HILTON ALS—White Girls—HC 1st Ed—"Made Me Question Nearly Everything"

Description: • For your consideration: • A First-Edition Hardcover (without Dust Jacket) of: • “WHITE GIRLS” (McSweeney’s, 2014) • BY HILTON ALS • “It’s hard to know what to say about WHITE GIRLS, by HILTON ALS. These essays defy categorization. They are unwieldy, and meandering and as self-indulgent as they are intriguing…. As a whole, the book is an interrogation of blackness and white womanhood. The prose is both intelligent and inscrutable. The essay GONE WITH THE WIND is a masterpiece. This was a book I hated as much as I loved it for the incisive cultural criticism that has made me question nearly everything.” —ROXANE GAY, THE NATION • “HILTON ALS’s WHITE GIRLS gave me a gift very few books do: of hearing a voice that’s new, that comes as if from a different room. A nonsensical thing to say in one sense: he’s been writing brilliantly and visibly for almost 20 years. But there’s something about the work in this book. It's a leap forward not merely for ALS as a writer but for the peculiar American genre of culture-crit-as-autobiography. Its bravery lies in a set refusal to allow itself all sorts of illusions—about race, about sex, about American art—and the subtlety of its thinking is wedded maypole-fashion to a real confessional lyricism. In the way ANTHONY HEILBUT’s recent FAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH taught me that I and everyone else I knew had a lot of black gay man in us, ALS taught me that I have a lot of white girl in me, too, and so does he. And so do you, is where it gets interesting. If you think that sounds like another blurb-job or post-postmodern twaddle, I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged.” —JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN • “We all have a little white girl inside us, some of us more than others. That might sound like a joke, but NEW YORKER critic HILTON ALS will make you believe it’s true. He begins his captivating new book, WHITE GIRLS, by examining the role white girls played in his life as a gay black man living in New York during the early years of AIDS. Then, in a series of essays, he claims that a diverse range of historical figures—RICHARD PRYOR, MALCOLM X, MICHAEL JACKSON, even actual white women like FLANNERY O’CONNOR— were shaped by their relationships or identification with white girls. There’s no overarching manifesto: ‘White girlness’ isn’t presented as good or bad; it means something different to each of his subjects. But his theories are so original they’ll make you think differently about race and gender whether you’re a white girl or not.” —MELISSA MAERZ, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • “As cogent as ALS’s analyses of luminaries are—whether of the stage, the page (FLANNERY O’CONNOR, TRUMAN CAPOTE), or fashion (ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY)—the writing itself stands as the most spectacular performance…. In this destabilizing, exhilarating blur of fact and fiction, ALS assumes the place of the performers he extols, making a habit of not only disjunction but also brilliant lunacy.” ––MELISSA ANDERSON, BOOKFORUM • “It is ALS’ first book since THE WOMEN came out more than 15 years ago, and if you don’t think this is momentous, think again. A staff writer for THE NEW YORKER who also contributes to THE BELIEVER and the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, ALS is one of the most consistently unpredictable and surprising essayists out there, an author who confounds our expectations virtually every time he writes.” —DAVID ULIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES • “With roots in Barbados and Brooklyn and a deep immersion in the endless identity issues attendant upon being a gay man of color, bold, versatile critic and NEW YORKER staff writer ALS continues the inquiry he launched in his first book, THE WOMEN (1996). Here’s a clue to the layered and spiked complexities of this essay collection: one of the ‘white girls’ ALS portrays is TRUMAN CAPOTE, another is MICHAEL JACKSON as well as FLANNERY O’CONNOR and silent film star LOUISE BROOKS. JENNIFER LEE, RICHARD PRYOR’s widow, appears in ALS’ bristling portrait of the brilliant performer. He also portrays with fresh insight MARSHALL MATHERS III, that is, EMINEM. ALS is pyrotechnic, lifting off the page in a blast of stinging light and concussive booms that somehow coalesce into profound cultural and psychological illuminations…. Whether his subject is his mother, himself, or seminal artists, ALS is a fine, piercing observer and interpreter, a writer of lashing exactitude and veracity.” —DONNA SEAMAN, BOOKLIST • “The best essays here—on O’CONNOR, lynching, PRYOR, GONE WITH THE WIND, EMINEM, MICHAEL JACKSON—belong to that American critical tradition whose ambit is ‘the complexity inherent in imagining what despair means to someone else and how that despair may shape arrogance,’ and the sad truth that being American has too often meant the exclusion of that complexity. It’s a tradition that includes RALPH WALDO EMERSON, WILLIAM JAMES, O’CONNOR, JAMES BALDWIN, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., EDMUND WILSON, JOHN MCPHEE, MARILYNNE ROBINSON, JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN. The ‘best books of the year’ fall away; this book will change you.”—MICHAEL ROBBINS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE • “ALS interweaves personal revelation with cultural touchstones, sometimes hopping from topic to topic at a breakneck speed, other times examining concepts so strategically and methodically his words become scalpels, flaying open unacknowledged bias, privilege, and conflict where he sees it.” —ANDREA BATTLEGROUND, THE A.V. CLUB • “HILTON ALS takes the reader on a wild ride through the complex, often rough, terrain of art, music, sexuality, race. What he writes—especially about MICHAEL JACKSON, EMINEM, LOUISE BROOKS, RICHARD PRYOR, GONE WITH THE WIND—is riveting.” —ELAINE PAGELS • “A comprehensive and utterly lovely collection of one of the best writers around.” —EUGENIA WILLIAMSON, BOSTON GLOBE • “I read ALS not only because he is utterly extraordinary, which he is, but for the reason one is often drawn to the best writers—because one has a sense that one's life might depend on them. WHITE GIRLS is a book, a dream, an enemy, a friend, and, yes, the read of the year.” —JUNOT DÍAZ • “WHITE GIRLS is more than just a collection of essays on race and sexuality. It’s more than ‘just’ cultural and literary criticism. It’s a volume of fine, albeit confusing, writing by a man who refuses to be boxed in to by any one genre.” —SHYAM K. SRIAM, POPMATTERS • “Only ALS…could write about ringworm—‘my cruddy friend,’ ‘a dark flower,’ ‘an erotic “pain” I could not wait to get my hands on’—and make it sound good. His first book since 1998 contains 13 pieces, most of them previously published, in which he meanders through fiction, criticism, and memoir along the axes of race, gender, and sexuality. He touches on aspects of his own life and on various cultural figures…. On writing about pictures of lynching victims, he admits, ‘I have become a cliché by answering white America’s request to “Tell me about yourself, meaning, Tell me how you’ve suffered. Isn’t that what you people do? Suffer nobly, even poetically sometimes? Doesn’t suffering define you?”’ VERDICT: Suffering does not define ALS; his art—loping, loopy, yet astonishingly precise language—does. This is a book that readers will want to spend the rest of their lives with: a searching, insistent, and thoroughly wise collection.” —MOLLY MCARDLE, LIBRARY JOURNAL (STARRED REVIEW) • “[ALS] deconstructs traditional hierarchies of American identity and creates kaleidoscopic portraits of these artists, and of himself.” —RACHEL ARONS, THE NEW YORKER • “Cultural critic HILTON ALS might have written the essay collection of the year with this month’s WHITE GIRLS (McSweeney’s), if indeed it were merely a book of essays. Instead, each piece explores so many genres—melding fiction with fact, the deeply personal to the staid journalistic profile—that ALS isn’t so much playing multiples chords at once as multiple pianos…. ALS has created a work of art.” —CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN, INTERVIEW MAGAZINE • “We don’t use the word palimpsest much anymore. It was a favored word back in the 1920s among poets and other cognoscenti of the literary, whether in Paris or in the Harlem Renaissance. That’s what HILTON ALS’s declarative, swooning, kiss-my-ass, stream-of-consciousness collection of essays is, however: a palimpsest…. Palimpsest is the coolest form of subtext and ALS is the coolest form of essayist—the kind who lures the reader in with an almost breezy, entre nous, let-me-tell-you-a-story segue and then 90-odd pages later you come smack up against the end and go: Wait—let me think about that ending for a minute or a day or forever…. Everything ALS is saying is a vivid, bright truth.” —VICTORIA BROWNWORTH, LAMBDA LITERARY • “Any worthy reading of race and gender must cut to the core—to their deep attachments and vernacular…. His resulting critique of whiteness is effortless, honest and fearless. He doesn’t afford whites any unwitting reverence, nor any hip, posturing disdain. Some of his remarks on race and sexuality—so original and mordant—may offend the mullahs of pious multicultural liberalism (and will certainly offend conservatives). ALS floats outside political and cultural orthodoxies, and this independence, this integrity, gives WHITE GIRLS much of its charm.” ––RICH BENJAMIN, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “ALS’ work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It’s about being human.” —KIRKUS (STARRED REVIEW) • “Mesmerizing.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW) • “Nothing short of masterful.” —HTML GIANT • “ALS is a literary showman, and WHITE GIRLS is a masterful routine.” —NICK RIPATRAZONE, THE MILLIONS • “[ALS] is a poet on the page, and his insistence on breaking the essay form defines his liberation as a writer.” —THE RUMPUS • “Exhilarating…audacious.” —JAN STUART, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE • “ALS has a serious claim to be regarded as the next JAMES BALDWIN.” —ALEXANDER LARMAN, THE OBSERVER (UK) • “[HILTON ALS] is above all a writer fascinated by people: their little habits and turns of phrase, their multi-layered sexualities, and their unfathomable relationships to each other or, in the case of his famous subjects, to the world.” —UTNE • “MR. ALS is a national treasure.” —NEW YORK OBSERVER•• For other details, please see below. • TITLE: “WHITE GIRLS” AUTHOR: HILTON ALS TYPE: HARDCOVER PAGES: 338 PUBLISHER, LOCALE, & YEAR: McSweeney’s (San Francisco, CA), 2013 ISBN: 978-1-936365-81-4 EDITION: First Edition, First Printing* *Re: On the Copyright Page, no later printings are listed. EDITION NOTE: This copy is NEITHER Ex-Library NOR a Book Club Edition. CONDITION of BOARDS (NO DUST JACKET): VERY GOOD.Book is square. Boards are clean except for a few light smudges near the letter “E” in “WHITE” on the front & on the back. Corners are sharp. Spine tips are faintly crumpled. CONDITION of BOOK ITSELF: VERY GOOD PLUS.Spine is tight. Text-block edges are close to fine but there’s a v. faint smudge on top & fore edges. Endpapers are fine. Pages are bright & clean (with no marks, etc.). Looks unread. SHIPPING NEWS: This book will be wrapped with care before being shipped in a cushioned & sturdy box. 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Price: 29.99 USD

Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-08-17T22:30:17.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5.75 USD