This highly anticipated book by the Pulitzer Prize winning critic Andrea Long Chu asks one of
the most urgent questions of our time: what is authority when everyone has an opinion on
everything? 'A rigorous thinker armed with a killer turn of phrase ' Observer 'Her writing
is razor-sharp personal and vociferous in its proclamations but it's also fun - it's got
bite' New Statesman ' Fun reading ' Guardian ' A galaxy-brain-level thinker ' Torrey
Peters 'One of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today' Brandon Taylor '
Thrilling ... Authority reminds us we haven't yet felt all there is to feel ' Kaveh Akbar 'A
pure joy to read' Claire Dederer Since her canonical 2017 essay 'On Liking Women' the Pulitzer
Prize-winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as one of the most provocative
funny brilliant and stylish critics at work today. With devastating wit and polemical clarity
she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art instead modeling how the left might
brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers. Authority brings
together Chu's critical work across a wide range of media-novels television theater video
games-as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1 . As a critic
Chu places The Phantom of the Opera within a centuries-old conflict between music and drama
questions the enduring habit of reading Octavia Butler's science fiction as a parable of
slavery teases out the ideology behind Hillary Clinton's (fictional) sex life and charges
fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with a complacent humanism. The unifying
theme of the book is authority and taste in literature art culture and politics: how do we
decide what's good and how do we convince others that our judgement is correct?
