Scott McLemee on Steven Kellman

In today's InsiderHigherEd.com, former Balakian winner Scott McLemee dedicates his column to Wilifred Sheed and tips his hat to our new Balakian winner, Steven G. Kellman, who he reminds is quietly amassing a gargantuan body of work:

The full bibliography of Kellman’s work runs to appalling length. The list of his scholarly works alone would be impressive. Once you count his pieces for newspapers and magazines, the question of whether he can somehow write in his sleep does come up. As another Balakian winner who saw the list told me, “He’s reviewed more books than I’ve ever read.”

Kellman tells McLemee the driving impetus for this torrent is not mania, but a love of the written word.

"What hooked me on bookery was the exhilaration of slinging words on the page and making them prance. The impulse is the same whether I am writing an academic monograph whose print run is in the low four figures or a guest column for Newsweek.”

He calls it “dispiriting” that “so many of those who profess literature, who have dedicated their lives to discovering and sharing the delicacies and intricacies of verbal art, display dull indifference to their own use of language.” The result, he says, is usually prose as succulent as a bowl of mashed turnips.

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