The Dyer's Hand
Auden's essays are the most intellectually pleasurable in the language: wide-ranging, aphoristic, opinionated, learned without pedantry. He writes on Shakespeare, Yeats, Kierkegaard, opera, detective fiction. The educated reader's delight.
The Shakespearian City section runs long, and without deep familiarity with the plays under discussion it becomes the part of the book most readers name as the wall they hit. Untranslated French, German, and Latin quotations assume an education Auden never checks for, and the American-poets material that closes the collection is weaker than the front, the energy visibly running down. Auden’s confidence tips into something readers call “over the line of funny to just straight up arrogance,” pronouncing judgments with no apparent interest in defending them. One frustrated reader dismisses a Robert Frost essay as covered in the equivalent of “doodled lips kissing a butt,” and another sums up whole stretches as “kind of English lit 101 level criticism” dressed up in a name-brand byline. Read it essay by essay and skip what doesn’t hold you.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
