The cultural rate of exchange cheats both sides of the Atlantic, leaving first-rate European writers unknown in America, excellent American authors unread outside their native shores.
Through these 13 essays by European critics, Ch netier seeks to remedy this, to encourage the cultural exchange between American and European writers. The authors discussed are living innovators, the critics contemporary and diverse. The essayists were asked to write as idiosyncratic a piece as they could think of, to do it with no holds barred, to indulge their particular critical manias or preferences, and to do so on the subject of their choice."
The book is divided into two parts, Part 1 providing a general European view of American literature today. The essays in Part 2 focus on individual authors--Walker Percy, William Gaddis and Gilbert Sorrentino, Nabokov and Balthus, Guy Davenport, Donald Barthelme, Raymond Carver, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard.