Donald Phelps’ Covering Ground

I’m pleased to say I’ve tracked down Mr. Phelps’ terrific earlier book of essays, Covering Ground. His language is such a wonderful tangle of metaphor and triangulation: he’s always trying to describe what it is a work does. These essays consist mostly of commentary on literature, from IB Singer to Collodi’s Pinocchio, to the usual handful of writers and authors I’ve never heard of. He writes about Doc Savage and William F. Buckley with equal depth and curiousity. Also, pornography and losing his own teeth.

I bounce between reading more of Reading the Funnies and thumbing through this. In the meantime, I post this to fire your imagination and maybe credit cards- go find it online. It can be found for only a handful of bucks easily.