Dictionary of Modern Anguish - Reviews

"In his new book of stories, R.M. Berry again shows himself to be a writer's writer; the erudiction and satirical density of his prose will be familiar to readers of his earlier collection..."

-New York Times Book Review

"Berry, author of the novel Leonardo's Horse, has a light touch, and his fictions poke fun at the pomposities of academia without succumbing to them."

--Publishers Weekly

“The stories of Dictionary are so thoughtfully counterpointed that the term collection is too weak to describe the book. Each expands its antecedent...In the aggregate, the theme that emerges plays off Wittgenstein’s belief that depth in human experience comes from those instances when, to rephrase Dictionary’s epigram, ‘language goes on holiday’...Measuring Dictionary’s philosophical grammars against the conventional realism of most story collections, I can say that Berry’s work represents the next term, an exemplar of its final fiction, ‘The Function of Art at the Present Time.’”

-The Review of Contemporary Fiction

“Berry’s follow-up to the elaborate historical speculation of Leonardo’s Horse is a slimmer but no less incisive volume entitled Dictionary of Modern Anguish...Self-described as ’14 enactments of radical undoing,’ the book is a collection of widely disparate narratives inspired at least in part by the spirit of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose ‘Philosophical Investigations’ is quoted in the book’s epigraph....As is the case with much of Berry’s work, the tenuousness of language and the unreliability of conventional literary forms figure prominently.”

-The Buffalo News