'Vermeer' collects over twenty essays from the past twenty years by acclaimed (and recently retired) New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Weschler. The pieces here deal with current events and the arts, and include profiles of Roman Polanski, David Hockney, and Art Spiegelman.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Daniel Asa Rose
With his densely textured consciousness, coupled with a curiosity that can only be called protean, he may be the most civilized staff writer The New Yorker ever lost.
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Outstanding
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Gilbert Reid
Weschler makes us look at things afresh, and think thoughts we have not thought before. Vermeer in Bosnia is a fine book.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Admirers of Weschler's blend of reportage, history and art criticism as well as newcomers will enjoy the far-ranging collection. [17 May 2004, p.41]
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Peter Lewis
Weschler has brought coherence to an obscured slice of the world.
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Favorable
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Booklist Vanessa Bush
[An] incredible display of Weschler's versatility and the depth, detail, and digressions that add enormously to the picture he paints of his chosen subject. [Jul 2004, p.1809]
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Matthew Price
Promiscuously eclectic... Weschler is an impossibly wide-ranging writer, and his subjects (Polanski aside) are far from typical.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Weschler writes from an ''I'' so sparkly that even a piece about his adored daughter escapes the traps of ego.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
The pieces don't add up to anything approaching a coherent whole (things postmodern seldom do), and themes come and go, but Weschler's indefatigable literariness and pleasantly unpretentious style help make these fugitive pieces a pleasure to read. [1 May 2004, p.436]
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Favorable
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LA Weekly David L. Ulin
In these essays, Weschler continues to push the boundaries, finding connections where we least expect them, and reporting back to us on a society that is at once profound and vicious, wondrous and frightful.
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