My Back Pages (2017)

Moore, Steven. My Back Pages: reviews and essays. Zerogram Press, 2017.

Steven Moore—an irreverent but supremely knowledgeable literary critic, editor, and writer—is new to my radar, following in the footsteps of my recent fascination with Michael Dirda and Alberto Manguel. Reading book reviews wasn't something I ever thought I'd enjoy, but, after reading through a handful of glorified reading lists (like that of Clifton Fadiman), I started to enjoy the craft of capturing just enough of the spirit of a book to make the reader (of your review) feel that the book must be purchased and read at once. The first twenty-five pages of My Back Pages are taken up by Moore's own introduction, which is pleasant and inviting, so I will exclude that from my format and focus on the book proper. Since Moore chooses to arrange the reviews alphabetically by author surname (so as to eliminate bias), the first twenty-five pages are spread across Héctor Abad to Anne Beattie, with names like Nicholson Baker, Djuna Barnes, and John Barth in between. Already within the handful of reviews, it is clear that we are in the hands of an enigmatic literary scholar. Moore exhibits an engaging conjunction between casual, crisp writing (as if you're discussing books over coffee) and a database-like mind buzzing with search and retrieval algorithms from a petabyte of data about books. Given Moore's previous two publications (two volumes that construct an alternative history of the novel from beginnings to 1800), one will never be at a loss as to what to read next if one has access to Moore's reviews.