Daniel Mendelsohn's elegant criticism for The New York Review of Books and elsewhere has been collected for the first time in this volume of essays. Whether writing on books (Middlesex), theater (Harold Pinter), film (Brokeback Mountain), or opera (Lucia), he’s deeply suspicious of the coercive tactics “culture” makers use to hook (and hoodwink) their audiences (the piece on Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones is alone worth the price of admission). He always, as the title suggests, stands on the side of aesthetic experiences that are rare, fleeting, and engaged.