The New Yorker critic examines the books that reveal and record our world in a new essay collection.
Joan Acocella Book order
Joan B. Acocella is an American journalist, serving as the dance and book critic for The New Yorker. Her work is distinguished by a profound understanding of the arts and an ability to get to the heart of her subject. Acocella analyzes contemporary dance and literary works with sharp intelligence and a refined style. Her critical essays explore not only aesthetic qualities but also the broader cultural and social contexts of artworks, offering readers insightful and enriching perspectives.
- 2024
- 2008
Here is a dazzling collection from Joan Acocella, one of our most admired cultural critics: thirty-one essays that consider the life and work of some of the most influential artists of our time (and two saints: Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene). Acocella writes about Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and chemist, who wrote the classic memoir, Survival in Auschwitz; M.F.K. Fisher who, numb with grief over her husband’s suicide, dictated the witty and classic How to Cook a Wolf; and many other subjects, including Dorothy Parker, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Saul Bellow. Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints is indispensable reading on the making of art—and the courage, perseverance, and, sometimes, dumb luck that it requires.
- 2002
Defending Willa Cather against historical and critical distortions, the author argues that Cather's central vision was a tragic vision of the human condition rather than a firm political agenda.