Authority

byAndrea Long Chu

Essays on Being Right

Format:

HardbackEbookAudio Download

Pre-order:

AmazonOpens in a new tabApple BooksOpens in a new tabGoogle PlayOpens in a new tabKoboOpens in a new tab
'A galaxy-brain-level thinker' Torrey Peters
'One of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today' Brandon Taylor
'Thrilling... Authority reminds us we haven't yet felt all there is to feel' Kaveh Akbar
'A pure joy to read' Claire Dederer

Since her canonical 2017 essay ‘On Liking Women’, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as one of the most provocative, funny, brilliant and stylish critics at work today. 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?

A critic for right now--and for the ages. Authority is, all at once, a dizzyingly smart challenge, a call to action, and a pure joy to read.

Claire Dederer, author of Monsters

About Andrea Long Chu

Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and critic at New York magazine. Her book Females was published by Verso in 2019 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction. Her writing has also appeared in n+1, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artforum, Bookforum, Boston Review and Jewish Currents.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9781804955185
  • Length: 288 pages
  • Price: £9.99
All editions