Authority
Essays on Being Right
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cornerstone
Publishing:7th Aug '25
£20.00
This title is due to be published on 7th August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
'A galaxy-brain-level thinker' Torrey Peters
'One of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today' Brandon Taylor
'Thrilling... Authorityreminds us we haven't yet felt all there is to feel' Kaveh Akbar
Since her canonical 2017 essay 'On Liking Women', the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers.
Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1. As a critic, Chu places The Phantom of the Opera within a centuries-old conflict between music and drama; questions the enduring habit of reading Octavia Butler’s science fiction as a parable of slavery; teases out the ideology behind Hillary Clinton’s (fictional) sex life; and charges fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with a complacent humanism.
The unifying theme of the book is authority and taste in literature, art, culture and politics: how do we decide what's good, and how do we convince others that our judgement is correct?
Andrea Long Chu is one of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today. These essays made me want to call a friend and get into an argument—about literature, about culture, about life. With style and bracing humour, she has located the exact pulse of our moment and taken its measure. A writer and critic to be reckoned with. * Brandon Taylor, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Real Life *
In an era of ethical infantilization, shitty cynicisms, and limpid rhetorical hygienics, Chu names exactly, irreducibly, what she sees and feels and believes... Like all truly great works of criticism, Authority makes remaining alive feel not just possible but worthwhile. It reminds us we haven’t yet felt all there is to fee. * Kaveh Akbar, author of the New York Times bestseller Martyr! *
Reading Andrea Long Chu is always an exhortation to dismantle some authority--outer, inner, or usually both. The writing is triggering, exhilarating, and illuminating. She demands we think counterintuitively, radically, and exactingly, with paradoxical precision and irreverent urgency. This collection coalesces around the dialectic of freedom and authority—and shows us that challenging this binary is vital to us as thinkers, readers and citizens. * Lexi Freiman, author of The Book of Ayn *
One of the most exciting critics working today. * New York Magazine *
[Females] is always smart, sometimes sincere, and unpredictable about when it will pinch your arm or clutch its nails around your heart. * VICE on Females *
Among our most original thinkers on gender. * The Week *
[Females] is always smart, sometimes sincere, and unpredictable about when it will pinch your arm or clutch its nails around your heart * VICE on Females *
ISBN: 9781529155112
Dimensions: 222mm x 138mm x 40mm
Weight: 500g
352 pages