Nobody's Looking At You

Janet Malcolm{u2019}s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was g2sunmistakably ... (more)

Janet Malcolm{u2019}s previous collection, Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, was g2sunmistakably the work of a masterg3s (The New York Times Book Review). Like Forty-One False Starts, Nobody{u2019}s Looking at You brings together previously uncompiled pieces, mainly from The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. The title piece of this wonderfully eclectic collection is a profile of the fashion designer Eileen Fisher, whose mother often said to her, g2sNobody{u2019}s looking at you.g3s But in every piece in this volume, Malcolm looks closely and with impunity at a broad range of subjects, from Donald Trump{u2019}s TV nemesis Rachel Maddow, to the stiletto-heel-wearing pianist Yuju Wang, to g2sthe big-league gameg3s of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In an essay called g2sSocks,g3s the Pevears are seen as the g2ssort of asteroid [that] has hit the safe world of Russian Literature in English translation,g3s and in g2sDreams and Anna Karenina,g3s the focus is Tolstoy, g2sone of literature{u2019}s greatest masters of manipulative techniques.g3s Nobody{u2019}s Looking at You concludes with g2sPandora{u2019}s Click,g3s a brief, cautionary piece about e-mail etiquette that was written in the early two thousands, and that reverberates{u2015}albeit painfully{u2015}to this day. (less)

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