More Dynamite

More Dynamite anthologizes a wealth of essays by a writer with one of the keenest critical eyes of his generation. Craig Raine - poet, critic, novelist, Oxford don and editor - turns his fearsome and unflinching gaze on subjects ranging from Kafka to Koons, Beckett to Babel. He waxes lyrical about Ron Mueck's hyperreal sculptures and reassesses the metafiction of David Foster Wallace. For Raine, no element of cultural output is insignificant, be it cinema, fiction, poetry or installation art.

Finding solace in both literature and art alike, and finding moments of truth and beauty where others had stopped looking, More Dynamite will reinvigorate readers, challenge our perceptions of the classics and wonderfully affirm our love of good writing, new and old. This extensive collection of essays is a crash course in twentieth century artistic endeavour - nothing short of a master class in high culture from one of the most discerning minds in contemporary British letters.



Craig Raine was born in 1944 and educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He became editor of

Quarto in 1979 and was subsequently Poetry Editor at Faber from 1981 to 1991. He is now an emeritus Fellow at New College, Oxford, and has been the editor of

Areté, the arts tri-quarterly, since 1999. He is the author of six works of poetry, and his

Collected Poems 1978-1999 were published in 2000. His verse drama,

'1953' was directed by Patrick Marber at the Almeida Theatre in 1996. He is the author of two collections of literary essays and, most recently, a critical study

T. S. Eliot (2007).



For more than 20 years, Craig Raine's essays have appeared in the best of Britain's thinking press, not least in these pages. This collection amounts to a critical survey of over a century of literature and art... What [Raine] brings to them all is a daunting frame of reference... It makes familiar figures seem fresh.



Inventive, frequently charming, but unapologetically opinionated... Raine's exuberant iconoclasm is always worth watching in full swing.



[Raine] is still - and always will be - an incredibly stylish writer.



Raine's talent is by no means a neligible one



Craig Raine's novels are brilliant and that's the end of it.