In a Swoon

Jonathan Yardley

I do believe I have a crush on Jonathan Yardley. His Second Reading is a delight. He is crazy about Eudora Welty and William Faulkner (shades of my Grand Southern Literary Tour). His favorites, with so many to choose from, by those two famous authors are The Robber Bridegroom and The Reivers.

He believes that The Great Gatsby is just about the greatest work by any American writer. Steinbeck doesn't stand up to his scrutiny as well as he did when Yardley was reading him as a younger man. Hemingway is just as cruel to Fitzgerald and Stein and Ford Maddox Ford, all who were a help to him, in A Moveable Feast.

He takes a good long look at the early essays of Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem; Maxine Hong Kingston's memoir The Woman Warrior; Toni Morrison's Sula; and, Crazy Salad, essays by the recently deceased Nora Ephron.

He adores James Thurber (My Life and Hard Times) and E. B. White (The Elements of Style)...as do I.

Best of all, once I am finished with the 60 reviews in this book, and I only have ten more to go, there are 37 more to be found online.

I am in a swoon.