''Give me a time-tested masterpiece or what critics patronizingly call a fun read, Sister Carrie or just plain Carrie. Give me anything, in fact, as long as it isn't the latest must-read novel.'' So wrote Myers last summer in The Atlantic Monthly, delivering the Establishment a deserved slap on the mouth. This expanded version of the piece -- subtitled An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose -- shores up the argument of the original by contrasting the overrated wordplay of, say, Annie Proulx with examples of effective metaphor. Myers' subject is style, and whenever he strays from analysis of prose to address matters of content, he seems merely shrill, but to read his dissections of bad paragraphs is to see sacred cows skillfully eviscerated.
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