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tsharris's review
3.0
Mixed bag. Some of these essays haven't dated well at all, in at least one case because Macdonald's evisceration of the subject was so completely that the subject was forgotten soon thereafter. Several of these essays - "Masscult and Midcult," "The String Untuned," "The Triumph of the Fact" - have genuine lasting value that speak to problems we face today. "The String Untuned" is of particular interest for David Foster Wallace obsessives, since it anticipated (and probably inspired) DFW's "Tense Present" in Harper's and covers much of the same ground on the debate between prescriptive and descriptive grammar.
thbevilacqua's review
3.0
My lower review of this has less to do with the quality of the writing (which is outstanding) but rather how much I disagree with MacDonald and his assertions (particularly his writing about Hemingway, though I'm glad they included the response from George Plimpton)
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