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Taking A Long Look
Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time
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Check link for latest rating. ( 582 ratings, 93 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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This book will appeal to readers interested in feminist thought, literary criticism, cultural history, and personal essays. It suits those who appreciate eloquent, insightful reflections on society, politics, and the self, especially within the context of American arts and culture.
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See moreOne of our most vital and incisive writers on literature, feminism, and knowing one's self
One of our most vital and incisive writers on literature, feminism, and knowing one's self
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
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Description
For nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick’s essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, All That is Given illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick’s work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what binds us to the larger world.
In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, All That Is Given brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s.
Alternately crackling with urgency or lucid with insight, the essays in All That Is Given demonstrate one of America’s most beloved critics at her best.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Critics praise Gornick's fresh, blunt language and quintessentially American voice. Dwight Garner of the New York Times highlights her beautiful prose, while Nora Caplan-Bricker from The Cut credits her with shaping the modern personal essay. The New Yorker's Alexandra Schwartz describes her work as both documentary and richly literary. Reviews also note the passion behind her political insights and her elegant, cogent writing style, confirming her status as a formidable intelligence and unique sensibility.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781839765094
Publisher: Verso Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 10 May 2022
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Verso Books
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 241g
Pages: 304
About the Author
Vivian Gornick is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations and been collected in The Best American Essays 2014. Gornick was a legendary writer for Village Voice, chronicling the emergence of the feminist movement in the 1970s, and a respected literary critic. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachments—ranked the best memoir of the last fifty years by the New York Times—The Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business, as well as the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story.
Also by Vivian Gornick
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The Romance of American Communism
“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now...Paperback$3299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Taking A Long Look
For nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick’s essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics, and personal experience. Drawing writing from the course of her career, All That is Given illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick’s work: that the painful process of understanding one's self is what...Hardback$4500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Fierce Attachments
Vivian Gornick's relationship with her mother is difficult. At the age of forty-five, she regularly meets her mother for strolls along the streets of Manhattan. Occasionally they'll hit a pleasant stride—fondly recalling a shared nostalgia or chuckling over a mutual disgust—but most often their walks are tinged with contempt, irritation, and rages so white hot her mother will stop strangers...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Best American Essays 2023
In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honourable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time when many writers are deliberately silencing themselves in the face of authoritarian and...Paperback$5100Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Approaching Eye Level
Vivian Gornick's writing has always explored the hard truths of existence: the nature of human loneliness, and the struggle to love, work, and connect. In these seven seminal essays, Gornick chronicles the New York streets that energise her and looks back on the dangerously charged atmosphere of the Catskills where she waitressed as a student in the late fifties. She...PaperbackSold Out -
Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader
The acclaimed author of The Odd Woman and the City celebrates the joys of rereading and the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life. A celebration of passionate reading from the acclaimed author and critic. In nine stunning essays, the inimitable Vivian Gornick returns to the books that have shaped her. From a reporter in 1970s New York,...PaperbackSold Out
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