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.

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.