The Performing Self: Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life

Richard Poirier is Marius Bewley Professor of American and English Literature at Rutgers University, the editor of Raritan, and a founder of the Library of America.

"Poirier’s nine essays are written with … a mobile and compact intelligence, and are … effortlessly allusive and stylistically elegant" – The New York Times Book Review

"I’ve read [this] with pleasure and think Poirier is on the way to becoming America’s first authoritative critic in many a year, to wit, the fella whose opinion we wait for after we’ve written a book." – Norman Mailer