“Lazar's prose renews in our time a kind of writing that is a treasure of literature wherever it is found: what is often called the personal essay. He is intent upon making private, particular experience enter into the language we share in a way that will convey the startling perspectives of memory and insight, and it is obvious that he means to produce writing that will be heard and remembered in itself. His talent for so demanding an ambition, and his devotion to it, is clear. And he's funny!” —W. S. Merwin

“I've read these essays with much delight. As a fellow-essayist, David Lazar has my intense envy for his deceptively calm, wonderfully amused style. The writing is silky and full of little surprises. These essays form a book which should be read for its pleasures as well as studied diligently by all would-be writers.”—Barbara Ehrenreich

“David Lazar has that sine qua non of the classical essayist: an interesting mind. I would gladly follow his quirky, bittersweet sensibility and language play on any subject in the universe. Lazar is a great Rememberer, with the ability to rub the Aladdin’s Lamp of memory and call forth tender, fanciful, elaborate, and painful insights on the detritus of past daily life. He belongs on any short list of the best younger personal essayists in the country (a list that includes writers like Herald Early and Bernard Cooper.)”—Phillip Lopate

“David Lazar is a writer’s writer’s writer.”—M. F. K. Fisher