Alter's remarkable book breathes new life into a long-neglected topic, the study of style. With the finesse that is his trademark, Alter shows the importance of all that is lost in translation. As it delineates the surprising ways in which the King James Bible has shaped American prose, Pen of Iron redirects current literary criticism and theory. -- Gary Saul Morson, author of "Anna Karenina" in Our Time" In this subtle and impressive work, Robert Alter shows us in great, attentive detail what style is, demonstrating the work of language on every page and revealing the extraordinary things that American writers have done with the language of the King James Bible. -- Michael Wood, author of "Literature and the Taste of Knowledge" This is a deft, spare, and deeply learned appraisal of the animating and abiding presence of the King James Bible in the language of the American novel, from the nineteenth century to today. If, as Robert Alter says, 'style is ultimately a mode of thinking,' Alter's own style shows a mode of thought that at once discerns, explicates, and registers in compressed, elegant formulations what is most distinctive about the works he examines. -- Tracy Fessenden, author of "Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature"

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning - and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists - from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy - have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven into "Moby-Dick", "Absalom, Absalom!", "The Sun Also Rises", "Seize the Day", "Gilead", and "The Road", Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.