"I’ve never read anything that so brilliantly reaches beyond the efforts of mass extermination by the Nazis to the American onslaught in Vietnam—and makes poetry out of it."
"Profoundly lyrical, it is Schultz’s great strength to create ugliness so profound as to reveal life’s beauty. Reading it is to be swept in by its power. I am reminded of Rilke, who wrote that the artist, in order to see beauty must first see the horrible, that a single denial of the repulsive will force him out of the state of grace and make him utterly sinful. Philip Schultz lives forever in that state of grace. He has written a great book."
"Schultz has found a way not only to make these many narratives inform each other but to do so in the service of what becomes the lyric celebration of the possibility of love and beauty and heroic action in the face of ultimate darkness… What is so remarkable about this poem is its symphonic orchestration of conflicting tones—of outrage and anger, passion and compassion, guilt and longing; its pitch-perfect depiction of both ultimate horror and the possibilities for moral triumph and human connection."
Kenyon Review - Ronald L. Sharp
"Stunning. . . . The Wherewithal is about evil and suffering and the human capacity for compassion."
"A masterpiece. It takes a mysterious combination of humility, bravery, curiosity and skill to try to comprehend massive evil, and to illustrate that effort . . . an extraordinary volume of poetry. I repeat. We have been given a masterpiece."
The Rumpus - Barbara Berman
"This dark, deep book, full of emotion and motion, points forward, thinking in new ways about the Holocaust and its aftermath."
"An extraordinary piece of writing. As in his earlier work Schultz uses the resources of fiction, verse, and reportage to create something at once novelistic and deliriously poetic. . . . It left me reeling."
Schultz has found a way not only to make these many narratives inform each other but to do so in the service of what becomes the lyric celebration of the possibility of love and beauty and heroic action in the face of ultimate darkness… What is so remarkable about this poem is its symphonic orchestration of conflicting tones—of outrage and anger, passion and compassion, guilt and longing; its pitch-perfect depiction of both ultimate horror and the possibilities for moral triumph and human connection.
Ronald L. Sharp - The Kenyon Review
Philip Schultz’s The Wherewithal is an ambitious, bracing book about large-scale suffering…and human compassion.”
Will Schutt - The East Hampton Star
This dark, deep book, full of emotion and motion, points forward, thinking in new ways about the Holocaust and its aftermath.
The Wherewithal is distinguished for its ability to braid together strands of narrative while leavening the story with unexpected bursts of humor… direct and precise in its emotional articulations.”
Stunning….The Wherewithal is about evil and suffering and the human capacity for compassion.”
Adam Plunkett - The New York Times Book Review
Gripping, eloquent, moving, this is a powerful tale about what remains hidden and/or unspeakable in history.
Philip Schultz's The Wherewithal is a book in which time has come undone. Taking place in San Francisco in 1968, it also reaches back to the Holocaust—specifically, the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, when Polish civilians killed more than 300 Jews. The Wherewithal is narrative as fever dream, chopped up, fragmented and stitched back together, less about realism than allegory.”
David Ulin - Los Angeles Times
Stunning….The Wherewithal is about evil and suffering and the human capacity for compassion. If the narrator, Henryk Stanislaw Wyrzykowski, is broken, inconsistent, unreliable, inconclusive, it’s because of the strain of finding the wherewithal to face suffering on every human scale.”
The New York Times Book Review
