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What Nails It
Series: Why I Write
Brief Description
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art. Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Writers write. They can't help it. They can't not."...
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What Nails It
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Description
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art.
Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Writers write. They can't help it. They can't not." In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning for fun, for play, and, most of all, to discover—to feel the moment when a creation speaks in its own voice.
Marcus reflects on over half a century spent honing the art of attention—from his California childhood, overshadowed by mystery and silence surrounding his father's death, to his discovery of the critic Pauline Kael, to a confrontation with a sixteenth-century painting in Venice. Through it all, he invites readers to join him in exploring the revolutionary power of art: what it is, why it captures us, and how it forces us to confront what we think we know and who we think we are. Art challenges us to see the world differently, Marcus argues, and the role of the critic is to enact this perspective.
Funny and poignant, What Nails It is a tribute to the indispensable art of criticism by one of its greatest practitioners.
Series: Why I Write
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Devotion
Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading.” —Suzi Feay, Financial Times Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing.” —Katherine Cooper, Hyperallergic A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic—its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist accomplish such an...Paperback$2000Elsewhere:$2199Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Devotion
The National Book Award-winning author of Year of the Monkey, Just Kids, and M Train offers a rare, intimate account of her own creative process. Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading.”—Suzi Feay, Financial Times “Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing.”—Katherine Cooper, Hyperallergic...Hardback$3299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Inadvertent
The second book in the Why I Write series provides generous insight into the creative process of the award-winning Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard. "Why I Write" may prove to be the most difficult question Karl Ove Knausgaard has struggled to answer, yet it is central to the project of one of the most influential writers working today. For the...Paperback$1899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
What Nails It
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art. "Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Writers write. They can't help it. They can't not." In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning...Hardback$3099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Into the Weeds
An illuminating reflection on the creative process from acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and translator Lydia Davis When asked why she writes, Lydia Davis confesses that the question makes her uncomfortable. Maybe she would rather not know. Instead, Davis considers how she writes her stories, how other writers write, and what insights the how might provide into the why. In this...Hardback$3099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
For Now
In this third Why I Write volume, Eileen Myles addresses the social, political, and aesthetic conditions that shape their work. "A sharply etched, unvarnished self-portrait." —Kirkus Reviews “[Myles] has a good time journeying through Hell, and like a hip Virgil, . . . is happy to show us the way.” —NPR "This is signature Myles: the unconventional syntax, the jazzy...Paperback$1899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
What Nails It
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art. Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art. — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Writers write. They can't help it. They can't not." In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as...Paperback$2399Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The House of Being
An exquisite meditation on the geographies we inherit and the metaphors we inhabit, from Pulitzer Prize winner and nineteenth U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. Trethewey doesn't just explore the reasons why she writes. She also offers a compassionate argument for why we must all be the authors of our own stories. —Shannon Carlin, Time Searching and intimate, this impresses. —Publishers...Hardback$5100Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Catching the Light
U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award, Joy Harjo examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing. “Her enduring message—that writing can be redemptive—resonates: ‘To write is to make a mark in the world, to assert ‘I am.’’ The result is a rousing testament to the power...Paperback$1899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The House of Being
An exquisite meditation on the geographies we inherit and the metaphors we inhabit, from Pulitzer Prize winner and nineteenth U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey. "Trethewey doesn't just explore the reasons why she writes. She also offers a compassionate argument for why we must all be the authors of our own stories." — Shannon Carlin, Time "Searching and intimate, this impresses."...Paperback$2199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Of Solids and Surds
In the fourth volume in the Why I Write series, the iconic Samuel Delany remembers fifty years of writing and shaping the world of speculative fiction. Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and history have convinced us that things are not as they seem.” So too does...HardbackSold Out
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300285529
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 25 November 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Illustration: 3 b-w illus.
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 121.0mm
Height: 178.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 104
About the Author
Greil Marcus is the author of many books, from Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music in 1975 to Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs in 2022. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America (2009).
Also by Greil Marcus
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Mystery Train
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus is universally acclaimed as the benchmark work of modern rock criticism. Marcus's study uses a handful of artists—a brace of bluesmen, The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman, and Elvis Presley—to illuminate and interpret the American Dream. In rigorous prose, the book touches on the myth, landscape, and oral tradition of the continent. This comprehensive, revised...Paperback$5000Elsewhere:$5500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Folk Music
Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs. "The most interesting writer on Dylan over the years has been the cultural critic Greil Marcus. . . . No one alive knows the music that fueled Dylan’s imagination better. . . . Folk Music . . . [is an] ingenious book...Paperback$2899Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
What Nails It
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art. "Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Writers write. They can't help it. They can't not." In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning...Hardback$3099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs
One of our finest critics gives us an altogether original history of rock ’n’ roll. Unlike all previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to...Paperback$3299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Under the Red White and Blue
An "astute, challenging, and far-reaching” look (Kirkus Reviews, starred) at how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive. “I found great pleasure in . . . Under the Red White and Blue . . . about the idea of the American dream, its allure, the exploitation of it.” —Percival Everett,...Paperback$3299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
Real Life Rock
From the author of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs comes his “Basement Tapes”: the complete Real Life Rock Top 10 columns For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called "Real Life Rock Top Ten." It has been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural...Paperback$4099Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
The Manchurian Candidate
"It may be the most sophisticated political thriller ever made in Hollywood," film critic Pauline Kael wrote of John Frankenheimer's terrifying 1962 political thriller about an American serviceman brainwashed in Korea and made into an assassin. Sophisticated to be sure, it's also a headlong fall through the looking-glass of American politics and the most deeply prophetic film of the second...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Folk Music
Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs. “Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic.” —Hilton Als Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a...HardbackSold Out -
More Real Life Rock
A funny, fierce, and uninhibited musical chronicle of the convulsive past six years from one of our finest cultural critics “A smart set of suggestions for further reading, viewing, and listening by a most trustworthy guide.”—Kirkus Reviews “This new collection of Marcus’ long-running column continues his role as a great chronicler of the highways and byways of American culture. This...HardbackSold Out
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