By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, June 2, 2017 As a child, Leonora Carrington — painter, fabulist, incorrigible eccentric — developed the disconcerting ability to write backward with her left hand while writing forward with her right. This trick did not go over well with English convent school nuns.
Category Archives: Essays and Profiles
Click Bait: On Diane Arbus
By Parul Sehgal, Bookforum, June 1, 2017 For years a rumor circulated that she’d set up a camera to record her suicide, to shoot her as she lay, “crunched up” in her bathtub, in the medical examiner’s words, wrists sliced to the tendons. Fear was part of what Arbus was seeking, even if she didn’tContinue reading “Click Bait: On Diane Arbus”
A Great Indian Novel Reaches American Shores
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, April 6, 2017 This spiny, scary story of moral decline, crisply plotted and no thicker than my thumb, has been heralded as the finest Indian novel in a decade. Read more here
On Virginie Despentes
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, June 30, 2016
The Forced Heroism of the ‘Survivor’
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, May 5, 2016 FOR MOST OF her life, Virginia Woolf suffered from what she called “looking-glass shame,” an aversion to seeing herself in mirrors. She wrote about it late in her career, not long before her suicide, recalling that the trouble began with one particular mirror. ItContinue reading “The Forced Heroism of the ‘Survivor’”
Ways of Being: New Immigrant Fiction
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, March 10, 2016 Rushdie wrote that the migrant had to discover new ways to be human. These books recognize what a task that is; they recognize that migration can be, for some, an almost posthumous existence, that it awakens not only the desire to succeed butContinue reading “Ways of Being: New Immigrant Fiction”
Fighting ‘Erasure’
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2, 2016 EFFORTS TO FORCE collective amnesia are as old as conquest. The Roman decree damnatio memoriae — ‘‘condemnation of memory’’ — punished individuals by destroying every trace of them from the city, down to chiseling faces off statues. It was considered a fate worse than execution.Continue reading “Fighting ‘Erasure’”
The Profound Emptiness of “Resilience”
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine, Dec. 1, 2015 In 2015, the Department of Education reported 146 cases of racial harassment on campuses, although studies suggest that only 13 percent of racial incidents are reported. By playing down the racism that the students have faced, it’s easier to frame the protests as tantrums,Continue reading “The Profound Emptiness of “Resilience””
What Muriel Spark Saw
Parul Sehgal, New Yorker.com, April 8, 2014 She loved lightning. It wasn’t her favorite weapon—fire was, or knives. But lightning has a brutal, beautiful efficiency, and she used it to good effect, once frying alive a pair of lovers. Lightning seemed to seek her out, too. It struck her houses repeatedly, and on oneContinue reading “What Muriel Spark Saw”
Writers and the Women They Worship
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times April 17, 2013 These three delightfully deranging books offer alternatives to your staid biographies. They’re a bit dangerous, a bit rude — free from the tyranny of good taste. The authors, first-rate obsessives, riff on the women who’ve consumed them — bearing out Frank Bidart’s line, “What youContinue reading “Writers and the Women They Worship”
Parul Sehgal 