Five portraits

the long version

"In Five Portraits, one of the most acute critical thinkers of our time presents essays on five of the most important writers of the past hundred years. The result is a remarkable examination of a moment of cultural crisis - a time when these writers, caught between the dream of creating an abiding masterpiece and the reality of a brutal culture fascinated by apocalyptic catastrophe, deliberately put themselves and their work at the center of the storm."--BOOK JACKET.