All Things Are Too Small
Essays in Praise of Excess
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
'I loved her ruthless, impatient thinking, her ferocious attention' Adam Thirlwell, New Statesman Books of the Year 2025
From one of the most talented young thinkers in the US, a warm, funny and intellectually dazzling call for excess, ecstasy and disorder in an age of sterility and minimalism
TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024
NEW YORK TIMES' 100 MOST NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2024
PROSPECT BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2024
'Scintillating writing of breadth and power' Observer
'Seriously precise and very funny' Telegraph
'A radical and important book' James Wood
Our culture's embrace of minimalism and uniformity has left our souls impoverished. Decluttering has reduced our living spaces to empty non-places; the mindfulness trend has emptied our minds of the thoughts that make us who we are; and the regularization of sex has drained it of unpredictability and therefore true eroticism.
In an age of oppressive sterility and limitation, All Things Are Too Small is a refreshing and much-needed tonic: a soul cry for derangement, imbalance, obsession, ravishment and disorder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Washington Post book critic Rothfeld's erudite debut collection muses on the merits of indulgence. In "More Is More," Rothfeld likens the spare storytelling in "fragment novels" by such authors as Kate Zambreno and Jenny Offill to the decluttering ethos espoused by Marie Kondo, critiquing both for prioritizing utility over sentimentality. Individuality, she suggests, is achieved through the accumulation of things (friends, fears, and phobias, for instance) one doesn't need. "Wherever You Go, You Could Leave" derides the recent mindfulness vogue and contends that though some people might find the mental exercises soothing, the movement's emphasis on tranquility and acceptance serves to divert attention from the material inequalities and unjust labor conditions that stress people out in the first place. Elsewhere, the author pushes back against a recent spate of books decrying the "rough, casual, and extramarital sex that the sexual revolution legitimated" and posits that the ostensibly restrained films of French director Éric Rohmer "trade in unfamiliar forms of exaltation," brimming with tenderness rather than overt sexuality. Rothfeld has a knack for aphorism ("There is nothing more foreign to justice than love"), and it's an absolute pleasure to watch her idiosyncratic arguments unfold. This is a triumph.
