Yet Again

Max Beerbohm was the kind of writer who made even a review of an obscure painting feel like a secret shared between friends. Yet Again gathers essays that display his particular genius: the ability to find absurdity in the halls of power and beauty in overlooked corners of culture. Here is Beerbohm skewering the empty rhetoric of Parliament, defending the neglected paintings of James Whistler against a indifferent public, and imagining, with perfect seriousness, why the King ought to visit Switzerland. There are essays on the courts of justice, where the drama of the law becomes theater, and tart discussions of old masters that treat Rubens and Corot with the same playful authority one might reserve for neighbors. Beerbohm's voice is never loud, never desperate for a laugh; it simply notices what others miss, and renders the invisible visible. These essays are for readers who crave wit without cruelty, intelligence without pretension, and prose that feels as carefully constructed as a caricature but reads as effortlessly as conversation.