essays

Christopher Hitchens and Fights Worth Having

Christopher Hitchens and Fights Worth Having

You can smell the cigarette ash and Johnnie Walker Black Label on the pages of A Hitch in Time, a gleefully pugilistic posthumous Christopher Hitchens anthology.

The ABCs of Barbara Stanwyck

The ABCs of Barbara Stanwyck

The “ABC” structure and diverse archival material in The Cinema of Barbara Stanwyck make it among the most interesting texts released in 2023.

In ‘How Far the Light Reaches’ Ocean Science and Memoir Make Magic

In ‘How Far the Light Reaches’ Ocean Science and Memoir Make Magic

How Far the Light Reaches weaves struggles with identity – gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, and body image – with the immense diversity of marine life, revealing new ways to think about ourselves.

Caroline Hagood’s ‘Weird Girls’ Prods the Monster Within to Snarling Life

Caroline Hagood’s ‘Weird Girls’ Prods the Monster Within to Snarling Life

All women should have easy access to Caroline Hagood’s bloody but unbowed heart of feminist grotesquerie, Weird Girls.

Oscar Wilde Envisions Our Post-Pandemic Socialist Future

Oscar Wilde Envisions Our Post-Pandemic Socialist Future

Millennials and GenZ had time to contemplate the real harms wrought by capitalism during the pandemic shutdown. Perhaps they might read Oscar Wilde, now.

Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ Essays Pandemic with Erudite Wit and Compassion

Zadie Smith’s ‘Intimations’ Essays Pandemic with Erudite Wit and Compassion

Zadie Smith's Intimations is an essay collection of gleaming, wry, and crisp prose that wears its erudition lightly but takes flight on both everyday and lofty matters.

‘High Cotton’ Is Culturally Astute and Progressive

‘High Cotton’ Is Culturally Astute and Progressive

Kristie Robin Johnson's collection of essays in High Cotton dismantle linear thinking with shrewdness and empathy.

Patrick Madden’s ‘Disparates’ Makes Sense in These Crazy Times

Patrick Madden’s ‘Disparates’ Makes Sense in These Crazy Times

There's no social distancing with Patrick Madden's hilarious Disparates. While reading these essays, you'll feel like he's in the room with you.

Joan Didion’s Crystal-Clear Vision Only Got Better with Age

Joan Didion’s Crystal-Clear Vision Only Got Better with Age

Reading the Library of America’s comprehensive anthology, Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s, is like walking out of the rain and into a compelling time warp.

In ‘Afterimages’ Laura Mulvey Returns to Feminist Film Criticism with Fresh Insights

In ‘Afterimages’ Laura Mulvey Returns to Feminist Film Criticism with Fresh Insights

Mulvey's Afterimages draws together her recent writing on women and film to create an engaging collection that is both timely and time-centred.

‘Vanity Fair’s Women on Women’ Is a Missed Opportunity

‘Vanity Fair’s Women on Women’ Is a Missed Opportunity

Women writing about famous women does not a feminist or otherwise interesting collection make.

Debut Essay Collection ‘Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now’ Takes a Slice from the Americana Songbook

Debut Essay Collection ‘Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now’ Takes a Slice from the Americana Songbook

Although Andre Perry's essays in his debut, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, traverse various geographical journeys, they are, overall, ballads, images from the self, the man isolated and marginalized in other countries and in his own land.

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