Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

Difficult Love
Jennifer Doyle’s Hold It Against Me explores the difficult. Some difficulty is good for us. And some, it seems, is not.
Feb 1, 2015
Uses of Criticism
Rather than simply making the familiar strange, Rita Felski’s "Uses of Literature" often recasts the familiar as wondrous.
Feb 1, 2015
Introducing “No Crisis”
In "No Crisis," we hope to show that the art of criticism is flourishing, rich with intellectual power and sustaining beauty, in hard times.
Caleb SmithFeb 1, 2015
- Philosophy & Religion
The Evergreen Dream
On the cemeteries of Los Angeles.
Alice BolinJan 31, 2015
Crazy Bob and the Pervert from Cedar Rapids
The story of Robert Joseph Bandler.
John KayeJan 29, 2015
- Memoir & Essay
“… With the remote shine of dead planets”: A New Year’s Meeting in Los Angeles
On Christopher Isherwood and Henri Coulette.
Boris DralyukJan 29, 2015
- Poetry
Left to Her Own Devices
In story after story, technology stands in as a focus for our fears for our daughters (as well as our desire to control them).
Elizabeth YaleJan 27, 2015
Second Eden
The quantum mechanics of family life
Max RossJan 26, 2015
- Memoir & Essay
- Science & Technology
“Serial,” Urgency, and “A Death in Belmont”
Why were we so hooked?
Aimee LiuJan 25, 2015
- Memoir & Essay
The Trauma Hero: From Wilfred Owen to “Redeployment” and “American Sniper”
“Yet when the trauma hero myth is taken as representing the ultimate truth of more than a decade of global aggression, as in it does in American Sniper, we allow the psychological suffering endured by those we sent to kill for us displace and erase the innocents killed in our name. As in Klay’s story, the real victims of American political violence disappear under a load of shit.”
Roy ScrantonJan 25, 2015
Penelope Fitzgerald Was Here: An Appreciation
"Penelope Fitzgerald’s story was both permission and company; it was okay if I too had to start late and move slowly as a writer."
Courtney CookJan 23, 2015
- Biography & Autobiography
- Fiction
The Fall, Seasons 1 and 2
'The Fall' pays lip service to feminism, performing it without embracing it.
Lili LoofbourowJan 23, 2015
- Dear Television
Auden, Rabelais, and “Charlie Hebdo”
W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” once again offers not just words of comfort, but clues on how to respond to the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Nina MartyrisJan 21, 2015
- Poetry
- Politics
A Death-Defying Love: Versions of the Orpheus Myth
Ultimately, Orpheus doesn’t lose Eurydice because he fails but because life and death are so profoundly incompatible; the story reminds us of the abyss between them.
Tim J. MyersJan 19, 2015
- Fiction
The Bachelor Vernacular
When reality catches up to reality TV
Suzannah ShowlerJan 19, 2015
- Television
LARB's Top 25 Most-Read Articles of 2014
The Los Angeles Review of Books' most popular articles from last year.
Jan 18, 2015