Incarnation and Metamorphoses

"Literary criticism,"
David Mason writes, "ought to entertain as well as illuminate." In these essays
he tells stories about embodiment and change, Incarnation and Metamorphosis, drawing connections between art and
life without confusing the two. Mason considers the many kinds of change we
encounter in our lives, our desire for justice and the ways great writers complicate
that desire. He discusses the aesthetic differences of poets Claudia Rankine
and Kay Ryan, his own colorful father's fascination with a fictional character,
and the lives and works of writers like Montaigne, Diderot, and Neruda. He then
takes up such contemporary figures as the daring Australian writer Helen
Garner, the playwright Tom Stoppard, and the poet-critic Dana Gioia, the perils
of fame in the careers of Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heaney, and the loss of poet Michael
Donaghy. Incarnation and Metamorphosis
is a book steeped in love of life and the love of reading.