What If This Were Enough Essays

By the acclaimed critic, memoirist, and advice columnist, an impassioned collection tackling our obsession with self-improvement and urging readers to embrace the imperfections of the everyday.

Heather Havrilesky’s writing has been called “whip-smart and profanely funny” (Entertainment Weekly) and “required reading for all humans” (Celeste Ng). In her work for New York, The Baffler, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic, as well as in “Ask Polly,” her advice column for The Cut, she dispenses a singular, cutting wisdom — an ability to inspire, provoke, and put a name to our most insidious cultural delusions.

What If This Were Enough? is a mantra and a clarion call. In its chapters — many of them original to the book, others expanded from their initial publication — Havrilesky takes on those cultural forces that shape us. We’ve convinced ourselves, she says, that salvation can be delivered only in the form of new products, new technologies, new lifestyles. From the allure of materialism to our misunderstandings of romance and success, Havrilesky deconstructs some of the most poisonous and misleading messages we ingest today, all the while suggesting new ways to navigate our increasingly bewildering world.

Through her incisive and witty inquiries, Havrilesky urges us to reject the pursuit of a shiny, shallow future that will never come. These timely, provocative, and often hilarious essays suggest an embrace of the flawed, a connection with what already is, who we already are, what we already have. She asks us to consider: What if this were enough? Our salvation, Havrilesky says, can be found right here, right now, in this imperfect moment.

“Heather Havrilesky is a singular talent and an indomitable force. When it comes to the tension between thinking and feeling, of being out in the world and being alone with yourself, there is no one sharper, wiser, funnier, most honest, or more insightful. In What If This Were Enough, readers will find a splendid mix of Havrilesky’s familiar and intimate ‘Ask Polly’ voice and the authority and erudition of a seasoned cultural critic. I couldn’t get enough.” Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion

“There’s an effortlessness to Heather Havrilesky’s writing that is incredibly rare. Her funniest sentences are still empathetic. Her darkest confessions are still pretty funny. It doesn’t seem to matter what she’s writing about, or what point she’s trying to make. She’s just good at it.” Chuck Klosterman, author of But What If We’re Wrong? and Killing Yourself to Live

“Heather is that dear friend you run into at a bad party at which you’re stuck and you say ‘Oh thank God you’re here’ and spend the rest of the night making dark and hilarious jokes about the party, other attendees, and the human condition. Thank God she’s here.” Jake Tapper, author of The Hellfire Club and The Outpost

“[Havrilesky] wants Americans to ‘wake up to the unbelievable gift of being alive,’ even though it means facing… the scary emotions that are easier avoided. It’s a message she relates with insight, wit, and terrific prose.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Thoughtful, direct, and often funny, these essays are a lovely blend of personal reflection and cultural critique.” BookRiot

Heather Havrilesky is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness. She has written for New York magazine, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, The New Yorker, NPR’s All Things Considered, and several anthologies. She was a TV critic at Salon for seven years. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a loud assortment of dependents, most of them nondeductible.

I started work on this book of essays right after Trump was elected, so the theme of the book quickly went from “What’s wrong with our culture?” to the much more desperate “How did we land here?” and “How do we navigate this poisonous world?”...

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