Attention

‘Joshua Cohen has a complex and capacious consciousness.’
— Harold Bloom

‘Cohen, one of our crucial young novelists, has made the non-fiction novel of our moment, formed of a constellation of investigations and inklings. No one’s done such a thing so well since George Trow or Joan Didion or Norman Mailer, if ever. It’s chasteningly brilliant, and the kind of chastening we unfortunately need.’
— Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude

‘Joshua Cohen is one of my favorite nonfiction writers. This book is a cause for celebration.’
— Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot

‘First-rate … Whip-sharp … Cohen here flaunts a next-level virtuosity across countless fields of expertise … [and] tackles the meta-problem of attention with the fervour of a man who knows the solution.... [He] is a phenomenal thinker whatever the theme: granular, acrobatic, startling.’
— Benjamin Evans, the Guardian

‘... cause for celebration and close study. [Cohen] is experimenting with the essay form much more, and more cleverly, than any major American writer today.’
— Zachary Fine, the Wall Street Journal

‘I enjoy his electric prose style … when it comes to making sense of our times with verve and imagination, few authors are more rewarding of our attention.’
— Max Liu, the Financial Times

‘Joshua Cohen – novelist, journalist, critic; prodigy, polyglot, polymath – has one of the most interesting minds in circulation. ... a young elegist for an old idea: ideas. He is a man profoundly out of step with the world in which he finds himself. Which is the only respectable place for a writer to be.’
— New York Times

‘[W]hat thrilled me was the imaginative and transfiguring attention Cohen pays to everything he touches.... There’s so much pleasure in Cohen’s sentences.’
— James Wood, New Yorker