James Marcus, <i>Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson</i>

James Marcus asks in the Introduction to Glad to the Brink of Fear: A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson (15).Marcus "take[s] a leaf from the man himself" and relies on his "own sensibility as a kind of divining rod" to read "for the lusters" in Emerson's life and work (15).This "selective" approach, combined with deliberate departures from a chronological narrative, yields a portrait with new emphases ( 16).Neither "a Victorian relic" (1) nor "a plaster saint" ( 16), the Emerson animating this biography is one "ripe for a fresh report" (17).While the book falls short of this ambitious aim, it does include several refreshing perspectives and illuminating details.