Sasha Frere-Jones: Portrait of the Critic as a Young Man
Sasha Frere-Jones’ anti-memoir memoir, Earlier, moves around in time without clear logic, keeping things alive and even suspenseful, though somewhat cryptically.
Sasha Frere-Jones’ anti-memoir memoir, Earlier, moves around in time without clear logic, keeping things alive and even suspenseful, though somewhat cryptically.
Blending personal experience with popular culture, Peter Coviello seeks to democratize how criticism is understood and practiced in Is There God after Prince?
It’s Not All Fun and Games is straightforward in manner and unconcerned with critical introspection. It’s a practical affair about how games are produced.
In Euphoric Recall, the Replacements’ manager Peter Jesperson is often as drunk as the band is, little more in control of their careening path than they are.
In Monsters, Claire Dederer explores how fans’ “dumb love” of art can exist with “heartbreak” and unresolved feelings about monstrous artists.
Sink is more than an ethnographic memoir. It’s a harrowing glimpse into an omnipresent but often unseen Americana.
Wolfish: Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear engagingly weaves ecology, sociology, and history into a rich tapestry to warily gaze into the unblinking eye of fear.
As there is an art to memoir writing, there is an artfulness to describing the power of the visual arts. Patrick Bringley’s ‘All the Beauty in the World’ is exquisitely rendered.
Graham Coxon could have made his memoir Verse, Chorus, Monster! a Blur / Britpop tell-all, but he wraps up honest observations in a lovely, conversational tone.
All women should have easy access to Caroline Hagood’s bloody but unbowed heart of feminist grotesquerie, Weird Girls.
In The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan conveys his thoughts in his signature styles, as in his lyrics, he can be plainspoken, gnomic, and over the top.
Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song is an awful book, awash with misogyny and crusty old man rants like a drunken, MAGA hat-wearing uncle.