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kimberlyf's review
4.0
“I remember which side, verso or recto, my favorite parts appeared on, how deep in the book, how far down the page. A book always feels like a place I’ve been to.”
I love literature about literature and these essays are just that; essays that center around the love of reading and writing and they weren’t quite what I was expecting. Many of the first essays in this collection turned out to be a literary analysis of classic works of fiction such as Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, the work of Proust, and a lot about Plath’s work. While I found some interesting, I mostly found myself drifting—forcing my way through—during the writing about classical works that I either didn’t care about or haven’t read so couldn’t relate. The back 2/3 of this collection are what really made it for me. The essays were reflective, personal, and bright. The essay on journaling, Second Selves, and the one on loneliness and isolation, Complicated Energy, were my most favorites here.
An added, wonderful perk was the variety of books listed throughout the essays which helped me expand my “want to read” list.
While at their core these essays are about reading and writing, they also include musings on libraries, the pandemic, having autonomy over the art you consume, memory, dreams, isolation, feeling one’s own specialness (or lack of), a loss of childhood, and more.
Thank you, NetGalley, for my digital copy. Out 06/11/2024!
I love literature about literature and these essays are just that; essays that center around the love of reading and writing and they weren’t quite what I was expecting. Many of the first essays in this collection turned out to be a literary analysis of classic works of fiction such as Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, the work of Proust, and a lot about Plath’s work. While I found some interesting, I mostly found myself drifting—forcing my way through—during the writing about classical works that I either didn’t care about or haven’t read so couldn’t relate. The back 2/3 of this collection are what really made it for me. The essays were reflective, personal, and bright. The essay on journaling, Second Selves, and the one on loneliness and isolation, Complicated Energy, were my most favorites here.
An added, wonderful perk was the variety of books listed throughout the essays which helped me expand my “want to read” list.
While at their core these essays are about reading and writing, they also include musings on libraries, the pandemic, having autonomy over the art you consume, memory, dreams, isolation, feeling one’s own specialness (or lack of), a loss of childhood, and more.
Thank you, NetGalley, for my digital copy. Out 06/11/2024!
torrinnelson's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.5
Elisa Gabbert is back with another perfect essay collection. What could be better than a writer writing about writers and books? Although the essays stand alone, each one seems to thread together a narrative of Elisa herself as she relocates and gropes for comfort and solace during the chaos of recent years. In a way, this is a comfort read until a sentence suddenly strikes.
casskrug's review
3.5
this was an enjoyable essay collection to read before bed, but it did leave me wanting just a little bit more of gabbert’s own experience and personality to shine through. while i appreciated her ability to weave together so many different sources in these essays on reading and writing, at times i felt overwhelmed by all the back to back quotations of other work. i really enjoyed and related to the passages where gabbert was expounding on her personal experiences with books throughout her life and especially throughout the pandemic, but her opinions felt overshadowed by the bibliography at times. my favorite pieces were the handful centering sylvia plath, and “second selves” which talked about people with highly superior autobiographical memory. overall a fun ride but not an all time favorite. thank you to FSG and netgalley for the digital galley of this!
dykereader's review
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
3.0
one of my first introduction to essay collections, and a good place to start!! on the whole, many essays were thought provoking and ignited my curiosity on completely obscure but interesting topics, the essay on the woman who remembers everything was so original and fascinating in particular. i loved the overarching themes of literature, self and isolation, her reflections throughout this collection were compelling to read and i loved being able to see how Gabbert’s mind works. at times, i did feel lost with the many cultural references, and it felt like i was being given more of a summary rather than an essay, but overall the majority of these were a joy to read!
thank u to NetGalley for the eArc !
thank u to NetGalley for the eArc !
brice_mo's review
4.0
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for the ARC!
I’ve been thinking recently about what constitutes good writing, and I’ve settled on the idea that—more than anything else—it is an effective curatorial impulse. It is knowing what shouldn’t be shared so that the reader can better appreciate what is shared.
This idea was on my mind while reading Elisa Gabbert’s exemplary Any Person is the Only Self, a collection of intersecting essays with reading and writing at their center. On the surface, these pieces first present themselves as Sontag-like cultural criticism, but they quickly and excitedly drop even the possibility of pretense, instead offering readers something more inviting and celebratory.
The collection’s voice falls somewhere between a conservationist explicating an ecosystem of great writing and a curator explaining why it’s beautiful. Gabbert isn’t offering only aesthetic or intellectual appreciation, though—she’s offering kinship. Although these essays cover a range of topics and themes, they repeatedly bring the same writers into conversation, and Gabbert situates both herself and the reader in the center of the discussion. Somehow, this feat is accomplished without ego, and I was struck by how generously the author works to invite everyone into the essays. Even if some readers might not have a robust cultural or literary knowledge, it doesn’t matter—Gabbert does all the legwork necessary for someone to participate in the conversation without feeling like an imposter.
If it seems odd that I’m dwelling on the structure and tone of the book more than its content, it’s because the content almost seems less relevant. There are great insights here, and I expected nothing less after reading Gabbert’s Normal Distance, but I feel like the book exists primarily for the reader to evaluate their own relationship to literacy. The author removes attention from herself as much as possible, creating space for reflection without didacticism.
I don't have any critiques per se, but I’m not quite sure the book is as unified in its focus on the self as the title would lead one to believe. Maybe that’s just it, though—selves are scrappy and sprawling. These essays don’t need to coalesce as much as they need to complicate. They are intended to open discussions instead of end them, and they are designed to help even the least literary amongst us find ourselves alongside literary greats.
A prime example of this is the essay, “A Complicating Energy.” In this piece, Gabbert shares about authors who struggled with anxiety and depression and their relationship to art, including the distance between the performed self and the actual self. I found it incredibly resonant, and it seems to summarize the book’s guiding impulse—sometimes we don’t need complicated feelings resolved; we just need to know they are shared.
I’ve been thinking recently about what constitutes good writing, and I’ve settled on the idea that—more than anything else—it is an effective curatorial impulse. It is knowing what shouldn’t be shared so that the reader can better appreciate what is shared.
This idea was on my mind while reading Elisa Gabbert’s exemplary Any Person is the Only Self, a collection of intersecting essays with reading and writing at their center. On the surface, these pieces first present themselves as Sontag-like cultural criticism, but they quickly and excitedly drop even the possibility of pretense, instead offering readers something more inviting and celebratory.
The collection’s voice falls somewhere between a conservationist explicating an ecosystem of great writing and a curator explaining why it’s beautiful. Gabbert isn’t offering only aesthetic or intellectual appreciation, though—she’s offering kinship. Although these essays cover a range of topics and themes, they repeatedly bring the same writers into conversation, and Gabbert situates both herself and the reader in the center of the discussion. Somehow, this feat is accomplished without ego, and I was struck by how generously the author works to invite everyone into the essays. Even if some readers might not have a robust cultural or literary knowledge, it doesn’t matter—Gabbert does all the legwork necessary for someone to participate in the conversation without feeling like an imposter.
If it seems odd that I’m dwelling on the structure and tone of the book more than its content, it’s because the content almost seems less relevant. There are great insights here, and I expected nothing less after reading Gabbert’s Normal Distance, but I feel like the book exists primarily for the reader to evaluate their own relationship to literacy. The author removes attention from herself as much as possible, creating space for reflection without didacticism.
I don't have any critiques per se, but I’m not quite sure the book is as unified in its focus on the self as the title would lead one to believe. Maybe that’s just it, though—selves are scrappy and sprawling. These essays don’t need to coalesce as much as they need to complicate. They are intended to open discussions instead of end them, and they are designed to help even the least literary amongst us find ourselves alongside literary greats.
A prime example of this is the essay, “A Complicating Energy.” In this piece, Gabbert shares about authors who struggled with anxiety and depression and their relationship to art, including the distance between the performed self and the actual self. I found it incredibly resonant, and it seems to summarize the book’s guiding impulse—sometimes we don’t need complicated feelings resolved; we just need to know they are shared.
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