satisfying frequency, Dean presents shrewd, discerning, fresh, and crisply composed interpretations of the temperaments, experiences, and sophisticated trailblazing works of these gutsy and transformative thinkers.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“[H]owever different these women may have been from each other, the author ably explains the ways in which their lives intersected, the conversations they had, and the goals they shared . . . engaging portraits of brilliant minds.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This is such a great idea for a book, and Michelle Dean carries it off, showing us the complexities of her fascinating, extraordinary subjects, in print and out in the world. Dean writes with vigor, depth, knowledge and absorption, and as a result Sharp is a real achievement.”—Meg Wolitzer, New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings and The Female Persuasion
“Michelle Dean has delivered an exquisite examination—both rigorous and compassionate—of what it has meant to be a woman with a public voice and the power to use it critically. This book is ferociously good.”—Rebecca Traister, New York Times-bestselling author of All the Single Ladies
“There can’t be enough cultural histories which make the point that a woman intellectual must represent her own mind, and not the collective mind of all her ‘sisters.’ Sharp is a brisk, entertaining, well-researched reminder that it’s impossible to write—or think—without making life very messy for oneself, but to do so is an achievement well worth the pains.”—Sheila Heti, author of How Should A Person Be?
“An elegant, incisive, and richly detailed account of the lives of ten extraordinary women. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted a book on exactly this subject until I started reading it. Sharp is not simply a collection of distinct biographical essays, but a vital composite portrait of the intellectual life of twentieth-century America. It’s also a lot more fun to read than a deeply researched study of a group of intellectuals has any business being. A necessary book by a wonderful writer.”—Mark O’Connell, author of To Be a Machine
“An insightful look at some of the wisest and most influential women writers . . . engaging, empowering, and insightful.”—Apartment Therapy
The 10 women writers Bernadette Dunne brings to life in this provocative audiobook share a quality women are thought to dislike: All of them relished expressing strong opinions in print, regardless of whether they would hurt feelings or invite retaliation. A sisterhood this is not; none of these women thought of herself as a feminist. Confrontation is a fascinating subject for women, and Dean is a skilled biographer and incisive critic. Even listeners who are familiar with her subjects, who include Dorothy Parker, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, and Nora Ephron, will learn much here. Dunne’s elegant performance adds great value to the insightful text. Her voice is lovely, and she has prepared impeccably, never missing the music in complex sentences and acing the trickiest pronunciations. B.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
2017-12-24
A debut book about the works of 20th-century women whose lives had a deep impact on culture."I gathered the women in this book under the sign of a compliment that every one of them received in their lives: they were called sharp," writes New Republic contributing editor Dean. At first glance, the premise seems rather elementary. Such a qualifier can't possibly carry with it the heft of a book's premise. However, by exploring the different roles that women such as Joan Didion, Hannah Arendt, Renata Adler, Susan Sontag, and Dorothy Parker occupied in the writing world, Dean makes it clear that to be called "sharp" was a steppingstone for their respective careers. All of the women are obviously extremely different: Dorothy Parker was hardly a contemporary of Susan Sontag, nor did they function within the same society. Hannah Arendt was not as progressively irreverent as Renata Adler. However, Dean reveals intriguing connections that link most, if not all, of them together. Each one of these women was involved in one way or another with Condé Nast, an extremely influential publishing group that could make or break writers' careers. In writing for the New York Review of Books or Vogue, among other publications, they were able to test out their ideas on a captive audience of fiery New Yorkers and sophisticated, fashionable women. As is often the case with geniuses, their writings were not received with open arms; there was push back from an audience used to a male authorial power. Interestingly, however different these women may have been from each other, the author ably explains the ways in which their lives intersected, the conversations they had, and the goals they shared. Unfortunately, Dean often discusses these female authors' writerly independence in relation to the men that occupied important places in their lives, an odd choice in a book of this nature. Still, the author presents engaging portraits of brilliant minds.A useful take on significant writers "in a world that was not eager to hear women's opinions about anything."
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169724387 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 04/10/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
I gathered the women in this book under the sign of a compliment that every one of them received in their lives: they were called sharp.
The precise nature of their gifts varied, but they had in common the ability to write unforgettably. The world would not have been the same without Dorothy Parker’s acid reflections on the absurdities of her life. Or Rebecca West’s ability to sweep half the world’s history into a first-person account of a single trip. Or Hannah Arendt’s ideas about totalitarianism, or Mary McCarthy’s fiction that took as its subject the strange consciousness of the princess among the trolls. Or Sontag’s ideas about interpretation, or Pauline Kael’s energetic swipes at filmmakers. Or Ephron’s skepticism about the feminist movement, or Renata Adler’s catalog of the foibles of those in power. Or Janet Malcolm’s reflections on the perils and rewards of psychoanalysis and journalism.
I wrote this book because this history has never been as well-known as it deserves to be, at least outside certain isolated precincts of New York. The forward march of American literature is usually chronicled by way of its male novelists: the Hemingways and Fitzgeralds, the Roths and Bellows and Salingers. There is little sense, in that version of the story, that women writers of those eras were doing much worth remembering. Even in more academic accounts, in “intellectual histories,” it is generally assumed that men dominated the scene. Certainly, the so-called New York intellectuals of the mid-twentieth century are often identified as a male set. But my research showed otherwise. Men might have outnumbered women, demographically. But in the arguably more crucial matter of producing work worth remembering, the work that defined the terms of their scene, the women were right up to par—and often beyond it.
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