It would be a shame if the predictable backlash against David Shields' exciting critique of contemporary literarature Reality Hunger (or against Ben Yagoda's related study Memoir: A History) actually discouraged any potential readers from checking out either book. The David Shields book has been stirring up a lot of strong words lately, and I'm finding the intensity of anger strange. Granted, as Laura Miller suggests in the Salon article above, some of Shields' bold statements are designed to be "controversial" (it sells books) -- however, they may still be worth something. It's galling that Jessa Crispin reacts to Shields book with defensive scorn, as if bloggers and critics who discuss the book were trying to tell her what to do. She says, "I don't know why people feel the need to make declarations about what literature should be all of a sudden."

Reality Hunger is a book-length essay about literature and culture by David Shields that's getting a lot of attention for its provocative key argument: we are wrong to think of fiction as the most exalted form of literature, because as readers we mostly value writings that bring us reality and truth -- which are, by strict definition, beyond the scope of fiction. Shields presents today's literary community as blind and confused, trained to pine after the ideal of the perfect novel, the sublime work of art, when in fact we crave something more primal than artistic excellence when we read.

Here's the first great book of the new decade. Just Kids by Patti Smith is a major work, an act of creative discovery, and a surprising new step in its author's riveting career.

Was there every any doubt that Patti Smith could write? She wrote before she sang, actually, publishing rock criticism in Crawdaddy, Creem and Rolling Stone and several poetry chapbooks before ever entering a recording studio. But it's rare for a musical artist to master the memoir format, and when I heard that Patti Smith's first book would focus on her early friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS in 1989, I was worried she'd phone in a Valentine.

Ben Yagoda, author of a new book called Memoir: A History, recently caused a splash by declaring that fiction has been replaced by memoir as the most important literary form, that "when it comes to proving points and making cases, fiction's day is done".

It's kind of a dirty trick to assign the well-known political writer Paul Berman, who has railed against Latin American left-wing leaders like Che Guevera, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro, to review Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin. A major biography of a literary giant must be considered on its own terms, but Berman nails Gabriel Garcia Marquez for a single perceived failing: he openly adores Cuba's controversial Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

Here are three works offering creative interpretations of noted authors and their works.

Love As Always, Kurt Vonnegut As I Knew Him by Loree Rackstraw

The photo above is me, reading Brad Gooch's biography of Flannery O'Connor (appropriately titled Flannery), and my yawning dog. She's a tough critic. Anyway, I've been a fan of Flannery O'Connor since I first read her story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" back when I was in high school, and as I got older and read more of her work, my appreciation of her grew. In fact, on my personal list of Date Book-Talk Gone Wrong is the following snippet:

It was a few minutes before 7 pm, and at least fifty people were waiting politely in folded chairs for novelist Joyce Carol Oates at the new Tribeca Barnes and Noble in Manhattan tonight. They should have been sitting at the Starbucks on the other side of the store, because that's where Joyce Carol Oates was, demurely sipping a grande coffee in a black dress with poet Lawrence Joseph, noticed by just a respectful few.