ABSTRACT
That reading of Buckley is embedded in the opening piece here by Michael Lydon on the realist tradition in literature. Since First has printed much more music writing than literary criticism it seems fitting that our exemplary piece of litcrit is by a longtime music journalist best-known for his biography, Ray Charles: Man and Music. Lydon is a pretty straight writer but he lets his I get into the act when he’s making a case for his favorite 19th-century novelists. His moments of self-exposure-“I have snatched money up from the ground with a look over my shoulder to see if I could get away with calling it mine”—link him with other revelators in this section.
