Two new book reviews (that I wrote)!
Ed Park's novel, "Same Bed Different Dreams" and Arlie Russell Hochschild's study of white working-class conservatives in Eastern Kentucky
I wrote about two books, one of which was published late last year and the other is just out this week.
The not-as-new book is Ed Park’s novel Same Bed Different Dreams, which is hard to describe but (I thought) easy to enjoy. I wrote an essay about it for Notre Dame Magazine’s “What I’m Reading” column. This is not a traditional book review, but more of an essay about how the book came into my life this spring and what it got me thinking about. As you’ll see, the book got me thinking about conspiracy theories, alternate histories, and my (and Park’s) beloved Buffalo Sabres hockey team.1
I hope you’ll read the essay. There is no paywall.
The brand-new book is the great sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, which I reviewed for the Washington Post. Hochschild is great,2 but I didn’t think the book was great. Still, I think there’s much value in what she did to research it: interviewing dozens of conservatives in one of the poorest and whitest Congressional districts in the country, in Eastern Kentucky.
Writing a review for the Post’s Book World is a small dream come true for me. I was a longtime print subscriber to the Post and loved the Sunday books section, home to the critics Jonathan Yardley, Michael Dirda (still there), and Jennifer Howard. It’s an honor to contribute to this section! Here again is the review, which requires a subscription.
Writing reviews and essays like these, by the way, is my main work. It’s where I put in the most effort (because I’m being paid for it) and where have the help of editors who always make my writing better. I’m grateful to all who read this work.
More new writing is on the way. And I may have a longer Substack post for you in a couple weeks. Thanks for reading.
I know, I know, hockey is weird and foreign, popular in dubious locales like Flin Flon, Chicoutimi, and Stockholm. I apologize for having written about it. (Thank goodness hardly anyone does.) If only I had grown up playing a nice, normal American sport like soccer!
I wrote about her groundbreaking concept of emotional labot in an essay for The Hedgehog Review last year.