I really can't think of any other critic, who is either an academic or a journalistic critic, who writes this high order of cultural criticism. I very much hope the book has the success it deserves. The whole book has a coherence that a work of already published essays very rarely doesthe coherence of course of the author's own preoccupations and voice.

Nikos Stangos, Editor, Thames and Hudson

Jill Johnston . . . surprises, enlightens, irritates, and beguiles the reader in something like equal measure . . .

Calvin Tomkins

Like the best critics, Jill Johnston understands the various artsliterature, dance, paintingin all their nuanced formal values. But she does not rest with this undrstanding. She looks for something more, something troubling, the life-story behind the art-storyperhaps the trace of a family conflict or the contraditions felt when an individual plays out a socially prescribed gender role.

Johnston's essay have a sharp witbold, lucid, and incisive. A thorough knowledge of both art and life informs her writing, a knowledge broad and deep enough to generate this: 'Art reflects our comfortable stations in life. We like that reflection even if we hate our stations.' Such thoughts not only stimulate the mind, as good criticism must, but also provoke the reader to reassess personal experiences and values. Johnston makes life historiesthe artist's, the reader's, her ownmatter. Rarely do you learn so much from writing that is such a pleasure to read.