A fantastic collection of critical essays from one of my favorite internet writers. I love the things she chooses to review, as they are usually not things people discuss often and she always had a unique and biting take on them. This is a must-read for those interested in engaging with culture

Authority: Essays simultaneously made me feel like I was back in the lecture hall and like I was hearing an especially eloquent friend rip into something they disliked. I appreciate Chu’s work even more as I’m trying to write a review of her reviews.

Chu structures Authority into five parts. Most essays are previously published, but the collection begins with the new “Criticism in a Crisis” as the first essay and slots in “Authority” in part four. These essays lean deeper into history than her others, which have more specific and modern topics. One essay, “China Brain," is her most narrative, offering a third-person perspective from the person and a first-person perspective from her brain (hm, my brain’s not explaining this well, is it?) on Chu’s journey with mental illness and treatment. Most other works center around reviewing media such as the TV shows The Last of Us and Yellowjackets or the books of Ottessa Moshfegh and Hanya Yanagihara.

Because these essays are both new and already published, the different years that these are written are a time capsule in it of themselves. “Votes for Woman,” a review on Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham, sent me into an internet spiral where I had discovered the review had a lore of its own (An interviewer mentioned it to Sittenfeld! Sittenfeld admitted she read it!). I appreciated the note at the end of the “Psycho Analysis” that printed the original final paragraph that was previously purged when it was first published in 2019.

I’m also kicking myself a bit for reading a collection of critical essays of books and shows, of which some I have not read or watched yet. However, through a combination of Chu’s incisive language and my own aforementioned intellectual hubris, I feel as though I have, and even more delusionally, come up with these takes myself. She lays them out so nicely that some of her more biting comments on sexism, ignorance, or even just plain insufferableness made me wonder how the subject in question cannot see the depths of their folly (“’Social-justice warriors never think like artists,’ Ellis declares, as if this is a sentence” is a personal favorite). Who said politics should be left out of art?

Smart, informative, and always having a unique perspective, Authority scans various pop culture and media moments that make readers feel familiarized but also ready to antagonize, in a good way. Through these essays Chu also flexes how her writing voice can breach into the sentimental and personal without ever fully committing to break a boundary between writer and reader. Her investigations feel they are always approached with a sincere appreciation for criticism as a form, reigning in the personal but expressing herself in a perfect balance between topic and the anecdotal. A very uniform, endearing, and memorable collection here.

First and foremost, thank you to NetGalley and FSG for giving me access to this book's ARC in exchange for my thoughts.

This is a collection of two new essays and the remaining pieces already published online, from an author I always anticipate works from. She gives the kind of criticism I look forward to, as if criticism is something that is served on a silver platter, waiting to be consumed.

Rather criticism, especially from Andrea Long Chu, is a palette cleanser for me.

It grounds you to reality but also lifts you to imagination. Or better yet: to different areas of the room, places you haven't been to, or have at least acknowledged. Contrary to popular belief that one should be deterred from consuming the medium or form criticized, I often look forward to watching or reading from the artists and writers mentioned. It gives me a new, well-researched perspective on what to anticipate, what to look forward to. Who knows, maybe I agree with the criticism, or I don't. But I have to give credit to the author for turning my head towards a specific direction.

I don't want to say I find Chu to be a 'good' critic, because that is to say there is the looming (heavily fictionalized) 'bad' critic, which she has already expounded upon in the new 'Criticism in Crisis' essay.

Instead, I'd rather say she's an effective writer, whose criticism is something that makes me giggle at times, and heavily ruminate for the most part. These just hit the nail on the head oftentimes, of what makes me deterred from certain individuals' works. And now, I decided to be brave about them and delve into their oeuvres. I think that what distinguishes Chu from the rest: the ability to entice the reader into the medium all the while criticizing it. I don't know how she does it, but it works.

Her magic is indeed a mystery. I'm too deep in it to recognize and care.

The epilogue guarantees that I should go out and do it: to become the authority I want to have, and not wait for the green light (I mean this metaphorically) from an ominous figure that we have all collectively created to be free from such responsibility. You have the ability to do so. We do not need to wait for someone to dictate what we ought to do. We just need to do it.

It sucks, I agree. But there's no better way to be ultimately free than to be on our own.

A collection of previously published essays plus two new ones from this Pulitzer Prize winning essayist. Chu offers her opinions and analysis of the TV show “Yellowjackets,” (which I love) “Phantom of the Opera,” “The Last of Us,” (which, apparently, I am the last to know began life as a video game) the writer Ottessa Moshfegh, Joey Soloway, creator of “Transparent,” mixed Asian novels and more.

On author Hana Yanagihara, “If A LITTLE LIFE was opera it was not “La Boheme, it was “Rent.” I disagree…but funny!

On the #MeToo movement, “The thing is, it’s all of them. It’s every single last one of them. Not just the famous ones. Never let anyone persuade you otherwise….”

This…interesting statement that is worthy of loads of discussion, “It is undoubtedly true that race in America is created and maintained through racist violence.”

The collection is bookended by the two new essays, both of which deal with criticism itself, so there’s a fair amount of navel-gazing here. The first, “”Criticism is a Crisis” (I think. I can barely read my own bad handwriting) is long and, honestly, a bit yawn-inducing. It’s a huge, long history lesson nobody asked for. Critics will like it as it parses what they do and why they are superior to mere reviewers. “[W]e expect the good critic to leave his own values at the door but not his nose for valuing.”

I don’t know, after reading it, critics sound exhausting to me. Certainly they have their place, but if this essay is what being a critic is, then, well, I’m going to want to have that proverbial beer with a plain old reviewer why we talk about which “Seinfeld” episodes are the best. We have favorite Shakespeare plays, but they aren’t as fun to discuss.

The final essay in the book and the second new work is “Authority.” I’ll sum it up with saying that people look to true critics (versus reviewers) not for opinions but judgment. Agree and disagree on this, and I can point to an essay in this very book as an example. I have read and loved two of Hana Yanagihara’s books. I think it’s fair to say that whatever definition one uses of the term “literary fiction” both meet it and both of them could be and likely are (or will be) taught in university classes (I realize that alone doesn't give them merit, but what does?). Anyway, Chu is not impressed. I very much enjoyed reading her views on books I know fairly well even though they differ from mine. I’m not looking for her judgment to take the place of mine or reinforce my own. I still feel exactly the same.

So, to sum up, I thought the first essay would never end, but I quite enjoyed everything else. I don’t know if I’ve read Chu in the past; if I have I didn’t connect the name with what I was reading. I’ll look for her in the future.

Finally!!!! I've been waiting for a collection of Andrea Long Chu's essays. Presented here with a few new additions. Chu's takes are incisive, hilarious, and they crack open all that criticism can be. I feel like a new, different thinker having finished these. There's truly no one else doing it like her.

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley.