"A series of co-written essays that set into motion expansive, mutinous, timely concepts, such as study, debt, surround, planning and the shipped. A difficult, beautiful, vertiginous, fortifying and enlivening piece of work that somehow makes the contemporary world, with all its horrors, seem worth being born into and living in, together."

"A fantastic introduction to one of the greatest authors ever. This 1997 collection of essays is one of Wallace’s best works. I can confidently say that the title essay is the single funniest thing I have ever read on paper. I can also confidently say … no one will ever write the way he did."

"Nabokov’s essays on Russian literature are brilliantly funny and iconoclastic. He loves Gogol and hates Dostoyevsky and accuses him of being like the worst kind of sensationalist, journalistic hack. “Dostoyevsky is not a great writer, but a rather mediocre one—with flashes of excellent humor, but, alas, with wastelands of literary platitudes in between.”"

"Emily Nussbaum is my very favorite television critic, and this collection of her work is so much fun. Over the years, she’s written incredibly insightful pieces about juggernauts like The Sopranos and Sex and the City, but she also has terrific essays here about less obvious shows like Vanderpump Rules and Jane the Virgin."

"I’ve been reading and re-reading the various essays in this book for 20 years with only a fleeting understanding of the Informe. The book pays homage to George Bataille’s term, meant to suggest that the 20th century breaks down the historical and potential monumentality of the form to plasticity… or something like that."