The Art of Language: Selected Essays

This volume gathers 24 essays by Kenneth Cox (1916%E2%80%932005), an English literary critic and essayist who was largely unknown to the public, but fervently admired by a small circle of devotees. Cox's collected reviews emanate polished minimalism and regal authority of voice. Devotees compare him to Samuel Johnson and William Hazlitt. Cox's opinions are always "original, precise, unsparing," says editor Penberthy. American readers will recognize James Joyce, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, and Geoffrey Chaucer among the authors, canonical and contemporary, who get the Cox treatment. Cox can pack a lot into a few words. His reviews consistently display lapidary language and diamond-hard thought. By Cox's lights, for example, Conrad's narratives boil down to the "fate of a man cut off by action of his own from native land and fellow-countrymen" and forced to confront the "fundamentals of life on earth." An afterword by poet August Kleinzahler informs readers that Cox had a notoriously "difficult and irascible" personality and operated at a level of intensity that many associates thought "mad." His acid, possibly self-destructive 1980 takedown of the eminent poet Geoffrey Hill, reprinted here, made him no friends. No doubt Cox is a brilliant critical writer, but this elegant, complex, often chilly volume is likely to appeal mainly to a select audience of literary connoisseurs. (July)