The collection starts out with a strong essay about what it is like to be a person on the internet, really articulates something about the particular The collection starts out with a strong essay about what it is like to be a person on the internet, really articulates something about the particular ways we all perform our identities on the internet. This is followed by a fun piece on Tolentino's brief stint on a reality tv show when she was a teenager, and an essay called "Always Be Optimizing" about the ambient societal pressure women experience to be, you know, optimized. I recognize the things she talks about in this essay- athleisure, very expensive workout classes, chopped salads for lunch- even if I didn't personally connect to them, unoptimized as I am.
The rest of the essays are mostly hits, a few misses. "Pure Heroines" is not so much an essay as thirty pages of plot recap of 80s/90s YA literature and 19th century novels, there's a rough thesis in there somewhere about the role models literature provides for young girls and then women, but it didn't cohere at all. I didn't find the piece on scams to be as cute or insightful as many others have. On the other hand, "The Cult of the Difficult Women" discusses the limits of mainstream feminist discourse heavy reliance on analyzing celebrity women as its main mode of inquiry, offering some direly needed pushback against some very pat, very limited understandings of feminism, and does a much better job of this than Jessa Crispin's Why I Am Not A Feminist from a few years back. I also got something out of the essay on Charlottesville, a town Tolentino and I lived in at the same time, though I was never a UVA student. (This piece confirmed the decision I made many years ago to attend a different university in Virginia.)
There was a lot of recap in many of these articles, of books and other long-form essays that have made a splash on the internet in the past few years. As someone who apparently takes in a lot of the same media as Tolentino, this often got old. But overall, a decent collection of essays that help us understand many of the weirdnesses of being a (particular kind of person) in the 21st century....more
This collection of essays is a good introduction to Natasha Lennard's work for those unfamiliar with her journalism on protest and the limits of liberThis collection of essays is a good introduction to Natasha Lennard's work for those unfamiliar with her journalism on protest and the limits of liberalism. If you're familiar with her work, this slim collection contains mostly(?) previously published work, but it's still worth reading, and it moves quickly.
Tash and I ran in the same circles during Occupy, and I've been reading her work since the olden days of 2011, when terms like "antifa" were unlikely to be discussed by the mainstream media. Much has changed in the political landscape since then but the basic contours of her writing remain the same- the failures of liberalism, the connections between liberalism and fascism, the overreach of the state and the ways that radical protest makes this overreach visible. Also covered, sex and politics, suicidal ideation, ghosts.
As much as I'm mostly in tune with the political project that these writings support, and as glad as I am that there is a voice like this making its way to readers outside of the rarified circles of NYC anarchists, I'm always left a little cold by Lennard's writing. Perhaps just because I'm so familiar with the world that leads to this type of journalism and I'm wanting something a little deeper, something more... essayistic? As an example, she begins the essay "Being Numerous" by talking about a photo from a small action during Occupy. At first glance, it's a mass of protestors charging at a fence that's blocking off a public park, facing off with the cops on the other side, but at further glance, it's clear that only a very few of the protestors are actually trying to do something about the fence, most of them have their smartphones out to record the action. This is fascinating to me, something I would love to hear Lennard thoughts on- how has technology changed protest, our presence at protests, our participation, what we want from it. For surveillance was everywhere, on all sides; we were filmed by cops, livestreamers of indeterminate politics, by fellow protestors, by mysterious cameras on buildings. But the essay goes on to discuss the Snowden revelations about the extent of government surveillance, and it's a good synthesis of those issues and the ways they've been discussed since 2014 or so, but I didn't learn anything new from this piece, in the end. I suppose I wanted something else from this piece because there are more than a few journalists who can write on government surveillance, on the California ideology, etc, but there are few who are as deeply involved with radical politics as Lennard is, and it seems that somewhere out there, there are real insights that perhaps only she could come up with. But they aren't here.
It was also interesting that this book ended with the essay on suicide. One of her other writerly habits is a strong reliance on critical theorists and the vocabulary of theory (see the ghost essay), but this last essay find Lennard grappling with the limits of theory. Without any Big Names to fall back on, she's forced to reckon more deeply with her own experience, and it's one of the more powerful pieces in the book.
It's funny, it's short, it's very real. Also I resolved to read one hundred books this year on goodreads, and this twenty-eight page short counts as aIt's funny, it's short, it's very real. Also I resolved to read one hundred books this year on goodreads, and this twenty-eight page short counts as a unit read, so, you know, here we are. ...more
As per her Goodreads bio, Samantha Irby is actually pretty rad. Great to read a personal essay collection by someone who is a fantastic writer but alsAs per her Goodreads bio, Samantha Irby is actually pretty rad. Great to read a personal essay collection by someone who is a fantastic writer but also has an entire life outside of being a professional personal essay writer. ...more
At some point in my cultural education I learned that Wallace Shawn, in addition to being the 'inconceivable' actor, was also a writer and the son of At some point in my cultural education I learned that Wallace Shawn, in addition to being the 'inconceivable' actor, was also a writer and the son of long-time New Yorker editor William Shawn. But it wasn't until I read several interviews he did to coincide with the publication of this essay that I learned that he was a bit more leftwing than the political orientation we might describe as "moneyed liberal who reads the New Yorker." In fact, he's apparently so leftwing that he was interviewed in Jacobin, and I purchased this ebook (for a dollar!) from the radical publisher Haymarket Books.
As other reviews have mentioned, this is a slim volume composed of one(?) meandering, but focused in its way, essay. It seems to be about disparity, in terms of both the distribution of economic resources within the US, and also the disparities brought about by imperialism, particularly but not only American imperialism. As mentioned in the Jacobin interview linked above, Shawn is very careful in his writing not use words like "capitalism," "socialism,""imperialism" or in the case of this essay, the buzzword "privilege." Instead, he discusses people as either being either lucky or unlucky. I suppose he selected these words as a kind of rejection of the bootstraps myths and prosperity doctrine myths that permeate American consciousness- people are rich because they are better than everyone else and they deserve their riches and that's just the way it is. He's also careful to discuss how we cannot hate or seek revenge against the lucky, even those who use their luckiness to exploit or otherwise harm the less lucky, because who are we say that we wouldn't act as they did, if we were born into their circumstances?
The distinction of 'lucky' and 'unlucky' is a productive thought experiment in its way, but this essay shows little curiosity about why the chips fall as they do. Perhaps in his desire to avoid spooking moneyed liberals who read the New Yorker, Shawn doesn't want to engage deeply with the idea that luckiness and unluckiness are not just happenstance, there are systems, many systems, in place that foster inequality. He seems more interested softening up upperclass Manhattanites to the idea that at some point, they may be asked to relinquish their air conditioners, and they should do happily. Shawn himself is clearly very intelligent and curious, I have no doubt that if asked he could and would speak eloquently and in-depth about structural inequality. I also have a sense that this essay isn't really for someone with politics (my politics being 'ready for the rev, man') and Shawn is trying to engage people more of his own milieu.
For while Shawn and I might both be 'lucky' in the grand scheme of things, born white in 20th century United States to families that could afford our care and education (which is, truly, quite a lot of luck), it's still hard for me not to read this essay as written by a moralizing rich guy. Throughout the essay Shawn discusses the idea of downward mobility as something he and his friends choose, so that they could be cool bohemian playwrights or other occupations that paid out in cultural capital instead of cash. But for most families, even lucky ones, downward mobility since the post-war boom years is not a choice, but a consequence of our economic systems that have created wage stagnation, hyper-inflation of educational and medical costs, off-shored manufacturing and subsequent loss of jobs, financialization of housing markets, etc. So in the end, I didn't quite understand what political point/s Shawn was trying to make, but I got a lot out of trying to work out my response to it. He is a talented writer, and Night Thoughts is worth the hour or so it will take you to read it.
I found many of these essays quite superficial and repetitive and skimmed a lot of this book. I've read Roxane Gay on the internet, and I'll of courseI found many of these essays quite superficial and repetitive and skimmed a lot of this book. I've read Roxane Gay on the internet, and I'll of course continue to do so, but I was hoping there'd be something more substantial to engage with here in the book. ...more
