Synopses & Reviews
Review
"These fugitive essays by this popular radical journalist chronicle the development of a sensibility—-both personal and cultural. Willis views herself viewing the seventies, and her vision often helps us sharpen our own recollections. Especially when she writes about feminism and the family does she make the most sense, for these are her most urgent concerns. Her reflections on rock, her essays into popular culture, and her comic occasional pieces share in the passion behind her sensibility, but here her voice cracks, if only out of her desire to be a little too comfy with both the reader and the avant-garde. Those who follow Willis are familiar with the split; she regularly contributes to The New Yorker and the Village Voice. But when the stakes are high enough, her personality is strong enough. Her sixties' consciousness vigorously tests the substance of seventies' phenomena, as Willis does best in her memoir of a trip to Israel, the concluding piece in this often stimulating collection." Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)