The Ego Is Always at the Wheel: Bagatelles - Hardcover

Schwartz, Delmore; Phillips, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811209830 ISBN 13: 9780811209830

Publisher: New Directions, 1986

Synopsis

Drawn from the poet's collected papers at Yale University, these humorous essays touch on topics including taking baths and the meaning of existentialism, the abominations of the telephone, theories of Hamlet's behavior and Don Giovanni's promiscuity, and divorce

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Now, The Ego Is Always at the Wheel, a collection of nineteen essays, presents the poet as a humorist of no mean accomplishment.

From Publishers Weekly:

Most of the 19 featherweight pieces in this posthumous collection culled from the "papers" of the onetime wunderkind of American letters were never before published. The subjects are deliberately frothy; among them: baseball, movie celebs, America's worship of cars, Shakespeare (irreverently), mail-order brides, naughty Don Giovanni, Marilyn Monroe. The intention is quite simply to amuse, now and then to edify, but the result is Schwartz often sounds like a bright, frisky undergraduate. Samples of his whimsy: the song titles "My Old Kentucky Womb" and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginity." Some of the pieces are wittier and more worthy of the poet's imagination and high intelligence. On balance, however, publication of these begatelles will do very little to salvage a lapsed reputation.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0811209830
• ISBN 13: 9780811209830
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 146