Essays

2008

Civic Virtues

George Scialabba

A new collection of Gore Vidal's essays showcases five decades of literary and political criticism, with his mocking, disenchanted patriotism in all its eloquence.
Windows Into the Night

Marcela Valdes : Non-Fiction

The collected nonfiction of Roberto Bolaño is a treasure trove filled with straw and dust, jewels and gold.
New Old Things

Frances Richard : Non-Fiction

A new collection of short pieces by the prodigious and wide-ranging critic Luc Sante doubles as a history of Modernism's outlaws.
A Great Deal of Work

George Scialabba : Non-Fiction

Edmund Wilson's politics have long been criticized, but his views were more nuanced than you might think.

In Our Orbit

David Schiff : Music

Edward Said's musical predilections capture the full complexity of the master theorist.
Playtime

Mark Polizzotti : Poetry

The Surrealist dissident Raymond Queneau turned his writings into a lab for his experiments, and the results are still exhilarating.
Cafe Society

William Deresiewicz : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

Clive James's erudite new collection of essays celebrates the best of twentieth-century art, thought and politics.
The Restless Mind

Jeremy Harding : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

At the Same Time, Susan Sontag's posthumous collection of essays and speeches, reveals her rapt attention to the world around her.
The Book of Questions

William Deresiewicz : Literacy & Reading

In a book-length essay on the novel, Milan Kundera foresees the curtain of literary history drawing to a close.

Fierce Convictions

Sarah Goldstein : Feminism & Women
Wartime Lies

Timothy Snyder : Cultural Criticism & Analysis

As Nazis dropped bombs in Warsaw, poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote a collection of literary criticism that sought to trace the rise of totalitarianism by deconstructing the mythologies of Western modernity.

Marxism and Form

Stefan Collini : Philosophy

Perry Anderson's Spectrum journeys through the abstract worlds of conservative and liberal intellectual thought, and leaves in its trail insights on the substance and style of ideas.
How Art Can Save Your Life

Hal Foster : Fine Art

Michael Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa is a celebration of the intersection between art and life and the random genius of the unexpected.