I like reviews where you sort of are on this journey with a critic watching them think. Virginia Woolf calls essays, The Theatre of the Mind. In that space, I feel like as I'm writing and thinking, then the kind of critical judgment begins to emerge. You're definitely feeling this sense of like, I love this, I hate this, but then the bigger question is why? Why does this work on me and this is not working on me?
Parul Sehgal is a book critic for The New York Times.
“I write about books, I review books, but in a sense, to do my job at a newspaper also puts that pressure on a piece to say: why should you read or care about this? You’re trying to tweeze out what is newsworthy, what is interesting, what is vital about this book….My job is I think to be honest with the reader and to keep surfacing new ways for me and for other people to think about books. New vocabularies of pleasure and disgust.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
parulsehgal.com
@parul_sehgal
Sehgal's archive at the New York Times
[17:11] “Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015)
[17:20] “In Letters to the World, a New Wave of Memoirs Draws on the Intimate” (New York Times • 2019)
[17:33] “#MeToo Is All Too Real. But to Better Understand it, Turn to Fiction.” (New York Times • 2019)
[24:18] Longform Podcast #354: Jia Tolentino
[41:39] “Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.” (New York Times • 2019)
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