Authority is an incisive essay collection by critic Andrea Long Chu, comprising previously published book reviews and long-form pieces, with two newly written essays serving as the collection’s bookends.

As someone who actively seeks out critical discourse on literature, film, and television, I was immediately drawn to this collection. I have a particular fondness for a well-executed pan—whether or not I agree with the critique—and Chu delivers plenty, as she is a hater to her core.

While I didn’t always align with her opinions, I especially appreciated her pointed critiques of A Little Life (a novel I personally enjoy) and Ottessa Moshfegh (an author whose work I adore). However, certain essays—such as the opening piece on the history of criticism and the collection’s titular essay—veered into territory that felt, at times, pretentious and, frankly, tedious.

Andrea Long Chu's "Authority: Essays” is structured into five sections, predominantly consisting of previously published essays. However, it commences with new material and integrates several other new pieces throughout the compilation. Chu's essays address both historical and contemporary topics, including her personal reflections on modern issues such as mental illness in her work "China Brain." The collection also examines current media, television shows, and renowned books by popular authors. This assortment offers diverse content that can engage and provoke thought among various readers. Her writing presents opinions and perspectives that are both insightful and witty.

Although every essay may not appeal to all readers, the anthology as a whole is commendable. Chu's writing is consistently clever, perceptive, and captivating. Regardless of your familiarity with the subjects, you will find yourself immersed in her world of thoughtful and well-researched critique.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for an opportunity to review.

Andrea Long Chu is a savage writer, and I mean that as a high compliment. I read her long essay on the work of Otessa Moshfegh with my jaw hanging open, and I knew that I wanted to read this collection as well. While I don't agree with everything that she says, of course, it's the logic and arguments she builds, along with her excellent deployment of specifics, that makes her writing to invigorating and intellectually stimulating to read.

Chu is a brilliant writer and critic, and this book is a must read for anyone who's either a fan of hers or enjoys essays. Her work makes me wonder if I ever think about anything at all when I watch anything and that is a fantastic feeling

Chu's intensity and joy are both razor sharp, and my digital copy is all kinds of marked up. Those of you looking forward to Bibliophobia next month should put this on your radar as a companion piece. I especially enjoyed Chu's writing on Yellowjackets, Hanya Yanagihara, and Otessa Moshfegh.
Definitely see this being on my year-end list

I loved this book and look forward to publishing my interview with the author!

My favorite pieces are probably "The Mixed Metaphor," "On Liking Women," and "C-nt!" I also enjoyed the two new essays on criticism. I wish there'd been time to include Chu's piece on Isabella Hammad – I really liked that one and I think it would have fit well in the collection.

Many thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ARC!

I always know when there is a new Andrea Long Chu piece out in the world because the social media discourse is rampant with people jumping at the chance to share their reaction to--not the subject of what Chu is providing criticism on--but Chu's criticism itself. This collection of works highlights why Chu is one of the best to do it and it would not surprise me to see selections from this collection on college syllabi--especially the new work written for the collection, the eponymous "Authority." While some entries felt overly long (which Chu cheekily acknowledges in the Epilogue), her prose nonetheless provides readers with a hearty meal in a time where media binges are not only more common, but encouraged in our seemingly numbered days. Whether you enjoy the meal or the piece of media being discussed, one thing is certain: Chu's criticism leaves readers with much to chew on, savor, and perhaps find more to appreciate upon multiple readings.

4.5

“We want reading to free the mind; we do not want it to free the reader.”

Is in the last paragraph of how Andrea Long Chu ends her masterful essay collection Authority, whose eponymous essay, placed in the middle of the book, questions the existence of authority as the essence of criticism. In Chu fashion, rather than answering such questioning, she takes the reader to a literary history of the critique, and after illuminating us towards material ideas found said works, opens the reader for the authority and ‘freedom’ to decide what to take from the piece: which becomes the pattern of the essays in the collection. Even with the personal essays of “On Liking Women,” “Pink” and “China Brain,” that grips the reader to the harsh realities and truths of Being in the contemporary scope of living, entwined with socio historical contexts, multiple. In terms of the critical essays, that I thought would ring too redundant given that a) I am an avid reader of Chu’s Vulture articles; and b) I felt that the pieces would unearth the impasses of the issues here already too late—but I thought wrong, I fell in love again with her wit, educated arguments, and ofcourse her humor (the “Moshfegh’s latest piece of shit…” exchange will never not fail to give me, a Moshfegh admirer, a chuckle). The two new essays, the eponymous one and “Criticism in a Crisis” holds the book with so much weight, and I believe the first glimpse as to how we see an essay-length meta writing on Chu’s ‘poetics’ as a critic and indulges yet arrests the reader to a great temperature check on the state of criticism in America: both in the political sphere and the literati, which Chu supposes as not being blurred but criticism bites both in one hit. Overall, the collection reminds us both in the preface and the epilogue to open our freedoms, if we have one and Chu keeps nuancing in the book, to the act of using criticism and the authority we gain after reading or writing criticism to engage them in the sphere not away from ourselves, but use the self as a neuron of action; reading then becomes not a passive action, criticism then becomes not an active motion. Rather, we hold ourselves grounded to move, a paradoxical truth that criticism offers.

I hope the latest essays on Cusk, which I think is her best one after Moshfegh, and Rooney will join in a reprint. Fingers-crossed.

Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for my first ARC, and I hope my musings were enough of a bargain.

Reading Andrea Long Chu is always a treat. It makes me feel smart but also not really, as she deftly analyzes TV shows, politics or books with sharpness and style, blowing a resolution at the end that is about what she was talking about, but also, not really. That’s why I’d always want to read her: I never know what’s going to happen next in the essay, and, even when it wraps up beautifully, I’m still left with questions.

“From the beginning, then, criticism had to reckon with two interlocking problems of authority, one literary, the other political. In order to criticize well, the critic would need both the critical authority that derived from his own free use of reason and the freedom to publish his criticism without being suspected of posing a threat to the actual authorities.”

“Nothing may be more dangerous, in criticism or in politics, than the revanchist desire to restore a form of authority that, if we are being honest, never existed in the first place.”

“The only measure of judgement is more judgement: that is what it means to try to live together with other human beings.”

“This, for the reader eager to skip to the end, is the secret of all real authority: money.”


“Cis women hate when trans women envy them, perhaps because they cannot imagine that they are in possession of anything worth envying. We have this, at least, in common: two kinds of women, with two kinds of self-loathing.”


Thanks netgalley for the e-arc!

I read one of the essays in this, "Females", back when it came out as an individual chapbook from Vewrso, and I'm glad that my original opinions of it were largely in line with what the author intended (yay releasing your own collection of essays with authors notes at the end!). It's also fascinating to see all her criticism collected in one place, and also comes with a new essay questioning why we ask critics to have the authority we currently do, which is objectively fascinating. Also Long Chu may be one of the last people who remain in paid dedicated reviewer positions like this, so it's objectively fascinating to read in that light. Definitely pick this up.

Yes... yes!!! No one is doing it like Andrea Long Chu. Several of these essays I had already read but I still re-read them to see if and how anything had changed. Following this woman's work and growth is a serious treat. Her perspective is grounded while aiming for a world beyond anything most of us believe is possible. The stand out for me of the two new pieces was, unsurprisingly, the essay on Authority. I have been telling everyone about this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for giving me access to this book's ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

Authority, which will be available on April 8, 2025, is a collection of essays on a wide range of topics, both current and timeless, by author Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer Prize winner in 2017.

For me, the most interesting aspect of this book was not so much seeing opinions similar to mine articulated in a much more enlightened and accessible way, but rather reflecting on the viewpoints that diverged from my own. Chu never presents her (quite strong and controversial) positions without providing a historical or academic context to justify them. There’s an excellent balance between the firm, structured opinions of the author and the freedom to question them afterward, using the resources and references mentioned to build our own judgments according to our convictions.

These essays include relentless critiques (which I loved, even while appreciating the works of the authors) of Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life, To Paradise, The People in the Trees), Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Lapvona, Eileen), Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, The Shards, Less Than Zero), Maggie Nelson (The Argonauts, Bluets, On Freedom), Tao Lin (Taipei, Leave Society, Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change), Octavia E. Butler, and Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty, The Fraud), always accompanied by excerpts from interviews or facts about their lives that validate Andrea's position, which, no matter how negative it may be, often tries to be constructive.

Andrea discusses the game The Last of Us and the success of its television adaptation, the series Yellowjackets, Big Little Lies, and Game of Thrones, but she doesn’t shy away from themes like the genocide in Gaza, the empire of capitalism, separating politics from art, racism, sexism, feminism, homosexuality, as well as her personal reflections on her journey as a trans woman. She said RANGE!

Some of the authors used as references in her arguments include Oscar Wilde, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt, Immanuel Kant, W. H. Auden, Valerie Solanas, Ned Block, John Searle, Samuel Johnson, Cicero, Herbert Marcuse, Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, Irving Babbitt, John Crowe Ransom, Harold Bloom, Adam Kirsch, Jay Caspian Kang, Celeste Ng, Ruth Ozeki, Nella Larsen, Amy Tan, Claire Stanford, Kyle Lucia Wu, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Claire Kohda, Michelle Zauner, David Foster Wallace, Cervantes, among many others.

Nothing and no one is left out of Andrea Long Chu’s analysis, a refreshing voice full of personality that isn’t afraid to challenge consensual opinions, always accompanied by very interesting research. An author I enjoyed discovering in this collection and whom I will undoubtedly follow in the future. Highly recommend!!!

The first time I saw this on Netgalley I requested to read it because 'hey, it's Andrea Long Chu!' And some of the author's essays I'd say I've stumbled upon so reading this collection would be a great way to get myself thinking, asking questions and also just nodding 'yes' to what's pointed out.
I'm glad I got to read this and explore all that, what I can guarantee is that you'd not agree with everything written, but one thing you would agree on is that the essays are bold enough to make you stop and think.

Always a treat to read anything new by ALC. Wished there were more new essays in this collection, but we will have to do with just one!

This was a fascinating collection of Essays. Loved the critical thinking and how the author took their time to really dig deep into topics and to really examine them thoroughly.

I am a student of literature and criticism. I spend my prescribed academic hours dissecting fiction and autobiography and poetry - then return home and review upcoming publications in my spare time. I breathe literature every day, from as many sources as I have time to scrounge through.

I am aware, therefore, that I fall in the exact target demographic for a series of leftist intellectual critiques on power and narrative. If I had to critique Chu, I would say that she sometimes confuses ‘sharp’ and ‘cutting’ for synonyms. An ironically relevant line from her second essay, ‘Hanya’s Boys’, springs to mind: “The first time [Jude, protagonist in Yanagihara’s A Little Life] cuts himself, you are horrified; the fiftieth time, you wish he would aim.” In general, though, comments like these don’t define any of the essays’ intentions; often, they are sweepingly outrageous enough to be genuinely funny (“If A Little Life was opera, it was not La Boheme; it was Rent.”)

I hope that this anthology will introduce people with perhaps more balanced reading habits than mine to see the real beauty in thoughtful, well-researched criticism. It is clear that Chu sees the beauty in the craft already.

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I am grateful, whatever my personal views expressed, for the opportunity provided to me by NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux to read this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

I do love a good book where an author decides to rip into things politely, delicately, and with decorum. It's always so satisfying to see the deconstruction of ideas in that kind of way, sort of like an autopsy - it's fascinating, a bit gory, and it leaves you with an appreciation for the art. While I haven't engaged with all the pieces of media that Chu speaks about throughout the book, I have engaged with enough that I can appreciate her perspective on things.

I will say my absolute favourite was the essay on Andrew Lloyd Webber, to which I found myself nodding vigorously in agreement whilst reading. I will say that I found the media critiques the best part of this book, although I can appreciate commentary on identity (of varying forms) and critics just as much. It was a sole matter of finding slightly more joy in the media criticisms and the often marvelously snarky commentary, layered with social emphasis.

This book was fun, meaningful, if not slightly confused in places as to the theme of the collection. Definitely well worth a read, even if just for a few marvellous takedowns.

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.