I feel like I can start, and I can feel it out pretty quickly with nonfiction. With fiction, it's harder because you can't really get a sense of an argument or the sort of things that would draw you to nonfiction. But yeah, I read quickly and I'm pretty decisive. So, I don't think I agonize so much about what I want to review. Do you know that those sort of trend pieces are coming? How do you organize your brain, is the question I'm asking.
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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