PositiveThe New York TimesHere, reading becomes psychoanalytic self-exhibition, complete with insights on identity, sexuality, voice and the attainment of knowledge ... Als’s careful read on Capote doubles as a mind-popping take on white girls generally. He exposes the funny and calculated fissures that can open between the white-girl self we’re shown and the white-girl self we cannot know, the slipperiness of white girls as shackled objects of desire and matrices of power. Nearly all his other literary readings glisten with this panache ... His resulting critique of whiteness is effortless, honest and fearless. He doesn’t afford whites any unwitting reverence, nor any hip, posturing disdain .... Als comes across as a critic who has mastered nuance and observation but not discipline or moderation. An orgy — or gluttony — of insights overwhelms these pages ... Clearly, Als is writing against the essay’s depletion as a genre. Yet how bizarre to read so many thought-jewels delivered in such perfect prose, scattered across such sloppy form ... Blends the cultivated and the vulgar with interpretive sophistication and unbridled verve.
