The Latest
- CMC You in Claremont
I will be serving as a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at Claremont McKenna College this coming November. The fellowship will involve a public lecture, classroom visits, and workshops. I will also be the Mary Routt Chair of Writing at Scripps College (also in Claremont) for the spring of 2015, teaching a course in arts criticism.
The new All Points post, 5/13.
- Excellent News
I've signed a contract for my next book, the one on elite higher education that I've been thinking about and writing bits and pieces of as essays and talks for the past six years. It will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2014. The working title is Excellent Sheep: Thinking for Yourself, Inventing Your Life, and Other Things the Ivy League Won't Teach You.
The National Book Critics Circle has chosen me as the winner of this year's Nona A. Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Here's a short interview that was conducted in advance of the award ceremony, and here's my acceptance speech in text and video (I'm introduced from about 11:00-12:30 and speak until about 19:00).
A segment on the radio program Q on the question of food as culture.
A piece in The New Republic on the English man of letters Geoff Dyer.
- Here Comes the Jane Again
A Jane Austen Education is out in paperback. Buy buttons below; more info here.
"sharp, endearingly self-effacing…a profound truth lies embedded in Deresiewicz’s witty account of his early animosity…a shrewd critic of Austen’s work."
--New York Times Book Review
"I must curb myself from gushing for fear of losing my credibility....How William Deresiewicz came to evolve into an enlightened Y-chromosome is one heck of a great story....Part literary criticism, part personal memoir and a lot of Austen doctrine, his prose is open, engaging and very humorous....We love this book, and not just because it has the best cover we have seen in years...We were truly agog and enchanted with every word."
--Austenprose.com
"Seeing a favorite critic expound at length on a favorite author is an undersung form of literary pleasure--as close as you can get to reading two great writers at the same time...Like Austen, Deresiewicz is lucid, principled and knows how to think as well as how to feel, without ever sacrificing one to the other...a delightful and enlightening book..."
--Salon
"I finished the book with two strong impulses: One, to immediately reread everything Jane Austen wrote, with Deresiewicz's book at my side, and two, to invite Deresiewicz over for more Austen talk."
--Associated Press
|
 |
||
 |
More about the book (latest news, reviews, media, adapted pieces, author videos, etc.)