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All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess
A glorious call to throw off restraint and balance in favor of excess, abandon, and disproportion, in essays ranging from such topics as mindfulness, decluttering, David Cronenberg, and consent.
In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish� (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation.
Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.
Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.
In her debut essay collection, “brilliant and stylish� (The Washington Post) critic Becca Rothfeld takes on one of the most sacred cows of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation.
Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: while the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.
Lush, provocative, and bitingly funny, All Things Are Too Small is a subversive soul cry to restore imbalance, obsession, gluttony, and ravishment to all domains of our lives.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published April 2, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 250 reviews
February 7, 2025
Obsessed with this. I couldn’t stop. I keep telling myself to savor jt, it’ll be even better if it last longer, but I couldn’t stop myself from spending my entire day with it (and texting several friends pictures of passages to entice them to do the same). If you have a friend that you want to do an unhinged buddy read with them next year, get yourself and them a copy of this for the holidays and it’ll be the best reading present you can find.
August 31, 2023
As a longtime admirer of Rothfeld’s criticism, this book was a highly anticipated read for me. This excitement dimmed slightly through the opening essays, where Rothfeld aims to situate the thesis of the text (as stated in the subtitle of the book: a “praise of excess�) in the political writings of John Rawls and chooses, rather surprisingly, to contrast her philosophy of maximalism with Marie Kondo’s guide to organization. There are some superficial points of disparity between Rothfeld’s embrace of the excessive and the ethos of the minimalist (namely—is it good or desirable to have more or less stuff?). But the two are so obviously distinct that the comparison does not help to elucidate Rothfeld’s positive view in much detail.
At her least persuasive, Rothfeld relies heavily on quoting those she disagrees with a sardonic bite, presumably expecting her reader to share these feelings of disdain for, e.g., the purported literary value of YA fiction and blandly philistine maxims to reduce one’s book collection to only the “necessities.� Even if she is correct in her assessment of these claims, I’m left wanting an explanation for how she came to these opinions rather than a theatrical dismissal of them.
Her strongest authorial voice is when she speaks as herself, weaving in personal narrative with critical analysis to intimate and honest effect. Rothfeld has a rich understanding, both in the texts that she consumes and in interpreting her own lived experience, and writes in a profoundly lyrical tone that renders the text not only deeply insightful but also luxurious. Although the essays follow no clear order and some have no apparent connection to the main claims regarding maximalism (such as the somewhat random dalliances into true crime, sexual consent, and Sally Rooney), there is something delightfully informal about the meandering soliloquies and I found myself jotting down lovely turns of phrases, looking up the books and films that are referenced, and musing over some of Rothfeld’s particularly striking characterizations. The text is intellectual without feeling dry or educational, and warmly personal without resorting to over-familiarity or effusiveness. Finally, Rothfeld’s strongest (and, in my opinion, least-explored) strength is in her wonderful marriage of the classic and the contemporary, such as an essay where she uses the films of Bergmann as a framing device for investigating the experience of stalking an ex’s new girlfriend online (or is it the other way around, where the personal shapes the critical? The text’s ambiguity here adds a meta-level of blurring between the self and the projection, which is a theme around which the essay orients). At times, she leans quite heavily into the nearly archaic—for instance, she predominantly discusses films from the 40s and 50s, and even her more contemporary movie references, such as to Cronenberg’s filmography, are still quite dated. It is clear that, literarily, she jumps through time more comfortably, as when she compares Rooney’s opus to both Jane Austen and the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy� initially surprising bedfellows that Rothfeld deftly ties together. These cross-temporal comparisons add a novel complexity to her criticism that I longed (and still long!) to see more of—not only in her choices of art, but in her reflections more broadly.
As a debut work, “All Things are Too Small� is an impressive feat. I don’t think it would be remiss to describe Rothfeld as a contemporary Sontag in many respects. The shortcomings of the work serve only to leave the reader hungry for more (more explanation, more details, more examples), exemplifying the very all-consuming desire that Rothfeld is concerned with understanding. And at her finest, Rothfeld’s writing soars dazzlingly. 4 out of 5 stars.
The ARC for this text was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
At her least persuasive, Rothfeld relies heavily on quoting those she disagrees with a sardonic bite, presumably expecting her reader to share these feelings of disdain for, e.g., the purported literary value of YA fiction and blandly philistine maxims to reduce one’s book collection to only the “necessities.� Even if she is correct in her assessment of these claims, I’m left wanting an explanation for how she came to these opinions rather than a theatrical dismissal of them.
Her strongest authorial voice is when she speaks as herself, weaving in personal narrative with critical analysis to intimate and honest effect. Rothfeld has a rich understanding, both in the texts that she consumes and in interpreting her own lived experience, and writes in a profoundly lyrical tone that renders the text not only deeply insightful but also luxurious. Although the essays follow no clear order and some have no apparent connection to the main claims regarding maximalism (such as the somewhat random dalliances into true crime, sexual consent, and Sally Rooney), there is something delightfully informal about the meandering soliloquies and I found myself jotting down lovely turns of phrases, looking up the books and films that are referenced, and musing over some of Rothfeld’s particularly striking characterizations. The text is intellectual without feeling dry or educational, and warmly personal without resorting to over-familiarity or effusiveness. Finally, Rothfeld’s strongest (and, in my opinion, least-explored) strength is in her wonderful marriage of the classic and the contemporary, such as an essay where she uses the films of Bergmann as a framing device for investigating the experience of stalking an ex’s new girlfriend online (or is it the other way around, where the personal shapes the critical? The text’s ambiguity here adds a meta-level of blurring between the self and the projection, which is a theme around which the essay orients). At times, she leans quite heavily into the nearly archaic—for instance, she predominantly discusses films from the 40s and 50s, and even her more contemporary movie references, such as to Cronenberg’s filmography, are still quite dated. It is clear that, literarily, she jumps through time more comfortably, as when she compares Rooney’s opus to both Jane Austen and the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy� initially surprising bedfellows that Rothfeld deftly ties together. These cross-temporal comparisons add a novel complexity to her criticism that I longed (and still long!) to see more of—not only in her choices of art, but in her reflections more broadly.
As a debut work, “All Things are Too Small� is an impressive feat. I don’t think it would be remiss to describe Rothfeld as a contemporary Sontag in many respects. The shortcomings of the work serve only to leave the reader hungry for more (more explanation, more details, more examples), exemplifying the very all-consuming desire that Rothfeld is concerned with understanding. And at her finest, Rothfeld’s writing soars dazzlingly. 4 out of 5 stars.
The ARC for this text was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
April 8, 2024
I’d read some of Rothfeld’s articles and appreciated her outsider position on some popular topics, like Sally Rooney’s novels, so when I won an ARC for this book through Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, I was excited. Unfortunately, when I spent a protracted length of time with her writing, it became clear that her ideas are half-baked, and her arguments deeply, sometimes oddly, flawed.
Although I didn’t entirely agree with Rothfeld’s first three essays, they were interesting and coherent enough that I was onboard for the ride. It was during “Murder on the Installment Plan� when the cracks in her thinking became glaringly obvious. It starts with her discussing Hannibal, Mindhunter, and other similar shows, and seems to be critiquing the fact that these TV shows about serial murderers are delivered in…episodes � the so called “installment plans.� Would she have fewer objections if they were instead very long movies played all in one go?
She was already losing me, then she wrote this:
The mystery novel, with its fixed template, lent itself to ready reproduction. But it did not satisfy readers� appetites because it concluded altogether too completely. The initial remedy was popularized by Charles Dickens in the late 1830s, with the staggered publication, over the course of a year and a half, of The Pickwick Papers. Dickens was among the first to divide corpse into corpus, in much the same way that Jack the Ripper, the first celebrity serial killer, cut prostitutes into pieces just fifty years later.
(I’m going to bypass the faulty idea that mystery novels with complete conclusions don’t satisfy the reader, to get to what really confounded me about this paragraph.) The baffling implication here is that The Pickwick Papers� publication in installments (pieces) would later somehow cause (inspire?) Jack the Ripper to mutilate and remove pieces of his victims. What evidence does she provide to prove this assertion? None, because, I’d assume, there isn’t any.
Although there is no way to prove that Jack wasn’t inspired by The Pickwick Papers, or any other serialized novel, there is some information that makes this unlikely. Firstly, Papers doesn’t involve any murders, let alone gruesome, serial murders. It’s a light hearted romp full of big caricatures and hijinks. The only thing that remotely comes close to a criminal proclivity is a minor court case about a dispute between a fellow and his landlady.
Second, Dickens� Papers was by no means the first serialized novel (although its success did make the form more popular), so why mention it specifically? Lastly, it was published between 1836-1837, and Jack’s first suspected kill was in 1888. Given the years between the events and the general age Jack is suspected to be when the killing began, we can assume that Jack was either not yet born, or barely of reading age, in the 1830s. So, how could the event of a serialized novel have any effect on the man?
Rothfeld seems to be trying to make a connection between people consuming stories in parts (be it through a serialized novel or TV episodes) causing some people to view bodies as nothing but parts to be disassembled via murder and mutilation. And although it’s kind of an interesting idea if you squint at it, there’s little to hold her argument together except ~*vibes*~.
In “Other People’s Loves� Rothfeld tells how she used to stalk the new love interests of her ex’s (by stalking, she means looking at publicly available information online.) This is a fairly common, understandable practice, easily explained by simple curiosity and mild romantic obsession. It probably doesn’t need to be defended, yet she does so anyway, with this provably untrue assertion:
Indeed, part of what distinguishes online stalking from its dangerous, “IRL� analogue is that no online stalker wants to meet, much less seduce or harm or abduct, the object of her obsession. The online stalker aspires to remain invisible at all costs�
What? Perhaps harming the women she “stalks� has never crossed her mind, or those of her friends with whom she confides, but some people desperately do want to meet the people they stalk online. In fact, online stalking has resulted in “IRL� harm, including murder. Her belief that this doesn’t happen is so obviously wrong that it is beyond me as to how she could think this.
I could go on, but I’m going to limit myself to responding to only one more of her essays. “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave� critiques the rise of mindfulness/meditation from everything from psychiatric settings to self-help books and corporate productivity shills. She begins by relating how a therapist suggested she meditate and practice “non-judgmental awareness� after a suicide attempt during college:
I asked my therapist, Surely there were some things I was allowed to judge?
Nope.
What about things that merit judgement?
Nope.
What about the Koch brothers?
Nope.
How was this supposed to help me, suspending judgement about the Koch brothers?
I had to trust it would be good for me.
How could she know what was good for me without exercising the faculty of judgement?
Rothfeld seems to be so enamored with her thoughts and judgements that even when rumination on the Koch brothers (and probably other things too) drove her to try to skedaddle from this mortal plane, she still couldn’t bring herself to even entertain the idea that some of her thoughts might not be serving her well, and that developing the ability to not think on occasion might do her some good.
Rothfeld then goes on to unartfully, and unfairly summarize why meditation is beneficial as “cognition is an unmitigated evil� and that “acceptance of external circumstances, no matter how dire, is paramount.� To argue that those in favor of meditation are really saying that no one should ever think anything and must accept everything is just so silly I don’t know where to start.
Rothfeld doesn’t seem to have much respect for the therapist she saw during this time, but admits some of her suggestions did help, especially going to the movies:
And as the lights dimmed around the silver flicker of the screen, I was flooded with a sharp sense of human presence. Who knows why � my cognitive behavioral therapist, for all her merits, probably does not � but sitting in the dark with strangers and staring at the same play of shadows on the wall can be salvific, especially if the shadows are beautiful. It was good to be somewhere besides where I was, good to know that escape into the parallel world of art was available and that other people could escape there with me.
This paragraph really struck me. Rothfeld is ignorant as to why a movie could be a balm for the psyche, believing not even her therapist could come up with an explanation. The best she can guess is that it was escape into art that helped her.
I think the true reason may be that for the 90-120 minutes she sat in that dark movie theater, Rothfeld was totally engrossed in the narrative, and was NOT thinking about the Koch brothers. She probably wasn’t thinking very much � maybe not even at all at times! If she did have thoughts, she let them go easily, as her attention was constantly pulled back toward the film. She posits her relief came from “escape[ing] into the parallel world of art,� but the only thing she had escaped was her ruminations. Although she was not meditating, she was out of her head and in that theater experiencing the PRESENT moment fully.
This essay is an example of when a writer has an immediate judgement about something and instead of staying open to information that may challenge their thinking, instead hordes everything that supports it. She deploys the “strawman� strategy again and again, finding the weakest advocates with the weakest arguments and acting like they are the standard bearers. For instance, there are many good books that explore mindfulness and meditation, but she barely sites them while giving more space to Ariana Huffington and Sam Harris, of all people!
Overall, I’d say that at times, Rothfeld’s writing was engrossing and lucid, especially when she wrote about her personal experiences. Rothfeld trained as a philosopher, so I hoped she would bring obtuse philosophical ideas to a general audience, but whenever she engaged with philosophical arguments, her writing became tortured and opaque to the point I could only vaguely gleam what she was going on about.
To give Rothfeld her due, I found the essays about films by David Cronenberg far more convincing than some of the other essays. But, I haven’t seen the films she sites, so I can’t say whether her interpretations have legs or not. Also, there should be something said about a writer that inspires a reader to write a review this long and involved. Rothfeld certainly gave me a lot to think about, to her credit.
Although I didn’t entirely agree with Rothfeld’s first three essays, they were interesting and coherent enough that I was onboard for the ride. It was during “Murder on the Installment Plan� when the cracks in her thinking became glaringly obvious. It starts with her discussing Hannibal, Mindhunter, and other similar shows, and seems to be critiquing the fact that these TV shows about serial murderers are delivered in…episodes � the so called “installment plans.� Would she have fewer objections if they were instead very long movies played all in one go?
She was already losing me, then she wrote this:
The mystery novel, with its fixed template, lent itself to ready reproduction. But it did not satisfy readers� appetites because it concluded altogether too completely. The initial remedy was popularized by Charles Dickens in the late 1830s, with the staggered publication, over the course of a year and a half, of The Pickwick Papers. Dickens was among the first to divide corpse into corpus, in much the same way that Jack the Ripper, the first celebrity serial killer, cut prostitutes into pieces just fifty years later.
(I’m going to bypass the faulty idea that mystery novels with complete conclusions don’t satisfy the reader, to get to what really confounded me about this paragraph.) The baffling implication here is that The Pickwick Papers� publication in installments (pieces) would later somehow cause (inspire?) Jack the Ripper to mutilate and remove pieces of his victims. What evidence does she provide to prove this assertion? None, because, I’d assume, there isn’t any.
Although there is no way to prove that Jack wasn’t inspired by The Pickwick Papers, or any other serialized novel, there is some information that makes this unlikely. Firstly, Papers doesn’t involve any murders, let alone gruesome, serial murders. It’s a light hearted romp full of big caricatures and hijinks. The only thing that remotely comes close to a criminal proclivity is a minor court case about a dispute between a fellow and his landlady.
Second, Dickens� Papers was by no means the first serialized novel (although its success did make the form more popular), so why mention it specifically? Lastly, it was published between 1836-1837, and Jack’s first suspected kill was in 1888. Given the years between the events and the general age Jack is suspected to be when the killing began, we can assume that Jack was either not yet born, or barely of reading age, in the 1830s. So, how could the event of a serialized novel have any effect on the man?
Rothfeld seems to be trying to make a connection between people consuming stories in parts (be it through a serialized novel or TV episodes) causing some people to view bodies as nothing but parts to be disassembled via murder and mutilation. And although it’s kind of an interesting idea if you squint at it, there’s little to hold her argument together except ~*vibes*~.
In “Other People’s Loves� Rothfeld tells how she used to stalk the new love interests of her ex’s (by stalking, she means looking at publicly available information online.) This is a fairly common, understandable practice, easily explained by simple curiosity and mild romantic obsession. It probably doesn’t need to be defended, yet she does so anyway, with this provably untrue assertion:
Indeed, part of what distinguishes online stalking from its dangerous, “IRL� analogue is that no online stalker wants to meet, much less seduce or harm or abduct, the object of her obsession. The online stalker aspires to remain invisible at all costs�
What? Perhaps harming the women she “stalks� has never crossed her mind, or those of her friends with whom she confides, but some people desperately do want to meet the people they stalk online. In fact, online stalking has resulted in “IRL� harm, including murder. Her belief that this doesn’t happen is so obviously wrong that it is beyond me as to how she could think this.
I could go on, but I’m going to limit myself to responding to only one more of her essays. “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave� critiques the rise of mindfulness/meditation from everything from psychiatric settings to self-help books and corporate productivity shills. She begins by relating how a therapist suggested she meditate and practice “non-judgmental awareness� after a suicide attempt during college:
I asked my therapist, Surely there were some things I was allowed to judge?
Nope.
What about things that merit judgement?
Nope.
What about the Koch brothers?
Nope.
How was this supposed to help me, suspending judgement about the Koch brothers?
I had to trust it would be good for me.
How could she know what was good for me without exercising the faculty of judgement?
Rothfeld seems to be so enamored with her thoughts and judgements that even when rumination on the Koch brothers (and probably other things too) drove her to try to skedaddle from this mortal plane, she still couldn’t bring herself to even entertain the idea that some of her thoughts might not be serving her well, and that developing the ability to not think on occasion might do her some good.
Rothfeld then goes on to unartfully, and unfairly summarize why meditation is beneficial as “cognition is an unmitigated evil� and that “acceptance of external circumstances, no matter how dire, is paramount.� To argue that those in favor of meditation are really saying that no one should ever think anything and must accept everything is just so silly I don’t know where to start.
Rothfeld doesn’t seem to have much respect for the therapist she saw during this time, but admits some of her suggestions did help, especially going to the movies:
And as the lights dimmed around the silver flicker of the screen, I was flooded with a sharp sense of human presence. Who knows why � my cognitive behavioral therapist, for all her merits, probably does not � but sitting in the dark with strangers and staring at the same play of shadows on the wall can be salvific, especially if the shadows are beautiful. It was good to be somewhere besides where I was, good to know that escape into the parallel world of art was available and that other people could escape there with me.
This paragraph really struck me. Rothfeld is ignorant as to why a movie could be a balm for the psyche, believing not even her therapist could come up with an explanation. The best she can guess is that it was escape into art that helped her.
I think the true reason may be that for the 90-120 minutes she sat in that dark movie theater, Rothfeld was totally engrossed in the narrative, and was NOT thinking about the Koch brothers. She probably wasn’t thinking very much � maybe not even at all at times! If she did have thoughts, she let them go easily, as her attention was constantly pulled back toward the film. She posits her relief came from “escape[ing] into the parallel world of art,� but the only thing she had escaped was her ruminations. Although she was not meditating, she was out of her head and in that theater experiencing the PRESENT moment fully.
This essay is an example of when a writer has an immediate judgement about something and instead of staying open to information that may challenge their thinking, instead hordes everything that supports it. She deploys the “strawman� strategy again and again, finding the weakest advocates with the weakest arguments and acting like they are the standard bearers. For instance, there are many good books that explore mindfulness and meditation, but she barely sites them while giving more space to Ariana Huffington and Sam Harris, of all people!
Overall, I’d say that at times, Rothfeld’s writing was engrossing and lucid, especially when she wrote about her personal experiences. Rothfeld trained as a philosopher, so I hoped she would bring obtuse philosophical ideas to a general audience, but whenever she engaged with philosophical arguments, her writing became tortured and opaque to the point I could only vaguely gleam what she was going on about.
To give Rothfeld her due, I found the essays about films by David Cronenberg far more convincing than some of the other essays. But, I haven’t seen the films she sites, so I can’t say whether her interpretations have legs or not. Also, there should be something said about a writer that inspires a reader to write a review this long and involved. Rothfeld certainly gave me a lot to think about, to her credit.
June 20, 2024
(2.5) Rothfeld, the Washington Post’s nonfiction book reviewer, is on hiatus from a philosophy PhD at Harvard. Her academic background is clear from her vocabulary. The more accessible essays tend to be ones that were previously published in periodicals. Although the topics range widely � decluttering, true crime, consent, binge eating, online stalking � she’s assembled them under a dichotomy of parsimony versus indulgence. And you know from the title that she errs on the side of the latter. Luxuriate in lust, wallow in words, stick two fingers up to minimalism and mindfulness and be your own messy self. You might boil the message down to: Love what you love, because that’s what makes you an individual. And happy individuals � well, ideally, in an equal society that gives everyone the same access to self-fulfillment and art � make for a thriving culture. That, with some Barthes and Kant quotes.
The writing has verve, from the alliterative word choice to the forcefulness of Rothfeld’s opinions. But in places her points of reference (from classic cinema, especially) are so obscure that I had no way in and the pieces felt like they would never end. My two favourites were “More Is More,� in which she’s as down on fragmentary autofiction (Jenny Offill et al.) as she is on Marie Kondo; and “Normal Novels,� about how she finds Sally Rooney’s self-deprecation and communism problematic. I knew the subject matter well enough to follow the arguments here, even if I ultimately disagreed with them.
Rothfeld is worth reading as a cultural critic, at least in small doses. She is clearly not interested in being a personal essayist, however, as the intimacy she keeps discussing in theory is almost completely absent. A piece on mental health, “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave,� opens with one tantalizing autobiographical line � “My first year of college, I attempted suicide and was promptly hastened home by an ominously smiling administrator� � then proceeds to poke fun at meditation for most of its 40 pages. It was interesting to see her fan-girl over her favourite novel, which I would even try if it wasn’t 480 pages: “I want to be reading Mating [by Norman Rush] constantly; I want to have been reading Mating forever, but always for the first time; I want everything in my life to be Mating and nothing but Mating�. Keep an eye out for the sequel: Actually, Moderation Is Cool: How I Learned to Temper My Expectations.
(The U.S. cover featuring a Bosch painting is so much better!)
Originally published on my blog, .
The writing has verve, from the alliterative word choice to the forcefulness of Rothfeld’s opinions. But in places her points of reference (from classic cinema, especially) are so obscure that I had no way in and the pieces felt like they would never end. My two favourites were “More Is More,� in which she’s as down on fragmentary autofiction (Jenny Offill et al.) as she is on Marie Kondo; and “Normal Novels,� about how she finds Sally Rooney’s self-deprecation and communism problematic. I knew the subject matter well enough to follow the arguments here, even if I ultimately disagreed with them.
Rothfeld is worth reading as a cultural critic, at least in small doses. She is clearly not interested in being a personal essayist, however, as the intimacy she keeps discussing in theory is almost completely absent. A piece on mental health, “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave,� opens with one tantalizing autobiographical line � “My first year of college, I attempted suicide and was promptly hastened home by an ominously smiling administrator� � then proceeds to poke fun at meditation for most of its 40 pages. It was interesting to see her fan-girl over her favourite novel, which I would even try if it wasn’t 480 pages: “I want to be reading Mating [by Norman Rush] constantly; I want to have been reading Mating forever, but always for the first time; I want everything in my life to be Mating and nothing but Mating�. Keep an eye out for the sequel: Actually, Moderation Is Cool: How I Learned to Temper My Expectations.
(The U.S. cover featuring a Bosch painting is so much better!)
Originally published on my blog, .
February 1, 2024
I don’t really have anything nice to say about this book. Reading it felt like a college exercise and it was so academic, dry and uninteresting. Essays should be engaging and interesting, not make you want to poke your eyes out.
Thank you to NetGalley, Henry Holt & Company and Becca Rothfeld for an advanced copy of this book.
Thank you to NetGalley, Henry Holt & Company and Becca Rothfeld for an advanced copy of this book.
July 1, 2024
I think that Rothfeld is at her best here when she writes about sex � her work on sex as transformation in her Cronenberg essays and on the ethics of sex beyond simply consent in “Only Mercy� are each brilliant. The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy, a celebration of the ravenous pleasure of desire, even as it transforms of us, is an expansion of an essay I'd already read and adored - .
Some of her further essays, however, are less compelling to me � and a few feel as if they didn’t get their proper due in Rothfeld’s writing.
There are some interesting things in here. In More and More, decluttering and minimalism as an exercise in excising hungers. In Two Lives Simultaneous and Perfect, an emplacement of the erotic as a violation of social norms. In Our True Entertainment Was Arguing, a celebration of marriage and love not as finding another self, but as finding a lover who is a person in and of themselves � someone to speak with, the “conversations of love� that continue out of interest, with an “orientation toward eternity�.
A few more seem just slightly lacking. In Ladies in Waiting, the waiting love, and the value of seeing the beloved as an outside no matter how much we may want to collapse into one another. In Murder on the Installment Plane, the intertwining of the detective and the criminal until the lines between them blur (though I wished she’d gone further with this rather than ending with “I don’t know the ultimate end� � I frankly felt I could’ve found plenty to say). In Other People’s Loves, an examination of desire as “reliev[ing] us of the burden of our own visibility� � one that left me feeling just a tad unsatisfied. In Having a Cake and Eating It Too, an in-depth close reading of the writings of mystic Simone Weil on hunger for god � one that I thought could’ve had a wider scope. In Normal Novels, a critique of Sally Rooney, with little to do with the scope of the novel.
Fantastic writer, though, and I did think the sex essays justified the collection for me.
Some notes from Only Mercy that I wanted to highlight:
➽Angela Carter: “Our flesh arrives to us out of history� we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class� our whole biographies�
➽“Every apparent pairing is in fact an orgy, consisting of the two participants and the entire social world�
➽I’m interested now in reading Srinivasan’s work because I generally agree with the point that the sexual revolution did not go far enough � it expanded the range of socially acceptable erotic practices but failed to meaningfully confront the societal and cultural biases behind some kink.
Critique of Emba and Perry’s Rethinking Sex and The Cade Against the Sexual Revolution � “for them, the best sex imaginable is just sex that is as harmless as possible�
➽“Why not effect the sort of political change that would in turn improve our tastes� why not fight for the possibility of ethical pleasure?
âž½The conservative state is desperate to preserve the nuclear family because women step in to perform the childcare that the state fails to subsidize
➽“The real import of the dictum that ‘sex is serious� is that sex is significant enough to matter even when it is unaccompanied by romance and ritual, even when it symbolizes nothing else at all�
➽Eroticism is a seeking of “an encounter between people stripped of their usual roles� � this is why I find patriarchy play to be boring potentially?
➽“Sex is a moral matter as it challenges us to make real � and therefore unexpected and sometimes disorienting � contact with other people, rather than glancing contact with the affirming balm of our own fantasies. If we come to bed set on securing any particular good, be it the time-honored staples of love and pregnancy or the modern debasements of pornographic reenactment, then we are not really prepared to respond to the unique claim that each lover lays on us.�
➽We have more ethical sex when we recognize “the violent individuality of our sexual partners�.
“An oppressive order is also a boring order� because it offers none of the surprise of eroticism
| | | |
Some of her further essays, however, are less compelling to me � and a few feel as if they didn’t get their proper due in Rothfeld’s writing.
There are some interesting things in here. In More and More, decluttering and minimalism as an exercise in excising hungers. In Two Lives Simultaneous and Perfect, an emplacement of the erotic as a violation of social norms. In Our True Entertainment Was Arguing, a celebration of marriage and love not as finding another self, but as finding a lover who is a person in and of themselves � someone to speak with, the “conversations of love� that continue out of interest, with an “orientation toward eternity�.
A few more seem just slightly lacking. In Ladies in Waiting, the waiting love, and the value of seeing the beloved as an outside no matter how much we may want to collapse into one another. In Murder on the Installment Plane, the intertwining of the detective and the criminal until the lines between them blur (though I wished she’d gone further with this rather than ending with “I don’t know the ultimate end� � I frankly felt I could’ve found plenty to say). In Other People’s Loves, an examination of desire as “reliev[ing] us of the burden of our own visibility� � one that left me feeling just a tad unsatisfied. In Having a Cake and Eating It Too, an in-depth close reading of the writings of mystic Simone Weil on hunger for god � one that I thought could’ve had a wider scope. In Normal Novels, a critique of Sally Rooney, with little to do with the scope of the novel.
Fantastic writer, though, and I did think the sex essays justified the collection for me.
Some notes from Only Mercy that I wanted to highlight:
➽Angela Carter: “Our flesh arrives to us out of history� we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class� our whole biographies�
➽“Every apparent pairing is in fact an orgy, consisting of the two participants and the entire social world�
➽I’m interested now in reading Srinivasan’s work because I generally agree with the point that the sexual revolution did not go far enough � it expanded the range of socially acceptable erotic practices but failed to meaningfully confront the societal and cultural biases behind some kink.
Critique of Emba and Perry’s Rethinking Sex and The Cade Against the Sexual Revolution � “for them, the best sex imaginable is just sex that is as harmless as possible�
➽“Why not effect the sort of political change that would in turn improve our tastes� why not fight for the possibility of ethical pleasure?
âž½The conservative state is desperate to preserve the nuclear family because women step in to perform the childcare that the state fails to subsidize
➽“The real import of the dictum that ‘sex is serious� is that sex is significant enough to matter even when it is unaccompanied by romance and ritual, even when it symbolizes nothing else at all�
➽Eroticism is a seeking of “an encounter between people stripped of their usual roles� � this is why I find patriarchy play to be boring potentially?
➽“Sex is a moral matter as it challenges us to make real � and therefore unexpected and sometimes disorienting � contact with other people, rather than glancing contact with the affirming balm of our own fantasies. If we come to bed set on securing any particular good, be it the time-honored staples of love and pregnancy or the modern debasements of pornographic reenactment, then we are not really prepared to respond to the unique claim that each lover lays on us.�
➽We have more ethical sex when we recognize “the violent individuality of our sexual partners�.
“An oppressive order is also a boring order� because it offers none of the surprise of eroticism
| | | |
May 5, 2024
the writing is super competent and rothfeld is obviously super bright (which she does REALLY want you to know), but i guess my main gripe is that i don’t really think the essays are what the book advertises? like an essay about mindhunter or mindfulness meditation—despite however tenuously you may want to draw those connections—don’t really fit my idea of “essays about excess�. other than the intro essay, they don’t really fit that description at all! the best essay here is one that was already released online, Normal Novels.
“there’s nobody you hate more than you one year ago� - somebody, probably. when i read these essays written by a very snarky person getting angry at dumb books or whatever nobody cares about i see a lot of the stuff i hated most about myself—a trigger happy, contrarian soul just looking to have the Cool New Opinion and show everybody that they’ve Read the Smart Books.
maybe i’m just changing, idk.
“there’s nobody you hate more than you one year ago� - somebody, probably. when i read these essays written by a very snarky person getting angry at dumb books or whatever nobody cares about i see a lot of the stuff i hated most about myself—a trigger happy, contrarian soul just looking to have the Cool New Opinion and show everybody that they’ve Read the Smart Books.
maybe i’m just changing, idk.
April 19, 2024
I loved this so much it almost makes me upset to read the three star (or even lower!!!) reviews. Rothfeld is exuberant and passionate and deeply invested in literature, film, philosophy, criticism—but most of all she is obsessed with LOVE, BEAUTY, and the disruptively divine experiences we can have with both.
I loved this. The collection includes some of Rothfeld’s hits, like her gorgeous essay on Éric Rohmer’s films (originally published in Cabinet), her (imo) original and fascinating critique of Sally Rooney, which is worth reading even for hardcore Rooney fans, as it really makes the experience of reading her novels so much richer…as well as some new essays that touch on the flaws of Western-style Buddhism, the limits of egalitarian politics in the face of desire, the thorny inadequacy of consent as a concept�
Overall, very thought-provoking and genuinely so pleasurable to read.
I loved this. The collection includes some of Rothfeld’s hits, like her gorgeous essay on Éric Rohmer’s films (originally published in Cabinet), her (imo) original and fascinating critique of Sally Rooney, which is worth reading even for hardcore Rooney fans, as it really makes the experience of reading her novels so much richer…as well as some new essays that touch on the flaws of Western-style Buddhism, the limits of egalitarian politics in the face of desire, the thorny inadequacy of consent as a concept�
Overall, very thought-provoking and genuinely so pleasurable to read.
March 16, 2024
I received an advance copy of this book as part of a goodreads giveaway.
I don't think I was the intended audience for this book. I thought I would be reading a celebration of excess and instead it was more like complaints (not arguments) against minimalism. The tone was more academic than I am used to and sometimes veered into an arrogance I found distracting.
The author's personal experiences and beliefs seemed so entirely different from mine that it seemed like a glimpse into an alien world. But what else is reading for? The essays were thought provoking.
I don't think I was the intended audience for this book. I thought I would be reading a celebration of excess and instead it was more like complaints (not arguments) against minimalism. The tone was more academic than I am used to and sometimes veered into an arrogance I found distracting.
The author's personal experiences and beliefs seemed so entirely different from mine that it seemed like a glimpse into an alien world. But what else is reading for? The essays were thought provoking.
June 12, 2024
Have you ever been in a social setting, overheard someone making a controversial point about a subject and found yourself agreeing with them only to be appalled by their delivery and lack of social awareness? That's how I felt reading this book.
This is a pretentious book. It's unreservedly, happily-rolling-in-it pretentious. That's fine. I'm also very pretentious. Rothfeld simply seems to find the concept of politeness completely foreign. Let me explain in the briefest way I can manage.
Rothfeld has a plethora of opinions about activities that are not only a waste of time, but a personal affront to the essence of humanity. She has taken not shutting the fuck up when other people are doing something she's deemed stupid, self-delusional or contrary to her beliefs as her life calling. Some of these things include decluttering, meditation and reading Sally Rooney.
If I may one-up Rothfeld in pretentiousness, since being able to call people out on stupid shit is clearly one of her core beliefs, I can only comment on the things about which I know she's wrong for lack of contextual information. I haven't read Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey or Sally Rooney because I don't read books I know are not for me only so I can complain about other people enjoying them. I have, however, watched video essays about why other people like them. It's about giving other people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they're all morons, you see? Or conflating escapist fantasy with people's actual desires for themselves.
There are many moments in the course of reading this book when Rothfeld is so close to getting it. So close to extending other people the common courtesy of assuming they know themselves better than she gives them credit for. So very close to understanding others in a shining moment of empathy that it's painful when she fails to do so only to explain to the reader from the point of view of a Jane Austen character what she's failing to do herself.
I could get into the specific misunderstandings she has regarding people's personal beliefs and the imposition of those practices as a corporate tool within capitalism, of the impossibility of marketing an unsellable idea as a product, and the disconnect there is between what these ideas are meant to be and what they have become, but Rothfeld has decided people have been prescribed empty-headedness as a cure for every ailment in a monumental feat of assuming she is smarter than everybody else because she's the only one who sees through this charade.
Rothfeld discusses neo-Protestantism and the resurgence of puritanical morality as the source of many evils. This is correct. And yet she fails to understand that the use of "Let people enjoy things" in context had to do with this angle, and is not necessarily a complaint against people criticising Marvel movies for their artistic value or lack thereof. This happens as well, of course, but there is a rampant problem on Tumblr in which people conflating the content of a text taken at face value with the author's morality take it upon themselves to ostracise and harass people who express any enjoyment of it (e.g. Nabokov was a paedophile and if you like Lolita you are one as well). This is a manufactured problem within the American school system because children have not been taught to read for the past 15 years, but we don't have time for that now. We also don't have time to discuss how little she seems to understand about BDSM dynamics.
To sum up, Rothfeld thinks other people are wasting their lives trying to empty them rather than filling them. This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. It may even be a perfectly reasonable opinion to express. Despite this, I would advise her to make sure she knows how to communicate with others without coming across as a supercilious asshole.
This is a pretentious book. It's unreservedly, happily-rolling-in-it pretentious. That's fine. I'm also very pretentious. Rothfeld simply seems to find the concept of politeness completely foreign. Let me explain in the briefest way I can manage.
Rothfeld has a plethora of opinions about activities that are not only a waste of time, but a personal affront to the essence of humanity. She has taken not shutting the fuck up when other people are doing something she's deemed stupid, self-delusional or contrary to her beliefs as her life calling. Some of these things include decluttering, meditation and reading Sally Rooney.
If I may one-up Rothfeld in pretentiousness, since being able to call people out on stupid shit is clearly one of her core beliefs, I can only comment on the things about which I know she's wrong for lack of contextual information. I haven't read Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey or Sally Rooney because I don't read books I know are not for me only so I can complain about other people enjoying them. I have, however, watched video essays about why other people like them. It's about giving other people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they're all morons, you see? Or conflating escapist fantasy with people's actual desires for themselves.
There are many moments in the course of reading this book when Rothfeld is so close to getting it. So close to extending other people the common courtesy of assuming they know themselves better than she gives them credit for. So very close to understanding others in a shining moment of empathy that it's painful when she fails to do so only to explain to the reader from the point of view of a Jane Austen character what she's failing to do herself.
I could get into the specific misunderstandings she has regarding people's personal beliefs and the imposition of those practices as a corporate tool within capitalism, of the impossibility of marketing an unsellable idea as a product, and the disconnect there is between what these ideas are meant to be and what they have become, but Rothfeld has decided people have been prescribed empty-headedness as a cure for every ailment in a monumental feat of assuming she is smarter than everybody else because she's the only one who sees through this charade.
Rothfeld discusses neo-Protestantism and the resurgence of puritanical morality as the source of many evils. This is correct. And yet she fails to understand that the use of "Let people enjoy things" in context had to do with this angle, and is not necessarily a complaint against people criticising Marvel movies for their artistic value or lack thereof. This happens as well, of course, but there is a rampant problem on Tumblr in which people conflating the content of a text taken at face value with the author's morality take it upon themselves to ostracise and harass people who express any enjoyment of it (e.g. Nabokov was a paedophile and if you like Lolita you are one as well). This is a manufactured problem within the American school system because children have not been taught to read for the past 15 years, but we don't have time for that now. We also don't have time to discuss how little she seems to understand about BDSM dynamics.
To sum up, Rothfeld thinks other people are wasting their lives trying to empty them rather than filling them. This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. It may even be a perfectly reasonable opinion to express. Despite this, I would advise her to make sure she knows how to communicate with others without coming across as a supercilious asshole.
July 19, 2024
not for everyone but decidedly for me! the essays about eroticism especially were knives to my wee heart! surprised myself by crying towards the end of Only Mercy? i need to buy a copy when it comes out in paperback so i may underline every single word bc this is a maximalist household goddamnit
January 23, 2025
Joan Didion: died 2021
Becca Rothfeld: born 1991
Close enough, welcome back Joan!!
Obviously I think this is extraordinary and special. Becca Rothfeld is such a smart writer and an unapologetically mean critic (non-derogatory!) but more importantly these essays are also funny and passionate and about surrendering yourself to desire and pleasure and surplus! Movies should be hornier, books should be more challenging, sex should be had as often as possible and strictly "crazy-style" (I don't why I put that in quotation marks, that's my quote), and most importantly Marie Kondo should get a real job! This rules and everyone should read this! "'You must change your life.' -Rilke" -Joey
Becca Rothfeld: born 1991
Close enough, welcome back Joan!!
Obviously I think this is extraordinary and special. Becca Rothfeld is such a smart writer and an unapologetically mean critic (non-derogatory!) but more importantly these essays are also funny and passionate and about surrendering yourself to desire and pleasure and surplus! Movies should be hornier, books should be more challenging, sex should be had as often as possible and strictly "crazy-style" (I don't why I put that in quotation marks, that's my quote), and most importantly Marie Kondo should get a real job! This rules and everyone should read this! "'You must change your life.' -Rilke" -Joey
May 23, 2024
I found this book to be quite terrible. After hearing continuous praise for it, I decided to give it a try, but I was extremely disappointed. The writing felt mindless and lacked any sense of artistry. Many of the essays focused on TV shows, movies, and other books, but the author seemed to assume that readers had seen or read all the same ones she had. This made it difficult to follow her points or fully understand her references.
One essay in particular, "Only Mercy: Sex after Consent," stood out as especially awful. It was poorly written and unconvincing, failing to engage with the topic in any meaningful or insightful way. Overall, the book seemed like a feeble attempt at being philosophical, and it fell far short of the mark. It was one of the worst books I've ever read in terms of trying to explore deep ideas.
One essay in particular, "Only Mercy: Sex after Consent," stood out as especially awful. It was poorly written and unconvincing, failing to engage with the topic in any meaningful or insightful way. Overall, the book seemed like a feeble attempt at being philosophical, and it fell far short of the mark. It was one of the worst books I've ever read in terms of trying to explore deep ideas.
December 7, 2023
I took a chance in this book although normally I don’t read these types. However, I was sent a widget and plowed ahead.
I didn’t get much out of the book. I thought I might find some useful tips about declutterring because I have too many books and totes, but I quickly became lost in the author’s mishmash of titles and commentary.
Most of the references the author made I’d never heard before except for Kondo, who I have no,use for since she preaches limited books.
I’m sure this book might be helpful for some readers, but it wasn’t for me.
Thanks to Henry Holt and NetGalley for the early read.
I didn’t get much out of the book. I thought I might find some useful tips about declutterring because I have too many books and totes, but I quickly became lost in the author’s mishmash of titles and commentary.
Most of the references the author made I’d never heard before except for Kondo, who I have no,use for since she preaches limited books.
I’m sure this book might be helpful for some readers, but it wasn’t for me.
Thanks to Henry Holt and NetGalley for the early read.
August 19, 2024
Huge book for all my multitude containers out there
October 13, 2024
Loved the ripping into mindfulness
July 12, 2024
Despite Rothfield’s disdain for many of my faves, I loved so much of this. Especially the chapter on mindfulness and thinking. This felt like those arguments your parents have with their friends when they visit.
It was fast, punchy and ridiculously funny.
However there were some glaring blind spots that were made all the more obvious at her insistence on pointing them out in others. Namely race and racially inequity. This book is glaringly white in its art and referential content, of which there are so many; Very few are outside the scope of white western canon.
It was fast, punchy and ridiculously funny.
However there were some glaring blind spots that were made all the more obvious at her insistence on pointing them out in others. Namely race and racially inequity. This book is glaringly white in its art and referential content, of which there are so many; Very few are outside the scope of white western canon.
June 24, 2023
Even the book description is nonsensical.
December 6, 2023
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.
All Things are Too Small is a collection of essays written by cultural critic Becca Rothfeld. I’ve only stumbled on Rothfeld’s criticism recently, but found her thoughts on wunderkind author Sally Rooney, and her takes on gender, to name two essays, particularly interesting. I can’t say that I’ve read a lot of academic criticism, aside from articles in my English undergrad studies, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of it. Rothfeld’s writing strikes a great balance for me: well-written enough and complex enough to satisfy me with new ideas, while being mostly pretty comprehensible to anyone scared away from truly “academic� writing.
The marketing around ATaTS positions it as a collection of essays defending excess against the ascendant minimalist threat. This is what drew my attention to the book in the first place, since it’s an idea I’m fascinated by. In my college years I was caught up in the minimalism trend: the allure of ruthlessly culling my possessions until I could, at a moment’s notice, leave my boring American life behind to backpack around Europe was particularly gripping. What I wanted were not things, but experiences. I tried to meditate, to sort the clutter of my mind into something sleeker, cleaner. The popularity of Marie Kondo represents maybe the height of the minimalist victory, as many of us began to assess our possessions on whether or not they “sparked joy,� and eliminate (though not after saying a fond farewell to) those that didn’t make the cut.
The book’s first two essays, All Things are Too Small and More is More, are the ones that most directly deal with this idea. I found them to be some of the more thought-provoking essays in the book, though one of them centers on dissecting a particular kind of fragmented autofiction that is both critically popular in the literary fiction world today, and a kind of book I rarely - if ever - read. The core of her argument, and the one I found most compelling whenever it surfaced in other essays, is that minimalism focuses on eliminating everything that isn’t necessary to life, but that the joys of life, the things that make us human, are the things we don’t simply need, but the things we want. Rothfeld argues that art and beauty are generally “excessive,� and it’s these things that go beyond our bare subsistence that make life worth living.
But venture much further in the book, and it quickly becomes obvious that the “anti-minimalism� theme of the whole book is just marketing, an attempt to find something, anything, to tie these disparate essays together. In reality, the book finds Rothfeld blending sociological insight, classic auteur film, her own life’s narrative, and political ideology into a scattershot collection that varies in quality.
I enjoyed Normal Novels (the essay I’d already read comparing the work of Sally Rooney to, of all things, Fifty Shades of Grey), and The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy (looking at body horror and the erotic through the lens of auteur filmmaker David Cronenberg), while others like Other People’s Loves and Our True Entertainment Was Arguing are centered on pieces of fiction I either haven’t experience or have entirely forgotten, and thus didn’t get as much out of.
My favorite essays here are the ones most tied to the (marketed) central premise, such as the aforementioned first two, Wherever You Go, You Could Leave (a take-down of the mindfulness idea market that wasn't wholly convincing but was interesting), Murder on the Installment Plan (tracing the history of serialized stories through the mystery/crime novel, and my favorite, Only Mercy.
Only Mercy is an exploration of sex in the post #MeToo era, particularly framed around the idea of consent, and deliberately proposing a conception of sex and consent that differs from ideas popular among the post-liberal right (the sexual revolution has gone too far and women actually want stable, emotional, monogamous, child-bearing sex), and the left (our sexual desires are shaped by unequal cultural values, and though any adult can have any kind of sex they want with any other adult(s), it behooves us to try to change our desires to be more egalitarian).
Rothfeld diagnoses her two example approaches to sex as both failing to consider sex in its own right, as a thing people might do and enjoy regardless of its other meanings. To spoil her ultimate conclusion - Rothfeld views sex, and particularly kink, as play. In this way, she brings it back to the vaguely-overarching theory of the collection: play, like art, is not strictly necessary. You might say, it’s excessive, something done for its own sake, because it’s fun, because it’s enjoyable, because it makes life work living.
It’s not brought up at all in the essay, but for me, I couldn’t help carrying that conception of play to my favorite hobby and creative endeavor: running role-playing games for my friends. It’s a form of play that isn’t so different from imaginative make-believe on the playground, but one that takes our adult interests into consideration. Contemporary society doesn’t give adults much acceptable outlets for play; in many circles it even considers play to be incompatible with responsible, sober adulthood. For many people, it’s just sex, if they’re lucky, that feels this way.
For me, play is the ultimate end, a good in and of itself. If the world I want ever comes to pass, the egalitarian world where peoples� basic needs are met, what is left? Our wants. Our fun. Our play. Our pointless, excessive play.
Overall, this is an intriguing collection of criticism that I didn’t always agree with, or, frankly, understand, but whenever it kept closest to its vague central thesis of the importance of the excessive, the maximalist, the playful, it both challenged me and gave me new ways of thinking about the parts of life most important to me.
All Things are Too Small is a collection of essays written by cultural critic Becca Rothfeld. I’ve only stumbled on Rothfeld’s criticism recently, but found her thoughts on wunderkind author Sally Rooney, and her takes on gender, to name two essays, particularly interesting. I can’t say that I’ve read a lot of academic criticism, aside from articles in my English undergrad studies, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of it. Rothfeld’s writing strikes a great balance for me: well-written enough and complex enough to satisfy me with new ideas, while being mostly pretty comprehensible to anyone scared away from truly “academic� writing.
The marketing around ATaTS positions it as a collection of essays defending excess against the ascendant minimalist threat. This is what drew my attention to the book in the first place, since it’s an idea I’m fascinated by. In my college years I was caught up in the minimalism trend: the allure of ruthlessly culling my possessions until I could, at a moment’s notice, leave my boring American life behind to backpack around Europe was particularly gripping. What I wanted were not things, but experiences. I tried to meditate, to sort the clutter of my mind into something sleeker, cleaner. The popularity of Marie Kondo represents maybe the height of the minimalist victory, as many of us began to assess our possessions on whether or not they “sparked joy,� and eliminate (though not after saying a fond farewell to) those that didn’t make the cut.
The book’s first two essays, All Things are Too Small and More is More, are the ones that most directly deal with this idea. I found them to be some of the more thought-provoking essays in the book, though one of them centers on dissecting a particular kind of fragmented autofiction that is both critically popular in the literary fiction world today, and a kind of book I rarely - if ever - read. The core of her argument, and the one I found most compelling whenever it surfaced in other essays, is that minimalism focuses on eliminating everything that isn’t necessary to life, but that the joys of life, the things that make us human, are the things we don’t simply need, but the things we want. Rothfeld argues that art and beauty are generally “excessive,� and it’s these things that go beyond our bare subsistence that make life worth living.
But venture much further in the book, and it quickly becomes obvious that the “anti-minimalism� theme of the whole book is just marketing, an attempt to find something, anything, to tie these disparate essays together. In reality, the book finds Rothfeld blending sociological insight, classic auteur film, her own life’s narrative, and political ideology into a scattershot collection that varies in quality.
I enjoyed Normal Novels (the essay I’d already read comparing the work of Sally Rooney to, of all things, Fifty Shades of Grey), and The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy (looking at body horror and the erotic through the lens of auteur filmmaker David Cronenberg), while others like Other People’s Loves and Our True Entertainment Was Arguing are centered on pieces of fiction I either haven’t experience or have entirely forgotten, and thus didn’t get as much out of.
My favorite essays here are the ones most tied to the (marketed) central premise, such as the aforementioned first two, Wherever You Go, You Could Leave (a take-down of the mindfulness idea market that wasn't wholly convincing but was interesting), Murder on the Installment Plan (tracing the history of serialized stories through the mystery/crime novel, and my favorite, Only Mercy.
Only Mercy is an exploration of sex in the post #MeToo era, particularly framed around the idea of consent, and deliberately proposing a conception of sex and consent that differs from ideas popular among the post-liberal right (the sexual revolution has gone too far and women actually want stable, emotional, monogamous, child-bearing sex), and the left (our sexual desires are shaped by unequal cultural values, and though any adult can have any kind of sex they want with any other adult(s), it behooves us to try to change our desires to be more egalitarian).
Rothfeld diagnoses her two example approaches to sex as both failing to consider sex in its own right, as a thing people might do and enjoy regardless of its other meanings. To spoil her ultimate conclusion - Rothfeld views sex, and particularly kink, as play. In this way, she brings it back to the vaguely-overarching theory of the collection: play, like art, is not strictly necessary. You might say, it’s excessive, something done for its own sake, because it’s fun, because it’s enjoyable, because it makes life work living.
It’s not brought up at all in the essay, but for me, I couldn’t help carrying that conception of play to my favorite hobby and creative endeavor: running role-playing games for my friends. It’s a form of play that isn’t so different from imaginative make-believe on the playground, but one that takes our adult interests into consideration. Contemporary society doesn’t give adults much acceptable outlets for play; in many circles it even considers play to be incompatible with responsible, sober adulthood. For many people, it’s just sex, if they’re lucky, that feels this way.
For me, play is the ultimate end, a good in and of itself. If the world I want ever comes to pass, the egalitarian world where peoples� basic needs are met, what is left? Our wants. Our fun. Our play. Our pointless, excessive play.
Overall, this is an intriguing collection of criticism that I didn’t always agree with, or, frankly, understand, but whenever it kept closest to its vague central thesis of the importance of the excessive, the maximalist, the playful, it both challenged me and gave me new ways of thinking about the parts of life most important to me.
November 14, 2024
Moreso than any of the content of this book, the prose grates. I pray I never use so many obnoxious words in my own writing. Some of the essays were really good, some were meh.
Edit: Ok, so I read a positive review of this and I think I'm feeling a bit more positive about Rothfeld's overall vision and definitely sympathize with her distaste towards this contemporary trend of excising the material world of meaning. Doesn't change my opinion necessarily on the book as a whole being uneven, and yeah, not a fan of the writing style.
Edit: Ok, so I read a positive review of this and I think I'm feeling a bit more positive about Rothfeld's overall vision and definitely sympathize with her distaste towards this contemporary trend of excising the material world of meaning. Doesn't change my opinion necessarily on the book as a whole being uneven, and yeah, not a fan of the writing style.
December 8, 2024
Something about this author rubbed me the wrong way. When reading essays, the voice of the author is so important. Rothfeld’s voice was flat out annoying. In the essays I read she cherrypicked evidence, made many many many strawman arguments, drew specious conclusions and was generally inaccurate and illogical. Not someone I want to waste time on, reading their thoughts.
Hard pass.
Hard pass.
March 18, 2025
Ranty, overwritten essays attacking a series of barely connected straw men.
August 13, 2024
God, this sucked. It entirely failed to deliver on its promise. I came expecting thrilling cries to throw off the greige shackles of minimalism in favor of boundless hedonic joy. Instead I got a disjointed, spiteful series of essays tearing apart the work of Rothfeld’s more successful contemporaries.
The writing reeks of someone who scrolls Twitter all day, the sort of prickly, quotable, over-edited, preemptively defensive prose characteristic of that breed of ivory tower fart-sniffers who waste their ample brainpower lending intellectual cachet to dying old-media outlets primarily sustained by boomer clickbait, like the Atlantic and the Washington Post. Peppered throughout are stilted personal anecdotes (internet stalking, suicide attempts, stellar sex with the husband she’s not yet sick of) that fail to lend relatability and detract from the would-be academic tone. The Cronenberg essay was good! I’ll give her that. But by the end, I was playing the audiobook at 2x and looking forward to passing trains drowning it out.
If you’re going to put Bosch on your cover, tell me to eat an entire cheesecake, wear silk pajamas, shoot heroin, engage in orgies with strangers. Don’t whine about Sally Rooney and Marie Kondo selling a lot of books. I need a week-long bender to wash this one away.
The writing reeks of someone who scrolls Twitter all day, the sort of prickly, quotable, over-edited, preemptively defensive prose characteristic of that breed of ivory tower fart-sniffers who waste their ample brainpower lending intellectual cachet to dying old-media outlets primarily sustained by boomer clickbait, like the Atlantic and the Washington Post. Peppered throughout are stilted personal anecdotes (internet stalking, suicide attempts, stellar sex with the husband she’s not yet sick of) that fail to lend relatability and detract from the would-be academic tone. The Cronenberg essay was good! I’ll give her that. But by the end, I was playing the audiobook at 2x and looking forward to passing trains drowning it out.
If you’re going to put Bosch on your cover, tell me to eat an entire cheesecake, wear silk pajamas, shoot heroin, engage in orgies with strangers. Don’t whine about Sally Rooney and Marie Kondo selling a lot of books. I need a week-long bender to wash this one away.
June 5, 2024
Girl, the marketing for this collection lied several times. I'm all for being a perverse hater, but damn, at least make your arguments cogent, coherent, and cohesive.
Like, I don't have patience for pretentious navel gazing from the ivory tower. I especially don't have patience for ponderings that only offer surface level analysis of disparate topics barely strung together.Ìý Instead of thoughtful cultural criticism, we getÌýcontrarian hateration concerned with low hanging fruit.Ìý
Maybe leave the academy, and try touching grass? (Also arguing in favor of hierarchy, classism, and elitism is a fucking weird flex)
Like, I don't have patience for pretentious navel gazing from the ivory tower. I especially don't have patience for ponderings that only offer surface level analysis of disparate topics barely strung together.Ìý Instead of thoughtful cultural criticism, we getÌýcontrarian hateration concerned with low hanging fruit.Ìý
Maybe leave the academy, and try touching grass? (Also arguing in favor of hierarchy, classism, and elitism is a fucking weird flex)
September 18, 2024
Literary critic Becca Rothfeld argues against the modern inclination toward minimalism, and insteads advocates embracing all the messy and irrepressible things that make the human existence so rewarding.
I am this book's target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don't want the plain book cover, but the one underneath spilling over with art, honest overabundance over artificial order.
And Rothfeld makes that point through examining a variety of subjects, opining with refreshing forcefulness on topics as diverse as decluttering, Sally Rooney's novels, and the impossibility of truly knowing anyone outside the flesh. I did not always agree with her arguments, but even those were fun to engage with, to try on that point of view and chase it down throughout the essay.
My favorite essays were "Having a Cake and Eating It, Too," which is about the human hunger for beauty, and "Our True Entertainment Was Arguing," which explores the concept of equality in love through the medium of the Norman Rush novel , which I am now convinced I really ought to read.
If there's any downside to Rothfeld's philosophical bent, it's that sometimes she leans too esoteric, becomes lost in the weeds and blunt the point she's trying to make. I'm willing to muddle over convoluted phrasing and try to make sense of obscure allusions, but only to an extent. While the general gist of each essay was clear enough throughout, the paths she transverses to make them weren't always sensible, nor some of her assertions very convincing.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
I am this book's target audience, because like Rothfeld I wonder if in the process of streamlining our world we have reached an unpleasantly bland and bloodless zeitgeist. I enjoy colorful and unusual clothes and furniture. I find the aesthetic of minimalism boring. I love the over the top pulp literature of yesteryears. I don't want the plain book cover, but the one underneath spilling over with art, honest overabundance over artificial order.
And Rothfeld makes that point through examining a variety of subjects, opining with refreshing forcefulness on topics as diverse as decluttering, Sally Rooney's novels, and the impossibility of truly knowing anyone outside the flesh. I did not always agree with her arguments, but even those were fun to engage with, to try on that point of view and chase it down throughout the essay.
My favorite essays were "Having a Cake and Eating It, Too," which is about the human hunger for beauty, and "Our True Entertainment Was Arguing," which explores the concept of equality in love through the medium of the Norman Rush novel , which I am now convinced I really ought to read.
If there's any downside to Rothfeld's philosophical bent, it's that sometimes she leans too esoteric, becomes lost in the weeds and blunt the point she's trying to make. I'm willing to muddle over convoluted phrasing and try to make sense of obscure allusions, but only to an extent. While the general gist of each essay was clear enough throughout, the paths she transverses to make them weren't always sensible, nor some of her assertions very convincing.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
November 7, 2024
I absolutely loved this collection of essays. The premise of the title essay is what drew me in, with the jacket of the book asserting that she "confronts one of the most sacred dogmas of our time: the demand that we apply the virtues of equality and democracy to culture and aesthetics. The result is a culture that is flattened and sanitized, purged of ugliness, excess, and provocation." I was excited for someone to tackle this exact idea, to refute the profoundly anti-intellectual 'let people like things' brigade, and she did a wonderful job of breaking down what is wrong with this unfortunately popular mindset.
Then I moved on to the other essays and was delighted to find that they were all fascinating and well written. Other than the title essay my other two favorites were Only Mercy: Sex After Consent, which was an incredibly important parsing of sexual culture in the wake of Me Too, a must read honestly, and then the final essay ended up being my favorite I think. It is called Our True Entertainment Was Arguing and is about equal love, which according to the author should just be called simply love because nothing less is acceptable. Marriage is a bit of a bad word among some millenials I know, and I've often struggled to defend the concept even though my own marriage is the greatest source of comfort and happiness in my life, but if I'm ever again asked what is so great about marriage I'm going to refer people to this essay. When you find someone you want to argue with forever, someone you are always excited to talk to even though you spend most of your time with them, someone with whom, "a lifetime is not enough for all we have to tell each other." you realize you have something valuable beyond measure and couldn't imagine ever living without it again.
Then I moved on to the other essays and was delighted to find that they were all fascinating and well written. Other than the title essay my other two favorites were Only Mercy: Sex After Consent, which was an incredibly important parsing of sexual culture in the wake of Me Too, a must read honestly, and then the final essay ended up being my favorite I think. It is called Our True Entertainment Was Arguing and is about equal love, which according to the author should just be called simply love because nothing less is acceptable. Marriage is a bit of a bad word among some millenials I know, and I've often struggled to defend the concept even though my own marriage is the greatest source of comfort and happiness in my life, but if I'm ever again asked what is so great about marriage I'm going to refer people to this essay. When you find someone you want to argue with forever, someone you are always excited to talk to even though you spend most of your time with them, someone with whom, "a lifetime is not enough for all we have to tell each other." you realize you have something valuable beyond measure and couldn't imagine ever living without it again.
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February 6, 2025I was really intrigued by both the title and the blurb of this collection of essays. As a quasi-staunch hater of minimalism, I was excited for someone to go into detail and defend owning things. If that’s what you are looking for, this is not that book.
I will partially blame my difficulty with this essay collection on the fact that I was listening to the audiobook where the narrator didn’t do a great job of differentiating between the author’s own words and things that were being quoted as well as not reading out the titles of the essays. (They also only titled them as chapter 1, chapter 2, etc. in the track list. SUPER unhelpful.)
That being said, the author herself was much too wordy, patronizing, and pretentious. The excessive use of fancy language and written tone that pushed the assumption everything she was saying was the ‘correct� opinion made the essays both hard to follow and mostly unenjoyable to read.
I DNFed after 4 essays.
I will partially blame my difficulty with this essay collection on the fact that I was listening to the audiobook where the narrator didn’t do a great job of differentiating between the author’s own words and things that were being quoted as well as not reading out the titles of the essays. (They also only titled them as chapter 1, chapter 2, etc. in the track list. SUPER unhelpful.)
That being said, the author herself was much too wordy, patronizing, and pretentious. The excessive use of fancy language and written tone that pushed the assumption everything she was saying was the ‘correct� opinion made the essays both hard to follow and mostly unenjoyable to read.
I DNFed after 4 essays.
May 13, 2024
Please go buy this book. I found myself grinning, nodding, and occasionally pumping the air with my fist as I devoured these pages. Such a refreshing and exciting series of reflections- no, exaltations - about some of the most complex and important tenets of the good life. I can’t wait to read it again.
“No matter how viciously or vehemently we perceive it, art persists, and try as we might, we cannot consume it. We could scarcely lick the lines of poems we love. We read and recite writing without wearing out its eloquence. Art is nourishment that never spoils, that regenerates itself.� (p. 157, “Having a Cake and Eating it Too�)
“No matter how viciously or vehemently we perceive it, art persists, and try as we might, we cannot consume it. We could scarcely lick the lines of poems we love. We read and recite writing without wearing out its eloquence. Art is nourishment that never spoils, that regenerates itself.� (p. 157, “Having a Cake and Eating it Too�)
November 28, 2024
The essay on new wave puritans and sex was a *slog* to be honest, and I’m on her side of it. Don’t completely agree with her on Sally Rooney. Loved the essay on minimalism!! Bit of a mixed bag but definitely something in there for everyone.
June 6, 2024
My head nearly fell off from nodding along to this so much.
I don't have to "agree" with a nonfiction book to appreciate it, but it doesn't hurt. Though what really works here is that Rothfeld not only slays sacred cows, but also argues passionately for the things she wants instead: unrestrained, uncontrollable, larger-than-life ecstasy.
I don't have to "agree" with a nonfiction book to appreciate it, but it doesn't hurt. Though what really works here is that Rothfeld not only slays sacred cows, but also argues passionately for the things she wants instead: unrestrained, uncontrollable, larger-than-life ecstasy.
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