SOURCE: "Truth in Transit," in The New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1987, p. 16.

In the following review of An Artificial Wilderness, Hall praises Birkerts's "urgent, serious, energetic voice" for celebrating non-American writers and books.

Sven Birkerts shakes us by the shoulders, telling us what to read and how to read it. He urges Robert Musil on us, comparing him to Nietzsche: "We find in both the same impatience, the same determination to stay in motion, and the understanding that the truth is itself a process, its seeker forever embattled. We turn to Musil because he never lies to us and because he never hides from the unsightly implications of a particular thought." In An Artificial Wilderness, his first book, Mr. Birkerts's urgent, serious, energetic voice ranges over the world of modern letters—with passionate intelligence discovering, praising and recommending books and writers: many German-language novelists. Marguerite Yourcenar, Malcolm...