[Montale's Selected Essays] is a collection well worth having, one which lets us see this major poet's reaction not only to his Italian predecessors, but to many of the principal American and European Modernists. For an English reader there is a certain amount of culture-gap to come to terms with: to find the Auden generation being described as "modern poets of anguished boredom" seems odd and offcourse. But of their kind, and especially when they deal with Italian literature and Fascism, the essays are exemplary: though nearly all written to tight deadlines and with severe restrictions of space (Montale earns his living as a reviewer), they are sharp, simple and insightful—giornalismo at its best. (p. 61)

Blake Morrison, "Upper Grub Street: Non-Academic Critics," in Encounter (© 1979 by Encounter Ltd.), Vol. LIII, No. 1, July, 1979, pp. 48-61.∗