This is a collection of essays that blend the personal and the social, from the celebrated literary critic and novelist. Author Darryl Pinckney has written for The New York Review of Books for decades, and most of the 25 essays here appeared there first. “In his two novels, Pinckney focused on the interior lives of his black characters in settings including Berlin, Chicago and Indianapolis, where Pinckney was raised. Here, he reveals himself to be a skillful chronicler of black experience in literary criticism, reportage and biography,” Lauretta Charlton said in a review for The New York Times. “The crown jewel of this book is ‘Banjo,’ an essay that first appeared last year in the literary magazine Salmagundi. In it, Pinckney pinpoints a devastating irony of growing up in a privileged, intellectual milieu like his. “The pressure to live up to his parents’ expectations led to its own kind of oppression, one he sought to escape by traveling to Europe but addresses head on in this essay, which captures his journey toward self-discovery. Through race, Pinckney implies, we hide from each other and ourselves,” the review added.