Imaginemos una frase

This book is based on a very unique proposal. The author brings together phrases -not necessarily the most famous or the most transcendental- of twenty-seven writers -from Shakespeare to some current ones- and each one of them gives rise to a brief, shrewd and intelligent essay. The Shakespearean opening is surprising: the chosen phrase is "Oh, oh, oh, oh". They are followed by others by John Donne on lying, Sir Thomas Browne on time, Quincey on the daguerreotype, Charlotte Brontë on medicine and pain, George Eliot on the gaze, one of Gertrude Stein's verbal games, Virginia Woolf on the disease, a response from James Baldwin to Norman Mailer, a photo caption written by Joan Didion, a comment by Roland Barthes on eels in Japanese cuisine, a reflection by Anne Carson based on Flaubert... The result is a waste of talent and wit, a literary pirouette, an exercise in scholarship, an intellectual challenge, a dazzling experimental game, a reflection on the power of words, and a highly stimulating set of juicy essays.