Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad City?
Contributor Isabel Ortiz on writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour's "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night."
Isabel OrtizDec 18, 2014
- Film
The 2014 Dear TV Questionnaire
Parts I and II
Evan Kindley, Jane Hu, Lili Loofbourow, Phillip Maciak, Sarah MesleDec 18, 2014
- Dear Television
Notes on a Native Daughter: Joan Didion at 80
Because Tom Wolfe and because James Baldwin and Hunter S. Thompson and Michael Herr, but because Didion most of all, an American essay today without the sudden and revelatory personal aside is hardly an American essay at all.
Emmett RensinDec 17, 2014
- Fiction
- Memoir & Essay
Roundtable on “Citizen: An American Lyric,” Part II
Carmen Giménez Smith invited Mark Nowak, Ruth Ellen Kocher, and Nick Flynn to have a conversation about Claudia Rankine's book "Citizen: An American Lyric."
Carmen Giménez Smith, Mark Nowak, Nick Flynn, Ruth Ellen KocherDec 15, 2014
- Poetry
Roundtable on “Citizen: An American Lyric,” Part I
Carmen Giménez Smith invited Mark Nowak, Ruth Ellen Kocher, and Nick Flynn to have a conversation about Claudia Rankine's book “Citizen: An American Lyric.”
Carmen Giménez Smith, Mark Nowak, Nick Flynn, Ruth Ellen KocherDec 14, 2014
- Poetry
How the Humanities Will Save the World
Read a book, change the world.
Paul A. KottmanDec 12, 2014
- Nonfiction
- Philosophy & Religion
You Got Pages?
Les Plesko and the Art of Writing
David FrancisDec 11, 2014
- Fiction
- Literary Fiction
There Are Some Things I Just Can’t Tell You About
Justin CampbellDec 11, 2014
Blood Sport: The Ultras White Knights vs. Mortada Mansour
Egypt’s Ultras White Knights — a group of hard-core football fans — are locked in a bitter contest with politician Mortada Mansour, one of Egypt’s most influential and infamous men.
Patrick KeddieDec 10, 2014
- Around the World
The Convergence of Personal, Political, and Spiritual Poetry
On Afaa Michael Weaver’s Plum Flower Trilogy
Nadia ColburnDec 9, 2014
- Poetry
Talk and Not Talk: Anne Carson’s Dialogue of Grief
Such realms of silence and suffering are where Anne Carson consistently resides.
Gary HawkinsDec 8, 2014
- Poetry
You Can’t Make a Living: Digital Media, the End of TV’s Golden Age, and the Death Scene of the American Playwright
Digital Media, the End of TV’s Golden Age, and the Death Scene of the American Playwright
Alena SmithDec 8, 2014
- Television
And if the man with the choke-hold
And if the man with the choke-hold pulls the standing man down
Juan Felipe HerreraDec 6, 2014
- Poetry
Emotions Doesn’t Change Facts: Remembering Joseph Hansen
Surely no other major mystery writer has played such an important role in the maturation of another literary genre in a major American city.
Bill MohrDec 5, 2014
Racecraft: Stories of Racial Passing
Racial passing shows that “race” is both socially constructed and, as experienced, extremely meaningful.
Lucy McKeonDec 5, 2014
- Fiction
- Literary Criticism
Contortionists and Conjurers
The Philippines is the country most likely to be hit by our near future’s apocalyptic storms.
Lara StapletonDec 2, 2014
- Around the World