First published in 1923, Knight's Move is a collection of articles and short critical pieces that Viktor Shklovsky, no doubt the most original literary critic and theoretician of the twentieth century, wrote for the newspaper The Life of Art between 1919 and 1921. With his usual epigrammatic, acerbic wit and genius, Shklovsky pillories the bad writers, artists, and critics of his time, especially those who used art as a political or social tool. And at no time is Shklovsky better than when he insists with indignation and outrage that "Art has always been free of life. Its flag has never...

This book is filled with passion and love for the art of writing and is a celebration of reading. Through the prism of the great Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, Douglas Glover provides a scrupulous reading of Cervantes's Don Quixote, opening this 400-year-old Spanish masterpiece to a new generation of readers, showing how Cervantes made his novel, and, finally, revealing how we as readers participate in his magic creation. Glover's brilliant accomplishment resides in his ability to seduce the reader with his own stunning prose and penetrating insight, while also creating the means for...