SOURCE: A review of Off Center, in America, Vol. 143, No. 3, August 2, 1980, p. 58.

In the following review, George commends Harrison’s honesty, humor, and insight as evinced in the essays that comprise Off Center.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison is more than a fine essayist and critic; she is a truth-teller of the first order. In Off Center, her collection of 20 essays and reviews, Harrison confronts a wide range of subjects, from race riots at her old high school to her youth as a Jehovah’s Witness, from the moral ambivalence of abortion to the mindless psycho-babble of est and the dangerous popularity of cults like the Moonies. It is a mark of her fair dealing that, although these essays originally appeared in periodicals as diverse as The Village Voice and The New Republic, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Ms., Mrs. Harrison never changes her critical voice to suit her forum. She...