A Word or Two Before I Go

Arthur Krystal has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Washington Post, among other publications. His book Agitations: Essays on Life and Literature was a finalist for the 2003 Pen Award for the art of the essay.

[Arthur Krystal] is smart, entertaining, and provocative. A down-to-earth intellectual with an effective strategically placed style of conversational understatement and charm. And a history of wanting his iconoclastic non-fiction to make a difference in the way we think and act . . . Krystal is heir to the familiar or informal essay, a genre going back to William Hazlitt in the early 19th century that reflects an evolving metaphysical and personal rumination on ordinary ideas, playing with them, rethinking them in prose that knows when to slip from complex to colloquial.--Joan Baum "WSHU Public Radio" Krystal's witty and generous essay collection purports to be his last, a denouement to a long career of writing "sentences that lead to other sentences," many in the pages of this magazine. In one essay, Krystal recalls getting clocked in the face by Muhammad Ali in 1991 on a bus driving down Interstate 78. In the book's finale, a short story, an aging man regards his life as a composite of moments stretched and compressed, probing time's capacity to blunt and to sharpen. In this collection, Krystal sifts through his essays and criticism in kind, mulling the stuff that makes life and literature.-- "The New Yorker" Arthur Krystal is an essayist of grace, range, and depth. . . . The subjects that he embraces range from contemporary poetry to the challenges of aging to legendary sports figures. Whatever his subject, we're right there with Krystal as he explores some of the highways and byways of the world around him. His work here bears comparison with other contemporary essayists who work in an exploratory spirit, including James Wolcott (Critical Mass), Zadie Smith (Changing My Mind), and the late Christopher Hitchens (Arguably). . . . I'm confident that readers who have followed Krystal's writing in The New Yorker and other publications will be eager to see some of their favorite essays gathered together in a permanent form.--National Magazine Award-winning journalist Wyatt Mason An essayist, besides being able to write, should possess 'a well-stocked mind, ' leaving open the question of what it is stocked with. Consider, for example, Arthur Krystal's A Word or Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now, which opens with a pleasing air of wry despondency. . . . This Eeyore-like plangency runs softly throughout Krystal's pages but dominates the superb 'Old News: Why We Can't Tell the Truth About Aging' . . . . Other essays in this companionable book include an appreciation of the poet John Ashbery; reminiscences of Krystal's teacher, mentor and friend Jacques Barzun; reflections on the books that shaped his mind and taste; meditations on boxing; and -- daring greatly--a thoughtfully balanced answer to the question 'Is Cultural Appropriation Ever Appropriate?'--Michael Dirda "The Washington Post"