Nobody Here But Us Chickens

The man the Village Voice called ""the Mickey Spillane of Belles Lettres"" and the Washington Post called a ""literary curmudgeon, randy iconoclast, and a delight"" outdoes himself in his fifth book, an outrageous and virtuoso display of literary and historical portraiture. Marvin Mudrick believes that in books, as in life, people matter; further, that it matters in books, as it does in life, whether people are decent or not. Sticking to this plain common sense, Mudrick has assembled a hall of fame and rogues' gallery that is also a satirical attack on Shakespeare, Jesus, and Flaubert (among others); a wide-ranging meditation on heroism; and great fun. Mudrick devotees will know that he favors Chaucer, Jane Austen, and D. H. Lawrence, all of whom appear here; but about Coriolanus, Van Gogh, and Solzhenitsyn? Readers unfamiliar with the daring of Mudrick's opinions and the special texture of his prose will come away from Nobody Here But Us Chickens wishing that critical biography as erudite and moral as this were always as provocative and fresh.