Critical list
Explore our Critical List of must-read books—essential titles handpicked for insightful critiques and in-depth analysis. Discover your next thought-provoking read today.
Book
Zeroville
by Steve Erickson
First edition of Erickson's phantasmagorical meditation on the power of cinema. In Zeroville (optioned by James Franco in 2011), Vikar becomes a film editor, the job he always wanted, but but the drugs, music, and sexuality, may be more than he can handle.
Book
Love and Death in the American Novel
by Leslie A. Fiedler
"No other study of the American novel has such fascinating and on the whole right things to say." Washington Post
Book
Orwell: Essays
by George Orwell
A generous and varied selection–the only hardcover edition available–of the literary and political writings of one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century. Although best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell left an even more lastingly significant achievement in his voluminous essays, which dealt with all the great social, political, and literary questions of the day and exemplified an incisive prose style that is still universally admired. Included among the more than 240 essays in this volume are Orwell’s famous discussion of pacifism, “My Country Right or Left”; his scathingly complicated views on the dirty work of imperialism in “Shooting an Elephant”; and his very firm opinion on how to make “A Nice Cup of Tea.” In his essays, Orwell elevated political writing to the level of art, and his motivating ideas–his desire for social justice, his belief in universal freedom and equality, and his concern for truth in language–are as enduringly relevant now, a hundred years after his birth, as ever.
