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Things Are Against Us
“There are three forms of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labor strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two.”
Lucy Ellmann’s essay collection is on the way. The essays explore a variety of topics and key figures including feminism, environmental catastrophe, labour strikes, sex strikes, Little House On The Prairie, Donald Trump, Alfred Hitchcock and Virginia Woolf.
222 pages, Hardcover
First published July 2, 2021
46 people are currently reading
1092 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Ellmann
18 books391 followersLucy Ellmann was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of biographer Richard Ellmann and writer Mary Ellmann (née Donahue). She moved to England at the age of 13 and was educated at Falmouth School of Art (Foundation degree, 1975), Essex University (BA, 1980), and the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA, 1981).
Her highly-praised autobiographical first novel, Sweet Desserts, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize. Both her second book, Varying Degrees of Hoplessness, and her third, Man or Mango?, were shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, while her fourth, Dot in the Universe, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Believer Book Award.
Lucy Ellmann is a regular contributor of articles on art and fiction to Artforum, Modern Painters, the Guardian, the Listener, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also a screenwriter and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 1992.
Her highly-praised autobiographical first novel, Sweet Desserts, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize. Both her second book, Varying Degrees of Hoplessness, and her third, Man or Mango?, were shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, while her fourth, Dot in the Universe, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Believer Book Award.
Lucy Ellmann is a regular contributor of articles on art and fiction to Artforum, Modern Painters, the Guardian, the Listener, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also a screenwriter and was a Hawthornden Fellow in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
February 17, 2025
While listening to the 1st chapter of this essay collection I read a blog post where this guy was offended by an essay in tweets created by Ellman for the book launch. He called her racist because she says something about The chinese lab made virus. Ha, he got offended only from such a little thing? Obviously, that person did not read this essay collection although he said he loved Ducks.
I read many reviews praising Ducks… but I did not have the courage to even add it to my list. While I love stream of consciousness, the repetition of “the fact that “ and the length of the book kept me away. When I started to read positive reviews of this smaller essay collection I decided to see for myslef myself what the fuss is about.
Damn, Lucy Ellman is one angry woman. She hates most THINGS and people, the whole book is a collection of complains and criticism. I LOVED the 1st essay, Things are Against Us, and I laughed many times while reading the 2nd and the 3rd one but from The essay called The Three Strikes I started to lose interest. I continued to listen and I got moments of brilliance and humor, but the general impression was that it was too much negativity and hate, no matter how funny some parts were. The radical feminist essays were the worst, many of the ideas were outright ridiculous. I am saying this as a feminist but men were made to come out as responsible for all the bad things in the world. While I totally agree they are responsible for Wars, for example, women are not innocent bystanders when it comes to other catastrophes.
I also had to admit that I was offended directly by the author. It’s fine, I am a strong believer in the freedom to express one’s opinion but I cannot ignore the fact that she attacked my believes and pleasures. She has one big essay in which she criticizes travelers, at one point saying that people who love to travel must have a very lousy life at home. I am an avid traveler, and horror, I am the kind of person she hates who loves airports and flying. Also, I read genre fiction and she has strong opinions against that kind of literature. The list goes on.
I liked some of her essays, I thought she was funny sometimes but it was all too much aggressiveness.
I read many reviews praising Ducks… but I did not have the courage to even add it to my list. While I love stream of consciousness, the repetition of “the fact that “ and the length of the book kept me away. When I started to read positive reviews of this smaller essay collection I decided to see for myslef myself what the fuss is about.
Damn, Lucy Ellman is one angry woman. She hates most THINGS and people, the whole book is a collection of complains and criticism. I LOVED the 1st essay, Things are Against Us, and I laughed many times while reading the 2nd and the 3rd one but from The essay called The Three Strikes I started to lose interest. I continued to listen and I got moments of brilliance and humor, but the general impression was that it was too much negativity and hate, no matter how funny some parts were. The radical feminist essays were the worst, many of the ideas were outright ridiculous. I am saying this as a feminist but men were made to come out as responsible for all the bad things in the world. While I totally agree they are responsible for Wars, for example, women are not innocent bystanders when it comes to other catastrophes.
I also had to admit that I was offended directly by the author. It’s fine, I am a strong believer in the freedom to express one’s opinion but I cannot ignore the fact that she attacked my believes and pleasures. She has one big essay in which she criticizes travelers, at one point saying that people who love to travel must have a very lousy life at home. I am an avid traveler, and horror, I am the kind of person she hates who loves airports and flying. Also, I read genre fiction and she has strong opinions against that kind of literature. The list goes on.
I liked some of her essays, I thought she was funny sometimes but it was all too much aggressiveness.
December 5, 2021
This book is published by the Norfolk based multi-award winning small press Galley Beggar, run by Elly Miller and Sam Jordison and whose past books include “We That Are Young”, “Lucia” and “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” and of course the wonderful “Ducks, Newburyport” by Lucy Ellmann.
That novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize (where it would have made a much better joint winner with “Girl, Woman, Other” than “The Testaments) and was the deserved as well as unsurprising winner of the 2019 Goldsmith Prize (a prize for innovative fiction - it being a huge tribute to Galley Beggar that they have won that prize twice in its 8 year history).
“Ducks, Newburyport” was of course a near one thousand page internal dialogue/stream of consciousness of a Ohio woman, with her reflecting on both the minutiae of her every day life alongside the state of the nation (particularly on the Trump presidency), on fiction (particularly that of Laura Ingalls Wilder), classic cinema (including Ingrid Bergman) and on the many issues of a patriarchal society (and world) including climate change, industrial pollution, male violence, mass shootings.
The book was perhaps best known for its brilliant use of “the fact that” as a highly effective form of punctuation and rhythm, as for example in this, now rather prescient passage at the end of a lengthy passage around agro-industry “the fact that now Ben tells me bird flu only has to mutate a few more times to cause a global pandemic like Spanish flu and that, if that happens, civilisation will grind to a halt within a year, the fact that I know it’s terrible of me but I can’t help hoping the guy with the scary dog will be one of the first to go”
Around the publication Lucy Ellmann gave a number of frank interviews in the press, typically in the Question and Answer format, which lead to some faux-controversy (largely if not entirely by people who in true Twitter style were taking things not so much out of context as not even in distant orbit of context) about her forthright (but nuanced) views on motherhood and her apparent (but reasoned) dismissal of genre fiction.
See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... and https://www.theguardian.com/books/201.... Note that both of these interviews are explicitly addressed and expanded upon in this book.
This book I feel continues on the strengths and themes of both “Ducks, Newburyport” and the author’s wider writing – but in the form of a non-fiction essay collection. The essays themselves consist of a number published earlier (for example four of the lengthiest previously published in 2015-17 in the American journal “The Baffler”) and some new ones commissioned for this collection.
A few examples of the essays:
The book opens with the titular essay, which is the one most stylistically reminiscent of “Ducks, Newburyport” with its wide ranging subject matter drawn together by the repeated use of “THINGS” – as in this passage which inadvertently appears to summarise the plot of Galley Beggar’s previous publication “Insignificance” by James Clammer.
There are two essays featuring female artists in Ducks, Newburyport: “The Woman of the House” and “A Spell of Patriarchy” which focus respectively on the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder and its interaction with feminism, and on the patriarchy the film “Spellbound” with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck (“Ducks, Newburyport” also has lots of peck but more of the hen variety)
“Trapped Family Fingers” is a kind of (A) to (Z) of Trump’s America with an (A) to (Z) of hoped for solutions – an essay written in 2019 with two more optimistic 2021 footnotes
“The Lost Art of Staying Put” – a challenge to those of us who spent our pre lockdown lives on a plane (I even read a proof of “Ducks, Newburyport” while stranded for 18 hours in Gander, Newfoundland after an emergency landing of my then regular transatlantic commute).
“Take the Money Honey” – an exhortation for women to embrace a matriarchal society (something which the author says on a number of occasions in the collection is the return to the natural order of things before all of the distortions and horrors which have resulted from millennia of patriarchy) and which as a footnote addresses in detail the Guardian comments on motherhood.
“Ah, Men” is a previously unpublished essay which starts as general musings about the patriarchy and male obsession, and which when reaches crime switches to a very detailed and forcefully argued expansion of the author’s views on crime fiction (with a reference to her Guardian article) and how it feeds off and reinforces male violence – concluding with the devastating rejoinder: “How about working on the unsolved crimes of environmental devastation instead ..”
But the undoubted highlight is the quite brilliant and massively thought provoking “Three Strikes”, modelled very explicitly on Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas” - the story hasc opious footnotes which form a parallel essay in itself (I believe also inspired by Woolf). This essay includes the phrase used in some of the blurbs for the book; “There are three forms of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two” which while conveying the dry humour that permeates the writing might lead people to underestimate how both hard hitting and how complex this essay is – with the paragraph actually continuing:
Overall:
For any fans of “Ducks, Newburyport” this is a must read;
For those who perhaps reacted badly to some of the Twitter storms a chance to really understand the author’s worldview;
For those new to her work, perhaps an introduction to it which will I think inevitably lead to wanting to read “Ducks, Newburyport”.
Highly recommended.
That novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize (where it would have made a much better joint winner with “Girl, Woman, Other” than “The Testaments) and was the deserved as well as unsurprising winner of the 2019 Goldsmith Prize (a prize for innovative fiction - it being a huge tribute to Galley Beggar that they have won that prize twice in its 8 year history).
“Ducks, Newburyport” was of course a near one thousand page internal dialogue/stream of consciousness of a Ohio woman, with her reflecting on both the minutiae of her every day life alongside the state of the nation (particularly on the Trump presidency), on fiction (particularly that of Laura Ingalls Wilder), classic cinema (including Ingrid Bergman) and on the many issues of a patriarchal society (and world) including climate change, industrial pollution, male violence, mass shootings.
The book was perhaps best known for its brilliant use of “the fact that” as a highly effective form of punctuation and rhythm, as for example in this, now rather prescient passage at the end of a lengthy passage around agro-industry “the fact that now Ben tells me bird flu only has to mutate a few more times to cause a global pandemic like Spanish flu and that, if that happens, civilisation will grind to a halt within a year, the fact that I know it’s terrible of me but I can’t help hoping the guy with the scary dog will be one of the first to go”
Around the publication Lucy Ellmann gave a number of frank interviews in the press, typically in the Question and Answer format, which lead to some faux-controversy (largely if not entirely by people who in true Twitter style were taking things not so much out of context as not even in distant orbit of context) about her forthright (but nuanced) views on motherhood and her apparent (but reasoned) dismissal of genre fiction.
See for example: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... and https://www.theguardian.com/books/201.... Note that both of these interviews are explicitly addressed and expanded upon in this book.
This book I feel continues on the strengths and themes of both “Ducks, Newburyport” and the author’s wider writing – but in the form of a non-fiction essay collection. The essays themselves consist of a number published earlier (for example four of the lengthiest previously published in 2015-17 in the American journal “The Baffler”) and some new ones commissioned for this collection.
A few examples of the essays:
The book opens with the titular essay, which is the one most stylistically reminiscent of “Ducks, Newburyport” with its wide ranging subject matter drawn together by the repeated use of “THINGS” – as in this passage which inadvertently appears to summarise the plot of Galley Beggar’s previous publication “Insignificance” by James Clammer.
All I am saying is that, if THINGS can go wrong, they will. THINGS let us down. THINGS fail us. Plumbing! What could be a more intimidating THING than that? THINGS outwit us …. THINGS pester us, THINGS try to bring you down.
There are two essays featuring female artists in Ducks, Newburyport: “The Woman of the House” and “A Spell of Patriarchy” which focus respectively on the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder and its interaction with feminism, and on the patriarchy the film “Spellbound” with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck (“Ducks, Newburyport” also has lots of peck but more of the hen variety)
“Trapped Family Fingers” is a kind of (A) to (Z) of Trump’s America with an (A) to (Z) of hoped for solutions – an essay written in 2019 with two more optimistic 2021 footnotes
“The Lost Art of Staying Put” – a challenge to those of us who spent our pre lockdown lives on a plane (I even read a proof of “Ducks, Newburyport” while stranded for 18 hours in Gander, Newfoundland after an emergency landing of my then regular transatlantic commute).
“Take the Money Honey” – an exhortation for women to embrace a matriarchal society (something which the author says on a number of occasions in the collection is the return to the natural order of things before all of the distortions and horrors which have resulted from millennia of patriarchy) and which as a footnote addresses in detail the Guardian comments on motherhood.
“Ah, Men” is a previously unpublished essay which starts as general musings about the patriarchy and male obsession, and which when reaches crime switches to a very detailed and forcefully argued expansion of the author’s views on crime fiction (with a reference to her Guardian article) and how it feeds off and reinforces male violence – concluding with the devastating rejoinder: “How about working on the unsolved crimes of environmental devastation instead ..”
But the undoubted highlight is the quite brilliant and massively thought provoking “Three Strikes”, modelled very explicitly on Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas” - the story hasc opious footnotes which form a parallel essay in itself (I believe also inspired by Woolf). This essay includes the phrase used in some of the blurbs for the book; “There are three forms of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labour strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two” which while conveying the dry humour that permeates the writing might lead people to underestimate how both hard hitting and how complex this essay is – with the paragraph actually continuing:
Whilst the ultimate object of all three of them is female supremacy, each strike would also focus on adjunct causes in women’s interest: (1) environmental and animal justice; (2) peace and nuclear disarmament; and (3) you guessed it, female appropriation of wealth, property and power.
Overall:
For any fans of “Ducks, Newburyport” this is a must read;
For those who perhaps reacted badly to some of the Twitter storms a chance to really understand the author’s worldview;
For those new to her work, perhaps an introduction to it which will I think inevitably lead to wanting to read “Ducks, Newburyport”.
Highly recommended.
October 20, 2021
My first encounter with Ellmann's brilliance was through Ducks, Newburyport, which enthralled me. Then I read the more accessible Mimi, which I also loved.
Needless to say, I was excited to read Ellmann's essays.
Even though these are essays, some of them feature themes that also appeared in the two novels mentioned above: the patriarchy and the many evils men bestow(ed) upon the planet, women, children; the proliferation of guns and nuclear power; the environmental destruction, plus a few other more mundane observations that cracked me up and made me think, "oh, no, you didn't": morning routines that are popular on YouTube and I'm guessing Insta and TikTok, objects, electricity. She makes some very good points on travelling and how much it ruins everything, including the culture, the environment - undeniable facts. I firmly agree with her, especially when it comes to business, academic junkets. Those travels are, for the most part, unnecessary, especially when we have such modern ways of communicating. There's also that perplexing aspect of eco travelling - an oxymoron if ever there was one. Her picking on American travellers had me in stitches. Of course, she generalises and exaggerates, but she also makes very good points.
She's audacious and gutsy, Ms Ellmann, and I love her for that. She even dared to pick on genre literature, particularly on crime novels. As I was saying, she's fearless, picking on the most published/most read genre. It cracked me up.
The essays are varied in both themes and style. As a collection, they just showcase her masterful writing skills and splendid intellect.
I don't know about others, but I feel a particular kinship with Lucy Ellmann, I feel we could be friends, although I'm nowhere near as intellectual or skilled as she is, I do love a good rant about the patriarchy, politics, culture etc.
Lucy Ellman for no 1 leader of the planet Earth
Essays:
Things Are Against Us
The Underground Bunker
Pygmalion in the White House
Trapped Family Fingers
The Woman in the House
Consider Pistons and Pumps
Three Strikes
A Spell of Patriarchy
Sing the Unelectric
The Lost Art of Staying Put
Bras—a Life Sentence
Morning Routine Girls
Ah, Men
Take The Money Honey
I've received this ARC via Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this collection.
Needless to say, I was excited to read Ellmann's essays.
Even though these are essays, some of them feature themes that also appeared in the two novels mentioned above: the patriarchy and the many evils men bestow(ed) upon the planet, women, children; the proliferation of guns and nuclear power; the environmental destruction, plus a few other more mundane observations that cracked me up and made me think, "oh, no, you didn't": morning routines that are popular on YouTube and I'm guessing Insta and TikTok, objects, electricity. She makes some very good points on travelling and how much it ruins everything, including the culture, the environment - undeniable facts. I firmly agree with her, especially when it comes to business, academic junkets. Those travels are, for the most part, unnecessary, especially when we have such modern ways of communicating. There's also that perplexing aspect of eco travelling - an oxymoron if ever there was one. Her picking on American travellers had me in stitches. Of course, she generalises and exaggerates, but she also makes very good points.
She's audacious and gutsy, Ms Ellmann, and I love her for that. She even dared to pick on genre literature, particularly on crime novels. As I was saying, she's fearless, picking on the most published/most read genre. It cracked me up.
The essays are varied in both themes and style. As a collection, they just showcase her masterful writing skills and splendid intellect.
I don't know about others, but I feel a particular kinship with Lucy Ellmann, I feel we could be friends, although I'm nowhere near as intellectual or skilled as she is, I do love a good rant about the patriarchy, politics, culture etc.
Lucy Ellman for no 1 leader of the planet Earth
Essays:
Things Are Against Us
The Underground Bunker
Pygmalion in the White House
Trapped Family Fingers
The Woman in the House
Consider Pistons and Pumps
Three Strikes
A Spell of Patriarchy
Sing the Unelectric
The Lost Art of Staying Put
Bras—a Life Sentence
Morning Routine Girls
Ah, Men
Take The Money Honey
I've received this ARC via Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this collection.
January 27, 2022
Audiobook….
….read by Stephanie Ellyne
….6 hours and 39 minutes
As soon as I started listening to this audiobook by Lucy Ellmann,
author of “Ducks, Newburyport”…..(one of the most phenomenal reading experiences, listening experiences, I’ve ever had) ….
Once again….
with the wonderful Stephanie Ellyne’s voice permanently tattooed in my brain—
I knew I was back ‘home’ with these two ladies: the author, and the voice-narrator….
Nobody…
And I mean ‘nobody’ does stream of consciousness like Lucy Ellmann.
These essays seem a little more angry - a little more aggressive in opinion than “Ducks”…
but … being inside Lucy Ellmann’s head is penetrating, thought-provoking - and overall, collectedly dismantling.
Topics and themes - can feel unmethodical — yet it works.
These essays portray unfairness towards women…
… and other ‘things’ unfair in our world.
Anything worth picking holes at, is covered —
Trump, men, race, sex, aging, finance, the work force, politics, war, climate change,
clothes, cultural shallowness,
social stupidity, etc. ETCETERA!!
“Things Are Against Us”…..
is a blend of funny and depressing things.
Lucy blends them together like peanut butter and jelly….
….complementary with a nutty roasted flavor of peanut taste and sweet and tart flavor like grape jelly.
“Why do things get dirty so fast?”
“Things are out to get us”
….read by Stephanie Ellyne
….6 hours and 39 minutes
As soon as I started listening to this audiobook by Lucy Ellmann,
author of “Ducks, Newburyport”…..(one of the most phenomenal reading experiences, listening experiences, I’ve ever had) ….
Once again….
with the wonderful Stephanie Ellyne’s voice permanently tattooed in my brain—
I knew I was back ‘home’ with these two ladies: the author, and the voice-narrator….
Nobody…
And I mean ‘nobody’ does stream of consciousness like Lucy Ellmann.
These essays seem a little more angry - a little more aggressive in opinion than “Ducks”…
but … being inside Lucy Ellmann’s head is penetrating, thought-provoking - and overall, collectedly dismantling.
Topics and themes - can feel unmethodical — yet it works.
These essays portray unfairness towards women…
… and other ‘things’ unfair in our world.
Anything worth picking holes at, is covered —
Trump, men, race, sex, aging, finance, the work force, politics, war, climate change,
clothes, cultural shallowness,
social stupidity, etc. ETCETERA!!
“Things Are Against Us”…..
is a blend of funny and depressing things.
Lucy blends them together like peanut butter and jelly….
….complementary with a nutty roasted flavor of peanut taste and sweet and tart flavor like grape jelly.
“Why do things get dirty so fast?”
“Things are out to get us”
July 6, 2021
Oh Lucy! The author who stirred a little controversy and broke everyone's arm with her brilliant giant quacking tome, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, is back! And she is justifiably mad as hell because “Patriarchy has trashed the place.” But, while her anger is deadly serious, there's an immensely funny tone to these essays as Ellmann's vitriol touches upon everything from the pollution of the oceans to men's love of pizza to the current pandemic to Doris Day. The humour arises because “In times of pestilence, my fancy turns to shticks”. And that's what these essays are: a critique of the state of the world as Ellmann sees it after a year of lockdown reading the newspapers and going online. She is somewhere between a feminist comedian, a sage scholar and your drunk aunty at the family barbecue. She sometimes seems like Mrs Duszejko in “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” come to life. She does not filter herself and she is not polite. And why should she be? As Ellmann states: “These people hate us! These people are trying to kill us. I don't know why we're all so goddam nice about it, but nothing is ever done about the way men carry on.”
No one who has read “Ducks, Newburyport” will be surprised by the content or preoccupations expressed in these essays which focus on everything from old movies to the YouTube videos of “Morning Routine Girls” to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although the narrator of that epic novel was a character most decidedly not Ellmann herself, much of the endlessly rolling thought process and references were clearly from Ellmann. We see a sensibility shaped by what she has consumed praising the heroes she sees as fighting the good fight and lambasting the criminals guilty of upholding corrupt systems. The title essay opening this collection sets the right furiously-comic tone because it's an absurdist take on how the physical world around us is constantly failing, falling apart and working against us. Then follows her fury about the people and governments who are similarly letting us down. Most of her anger is directed at America “The US is now the worst boy scout jamboree in history. Or jerk circle” and men who “have wrecked everything of beauty and cultivated everything putrid on the face of the earth. Not all men, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I'm generalising. But it's for a good cause: sanity.” Crucially, I think this is the point and joy of these essays. They are a cathartic release from all the tension. I certainly don't agree with all of Ellmann's opinions, but I sympathize with many of them.
Read my full review of Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann on LonesomeReader
No one who has read “Ducks, Newburyport” will be surprised by the content or preoccupations expressed in these essays which focus on everything from old movies to the YouTube videos of “Morning Routine Girls” to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although the narrator of that epic novel was a character most decidedly not Ellmann herself, much of the endlessly rolling thought process and references were clearly from Ellmann. We see a sensibility shaped by what she has consumed praising the heroes she sees as fighting the good fight and lambasting the criminals guilty of upholding corrupt systems. The title essay opening this collection sets the right furiously-comic tone because it's an absurdist take on how the physical world around us is constantly failing, falling apart and working against us. Then follows her fury about the people and governments who are similarly letting us down. Most of her anger is directed at America “The US is now the worst boy scout jamboree in history. Or jerk circle” and men who “have wrecked everything of beauty and cultivated everything putrid on the face of the earth. Not all men, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I'm generalising. But it's for a good cause: sanity.” Crucially, I think this is the point and joy of these essays. They are a cathartic release from all the tension. I certainly don't agree with all of Ellmann's opinions, but I sympathize with many of them.
Read my full review of Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann on LonesomeReader
July 3, 2021
Lucy Ellmann's Ducks Newburyport was perhaps my least favourite reading experience of 2019, but was loved by many who normally share my literary tastes, and as a Galley Beggar Buddy I decided to give this 'new' essay collection (most previously published, but often updated with a mandatory Covid reference) a try and, on balance, I'm glad I did.
The title piece, with Ducks ",the fact that" replaced here by repeated "THINGS" made for a disappointing start, but at least there weren't 19,396 of them.
At my twin Gumble Yard's recommendation (his review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) I moved on to Three Strikes, which proved to be by far the highlight of the collection, a polemic against patriarchy inspired by Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas. Replete with footnotes the essay is erudite and generous in its intertextuality, and amongst those cited is one of my favourite authors, Thomas Bernhard.
The 2019 re-issues of Thomas Bernhard's masterful novels came with a blurb from Ellmann, If you haven’t read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce, and in a 2019 Guardian interviewshe confessed that: 'I wooed my husband with Thomas Bernhard's Concrete.
Here his influence is perhaps most apparent in her Nestbeschmutzer denunciations of her childhood America, although actually these were perhaps the weakest parts of the collection, particularly when discussing Trump, who does seem to have an ability to drag even normally erudite critics down to his intellectual level of discourse.
Her rants alternate between the profound and politically radical, and the rather silly and trivial - one on the evils of electricity contained an ironic lament for the replacement of typewriters by word processors on laptops from an author whose most famous novel is the living embodiment of the search and replace function.
The essays were originally published separately and do suffer from diminishing returns from repetition, indeed I suspect my rating would be higher (4 stars) had I read Three Strikes and Ah, Men (which spectacularly doubles down on the author's contempt for crime fiction from the same 2019 Guardian interview) and skipped the rest.
But Ellmann's caustic wit will be appreciated by her many fans, and hopefully will attract new readers to her Goldsmiths winning novel and to her publisher Galley Beggar.
The title piece, with Ducks ",the fact that" replaced here by repeated "THINGS" made for a disappointing start, but at least there weren't 19,396 of them.
At my twin Gumble Yard's recommendation (his review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) I moved on to Three Strikes, which proved to be by far the highlight of the collection, a polemic against patriarchy inspired by Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas. Replete with footnotes the essay is erudite and generous in its intertextuality, and amongst those cited is one of my favourite authors, Thomas Bernhard.
The 2019 re-issues of Thomas Bernhard's masterful novels came with a blurb from Ellmann, If you haven’t read Bernhard, you will not know of the most radical advance in fiction since Joyce, and in a 2019 Guardian interviewshe confessed that: 'I wooed my husband with Thomas Bernhard's Concrete.
Here his influence is perhaps most apparent in her Nestbeschmutzer denunciations of her childhood America, although actually these were perhaps the weakest parts of the collection, particularly when discussing Trump, who does seem to have an ability to drag even normally erudite critics down to his intellectual level of discourse.
Her rants alternate between the profound and politically radical, and the rather silly and trivial - one on the evils of electricity contained an ironic lament for the replacement of typewriters by word processors on laptops from an author whose most famous novel is the living embodiment of the search and replace function.
The essays were originally published separately and do suffer from diminishing returns from repetition, indeed I suspect my rating would be higher (4 stars) had I read Three Strikes and Ah, Men (which spectacularly doubles down on the author's contempt for crime fiction from the same 2019 Guardian interview) and skipped the rest.
But Ellmann's caustic wit will be appreciated by her many fans, and hopefully will attract new readers to her Goldsmiths winning novel and to her publisher Galley Beggar.
July 14, 2021
Lucy Ellmann's first book for Galley Beggar Press was the monumental, extraordinary Ducks, Newburyport, a book that her previous publishers baulked at. That book was one of my favourite books of 2019, and fully deserved its Booker shortlisting, but it did inevitably create very high expectations for Ellmann's next book, this collection of essays, most of which have appeared in newspapers and magazines. This book is by turns funny, fierce and confrontational, and as an unwitting representative of the patriarchy and a believer in scientific reason I am probably not the best person to review it fairly!
Several of these pieces are radical feminist polemics, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has read Mimi, but these are never dull, because she has a sharp eye for the ridiculous and many of her observations are telling.
In some ways my favourite piece was The Woman of the House, which discusses the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder (another topic familiar to readers of Ducks).
The title essay which introduces the collection worked brilliantly as a comic monologue, as demonstrated by her audiobook narrator Stephanie Ellyne during a Galley Beggar showcase event on Zoom earlier this year, but for me it was less impressive on paper, in particular the capitalisation of every occurrence of the word THINGS becomes hard on the eye after a while.
Several of these pieces are radical feminist polemics, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has read Mimi, but these are never dull, because she has a sharp eye for the ridiculous and many of her observations are telling.
In some ways my favourite piece was The Woman of the House, which discusses the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder (another topic familiar to readers of Ducks).
The title essay which introduces the collection worked brilliantly as a comic monologue, as demonstrated by her audiobook narrator Stephanie Ellyne during a Galley Beggar showcase event on Zoom earlier this year, but for me it was less impressive on paper, in particular the capitalisation of every occurrence of the word THINGS becomes hard on the eye after a while.
July 23, 2021
I loved Ellmann’s “Ducks, Newburyport” so much that I read it twice. This was despite its length (circa 1000 pages) and, in my case, at least partly because of the repetition of “the fact that…” through the book (a THING - more to come about these - that annoyed several people as much as it pleased me).
Things Are Against Us is a different proposition entirely, being a collection of essays rather than a novel. That said, if you haven’t read “Ducks, Newburyport” reading this might be a good way to sample Ellmann and decide whether to launch into that much longer work. It doesn’t read like Ducks, but it gives you a flavour of what happens when Ellmann cuts loose.
The title of the book comes from the first essay in the collection. My reaction to this essay confused even me: I loved Ducks for its repetition of a single phrase, but somehow the repeated use of “THINGS” in this essay began to wear me down. For me, this was the weakest essay in the collection. This surprised me mainly because it is the essay that most closely resembles Ducks, Newburyport in style. I can’t figure it out, but I guess I don’t have to: it’s just what happened.
The highlight of the collection is, I think, the third essay “Three Strikes”. This apparently uses Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas” as inspiration, although I haven’t read that so can’t confirm., but if Lucy Ellmann says that is the case, there is no reason to doubt her. This essay has a multitude of footnotes which form a sort of parallel essay and the main essay along with its footnotes is very thought-provoking.
The rest of the essays are a collection of previously published works (at least some of which have been updated - one that was originally published pre-COVID now includes mentions of the pandemic) and new essays written especially for this book. Ellmann sets her sights on subjects such as Trump, patriarchy, unnecessary travel, bras and wasteful use of electricity. And she does not hold back.
It is often a very amusing book to read. But it is fundamentally a long rant about a lot of different things. I think I might have enjoyed the book even more if I had read it one essay at a time with a break between them. I found the continuous rant a bit too much to take all in one go.
And here’s one final thing that is completely personal to me, I imagine. I never normally pay any attention to the font in which a book is published, but for some reason I noticed this one and I’m not at all sure I liked it!
Things Are Against Us is a different proposition entirely, being a collection of essays rather than a novel. That said, if you haven’t read “Ducks, Newburyport” reading this might be a good way to sample Ellmann and decide whether to launch into that much longer work. It doesn’t read like Ducks, but it gives you a flavour of what happens when Ellmann cuts loose.
The title of the book comes from the first essay in the collection. My reaction to this essay confused even me: I loved Ducks for its repetition of a single phrase, but somehow the repeated use of “THINGS” in this essay began to wear me down. For me, this was the weakest essay in the collection. This surprised me mainly because it is the essay that most closely resembles Ducks, Newburyport in style. I can’t figure it out, but I guess I don’t have to: it’s just what happened.
The highlight of the collection is, I think, the third essay “Three Strikes”. This apparently uses Virginia Woolf’s “Three Guineas” as inspiration, although I haven’t read that so can’t confirm., but if Lucy Ellmann says that is the case, there is no reason to doubt her. This essay has a multitude of footnotes which form a sort of parallel essay and the main essay along with its footnotes is very thought-provoking.
The rest of the essays are a collection of previously published works (at least some of which have been updated - one that was originally published pre-COVID now includes mentions of the pandemic) and new essays written especially for this book. Ellmann sets her sights on subjects such as Trump, patriarchy, unnecessary travel, bras and wasteful use of electricity. And she does not hold back.
It is often a very amusing book to read. But it is fundamentally a long rant about a lot of different things. I think I might have enjoyed the book even more if I had read it one essay at a time with a break between them. I found the continuous rant a bit too much to take all in one go.
And here’s one final thing that is completely personal to me, I imagine. I never normally pay any attention to the font in which a book is published, but for some reason I noticed this one and I’m not at all sure I liked it!
December 3, 2021
In Ducks, Newburyport, Ellmann wrote a seminal monsterpiece that perfectly captured the infinite loop of anxieties of a post-Trump world, as well as nattily pulling off an Oulipo-strength feat of writing an 1000-page novel in list form. An almost perfect marriage of the formally fearless and the universally communicable, Ducks was an explosive, hilarious, and pathologically readable piece of utter genius. In her first essay collection, Ellmann maintains the fume, fury, and fiery incision of her novel across fourteen blazing essays on the patriarchy, the climate, the epic beastliness of most humans, and certain orange-faced loser ex-Presidents who never have and never will do a “fantastic job”. (P.S. For some reason I received the Picador India edition with this misleadingly sugary cover and not the Galley Beggar one, which I ordered).
September 14, 2021
Ellmann's masterwork, Ducks, Newburyport was my first introduction to this author and I became so enamored of her writing I immediately read her entire canon (including the elusively obscure Tom the Obscure.) This first collection of her essays don't quite succeed for me as well as her novels, but that's partially my fault, as reading them back to back, they betray a bit of sameness and OTT-ness (her fondness for alliterative lists, her fantastical schemes for wresting power and money from the male sex), rather than the originality of thought contained in her fiction. That said, there are still both wildly funny and unexpected turns of phrase/quips, as well as some trenchant diatribes against our current predicaments (Covid and Trump being the primary targets). I particularly enjoyed her harangue against the joys of traveling, being an inveterate hermit/agoraphobe myself.
PS: For some strange reason, Ellmann attributes song lyrics from the rock musical 'Hair' to ... Nina Simone? Weird.
PS: For some strange reason, Ellmann attributes song lyrics from the rock musical 'Hair' to ... Nina Simone? Weird.
July 25, 2021
The Ellmann style here wears a little thin by the end (it's so pointedly OTT -- she's angry, but also wants to overdo the shrill apoplexy for comic effect, which works wonderfully in each piece, not so much when you read several in one go) but each essay is well worth the effort. The best of Things Are Against Us are those takedowns that also dial it down a little -- savage miniature annihilations of worthy targets that don't have time to run out of steam.
"Come on, dump the face powder, gals. This is the stuff of girl dreams:
To turn somersaults naked, outdoors,
your cunt in the air.
To wallow in baths of whipped cream
and maraschino cherries.
To ride a galloping stallion bareback along a beach.
To understand the phases of the moon and Dog Star.
To be free as a mermaid adrift in the sea.
To run into a bullring and befriend the bull.
To discover something very very important.
To speak the language of goats and hoop snakes.
To be unique.
To fly.
To hide a pet mouse in your mouth and scare people."
"Come on, dump the face powder, gals. This is the stuff of girl dreams:
To turn somersaults naked, outdoors,
your cunt in the air.
To wallow in baths of whipped cream
and maraschino cherries.
To ride a galloping stallion bareback along a beach.
To understand the phases of the moon and Dog Star.
To be free as a mermaid adrift in the sea.
To run into a bullring and befriend the bull.
To discover something very very important.
To speak the language of goats and hoop snakes.
To be unique.
To fly.
To hide a pet mouse in your mouth and scare people."
July 31, 2021
Sometimes Cruel but Sometimes Funny & Thoughtful Rants
Review of the Galley Beggar Press buddies edition (2021)
[2.65] average bumped up to [3]
Fourteen essays by the writer of the 1000-page Booker nominated Ducks, Newburyport (2019), which I have made 3 unsuccessful attempts to read, usually giving up between pages 50 to 100. These bite-sized pieces are easier to get through and often funny, but in a cruel schadenfreude or bitter, envious curmudgeonly sort of way. Some are so over the top that it makes me think this is a persona adopted for comic effect only. i.e. can someone hate Americans, mystery novels, travel, electronic appliances etc. this much in real life?
1. Things Are Against Us . (2021) * A rant against THINGS, a proxy for anything that bedevils one's existence. A one-page joke that goes on for twelve pages.
2. The Underground Bunker . (2019, Irish Times [edited to include the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capital riot]) **** An anti-Trump & anti-deplorables rant, but funny. Rather brutally contemptuous about America. See 2 extended quotes below.
3. Trapped Family Fingers . (2019, Globe & Mail) **** More of the same as 2. See 1 short quote below. Bonus points for the Trapp Family Singers/The Sound of Music parody.
4. Three Strikes . (2015, The Baffler) ***** Inspired by Three Guineas (1938) by Virginia Woolf. This is the most interesting essay of the book and covers many of its themes e.g. money confiscation as in 14. It has an infuriating amount of footnotes printed in microscopic font, but you can read it online and save your eyes at The Baffler (March 2015).
5. A Spell of Patriarchy . (2019, NYTimes) *** Viewing Spellbound (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock in hindsight as a MeToo precursor movie.
6. Third-Rate Zeros . (2021) *** OK, we get it, you don't like Trump.
7. Consider Pistons and Pumps . (2016, The Baffler) ** Viewing everyday machine objects as phallic or vaginal symbols.
8. The Woman in the House . (2012, The Guardian) *** Reading The Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder as a frontier feminist epic.
9. The Lost Art of Staying Put . (2017, The Baffler) ** A rant against world travellers.
10. Bras - A Life Sentence . (2000, Deliberately Thirsty) ** A rant against the title subject.
11. Morning Routine Girls . (2015, The Baffler) ** A cruel rant against the "morning routine" videos on YouTube. The idea of these make me feel pity rather than wanting to mock misguided young women.
12. Sing the Unelectric! . (2013, Aeon Magazine) **** Promoting minimalism and non-electric appliances.
13. Ah, Men . (2021) * A rant against men and then against the mystery and crime genre, which, as far as I appreciate it, was and is dominated by women writers esp. in the golden age 1920-1930s and in the present day.
14. Take The Money Honey . (2019, The Evergreen) *** More on the money confiscation theme.
I read Things Are Against Us in its limited edition grey-cover release available to supporters of the Galley Beggar Press' Galley Buddy subscription program.
Review of the Galley Beggar Press buddies edition (2021)
[2.65] average bumped up to [3]
Fourteen essays by the writer of the 1000-page Booker nominated Ducks, Newburyport (2019), which I have made 3 unsuccessful attempts to read, usually giving up between pages 50 to 100. These bite-sized pieces are easier to get through and often funny, but in a cruel schadenfreude or bitter, envious curmudgeonly sort of way. Some are so over the top that it makes me think this is a persona adopted for comic effect only. i.e. can someone hate Americans, mystery novels, travel, electronic appliances etc. this much in real life?
1. Things Are Against Us . (2021) * A rant against THINGS, a proxy for anything that bedevils one's existence. A one-page joke that goes on for twelve pages.
2. The Underground Bunker . (2019, Irish Times [edited to include the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capital riot]) **** An anti-Trump & anti-deplorables rant, but funny. Rather brutally contemptuous about America. See 2 extended quotes below.
3. Trapped Family Fingers . (2019, Globe & Mail) **** More of the same as 2. See 1 short quote below. Bonus points for the Trapp Family Singers/The Sound of Music parody.
4. Three Strikes . (2015, The Baffler) ***** Inspired by Three Guineas (1938) by Virginia Woolf. This is the most interesting essay of the book and covers many of its themes e.g. money confiscation as in 14. It has an infuriating amount of footnotes printed in microscopic font, but you can read it online and save your eyes at The Baffler (March 2015).
5. A Spell of Patriarchy . (2019, NYTimes) *** Viewing Spellbound (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock in hindsight as a MeToo precursor movie.
6. Third-Rate Zeros . (2021) *** OK, we get it, you don't like Trump.
7. Consider Pistons and Pumps . (2016, The Baffler) ** Viewing everyday machine objects as phallic or vaginal symbols.
8. The Woman in the House . (2012, The Guardian) *** Reading The Little House on the Prairie series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder as a frontier feminist epic.
9. The Lost Art of Staying Put . (2017, The Baffler) ** A rant against world travellers.
10. Bras - A Life Sentence . (2000, Deliberately Thirsty) ** A rant against the title subject.
11. Morning Routine Girls . (2015, The Baffler) ** A cruel rant against the "morning routine" videos on YouTube. The idea of these make me feel pity rather than wanting to mock misguided young women.
12. Sing the Unelectric! . (2013, Aeon Magazine) **** Promoting minimalism and non-electric appliances.
13. Ah, Men . (2021) * A rant against men and then against the mystery and crime genre, which, as far as I appreciate it, was and is dominated by women writers esp. in the golden age 1920-1930s and in the present day.
14. Take The Money Honey . (2019, The Evergreen) *** More on the money confiscation theme.
I read Things Are Against Us in its limited edition grey-cover release available to supporters of the Galley Beggar Press' Galley Buddy subscription program.
July 13, 2021
I have said many times that Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport is a BIG favourite of mine. I won’t go into a detailed explanation but that 1030 page one sentence narrative of an Ohio housewife on Motherhood, Trump, Gun Culture and baking tips just struck a chord with, not to mention the more conventional lioness subplot which gave this weighty tome more depth.
Needless to say that I was excited to read Lucy Ellmann’s new book; an essay collection called Things are Against us. This is a mixture of previously published pieces, albeit updated and some unreleased works.
Whilst reading the book two thoughts went through me
Lucy Ellmann would make a great rapper lyricist.
A lot of the themes in these essays seem like an extension of the topics that were in Ducks, Newburyport.
Take the title essay, which opens the collection. Stylistically it’s similar to Ducks, Newburyport, with it’s use of repetition and rhythm. Thematically as well as it’s about society’s over reliance on material objects but this is Lucy Ellmann and she cleverly takes the word ‘Things’ and gives it a new context in each sentence. It’s dazzling.
A good number of the essays criticise the patriarchy and Trump ; The Underground Bunker, early highlight Three Strikes and Third Rate Zeroes are such examples.
Some focus on books and movies: A Spell of Patriarchy discusses how Hitchcock’s Spellbound is a feminist film, or how The Woman of the House is about Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House on the Prairie books showcased a type of American way of life but it also doubles up as the amount of problems a female author has to go through. One book related essay is Ah Men which starts off as with the problems of living in a patriarchal state and then delves into crime fiction, which treats women unfairly.
I could easily fill the post about descriptions but there are essays about bras , morning routine videos and the hidden sexuality of pistons and pumps. needless to say that all are brilliant. I will say that the lonest piece here, called The Lost Art of Staying Put is a masterpiece about travelling and how the human need to experience things has brought a lot of the problems such as pandemics, environmental destruction and famine, which are still happening today.
What makes these essays stand out is Lucy Ellmann’s impish sense of humour. All these essays are genuinely funny, be it a witty one liner, an unexpected pun or the highly entertaining footnotes in Three Strikes, trust me you do not want to skim read them. I have always said that in order to get one’s point across one needs hit the funny bone in some way, be it a cartoon or caustic wit. Lucy Ellmann goes for the latter and she nails it every time.
A great essay collection will make the reader aware of what is happening. These essays definitely opened my eyes to the struggles. Even as I am typing this review on a Sunday night, the streets will be filled with white men creating aggro because their favourite team won or lost (yes I know football is not gendered but I doubt that female fans will behave in a destructive manner) while I will be reading the news about these ‘celebrations’ and seeing Lucy’s words about the patriarchy becoming a reality.
As a final note do check out the N.B. at the back of the book. Only Lucy Ellmann could think of a parting shot (maybe not the best term) like that! furthermore it could happen!
Needless to say that I was excited to read Lucy Ellmann’s new book; an essay collection called Things are Against us. This is a mixture of previously published pieces, albeit updated and some unreleased works.
Whilst reading the book two thoughts went through me
Lucy Ellmann would make a great rapper lyricist.
A lot of the themes in these essays seem like an extension of the topics that were in Ducks, Newburyport.
Take the title essay, which opens the collection. Stylistically it’s similar to Ducks, Newburyport, with it’s use of repetition and rhythm. Thematically as well as it’s about society’s over reliance on material objects but this is Lucy Ellmann and she cleverly takes the word ‘Things’ and gives it a new context in each sentence. It’s dazzling.
A good number of the essays criticise the patriarchy and Trump ; The Underground Bunker, early highlight Three Strikes and Third Rate Zeroes are such examples.
Some focus on books and movies: A Spell of Patriarchy discusses how Hitchcock’s Spellbound is a feminist film, or how The Woman of the House is about Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House on the Prairie books showcased a type of American way of life but it also doubles up as the amount of problems a female author has to go through. One book related essay is Ah Men which starts off as with the problems of living in a patriarchal state and then delves into crime fiction, which treats women unfairly.
I could easily fill the post about descriptions but there are essays about bras , morning routine videos and the hidden sexuality of pistons and pumps. needless to say that all are brilliant. I will say that the lonest piece here, called The Lost Art of Staying Put is a masterpiece about travelling and how the human need to experience things has brought a lot of the problems such as pandemics, environmental destruction and famine, which are still happening today.
What makes these essays stand out is Lucy Ellmann’s impish sense of humour. All these essays are genuinely funny, be it a witty one liner, an unexpected pun or the highly entertaining footnotes in Three Strikes, trust me you do not want to skim read them. I have always said that in order to get one’s point across one needs hit the funny bone in some way, be it a cartoon or caustic wit. Lucy Ellmann goes for the latter and she nails it every time.
A great essay collection will make the reader aware of what is happening. These essays definitely opened my eyes to the struggles. Even as I am typing this review on a Sunday night, the streets will be filled with white men creating aggro because their favourite team won or lost (yes I know football is not gendered but I doubt that female fans will behave in a destructive manner) while I will be reading the news about these ‘celebrations’ and seeing Lucy’s words about the patriarchy becoming a reality.
As a final note do check out the N.B. at the back of the book. Only Lucy Ellmann could think of a parting shot (maybe not the best term) like that! furthermore it could happen!
December 3, 2021
Well, in case anyone had any lingering doubts about this lady being an untalented hack, I'd say this collection is decisive in that regard. The essays on politics are so tedious that I went beyond being bemused/annoyed and actually began to feel embarrassed for her, and kind of amazed that Ellmann had allowed something this bad to be published (in print!) under her legal name. The writing is so self-parodically terrible that it makes Salon.com comment sections look like Demosthenes's Funeral Oration.
abandoned-luncheonette
September 10, 2021DNFed at p42.
Found the hyperbole a smidge hyperbolic and the OTT-ness a tad too OTT...YMMV
This won't stop me from getting to Ducks, Newberryport (eventually), of course.
Found the hyperbole a smidge hyperbolic and the OTT-ness a tad too OTT...YMMV
This won't stop me from getting to Ducks, Newberryport (eventually), of course.
September 8, 2021
"What riches there once were, what beauties! Raindrops on roses and crop tops on cuties. Now it's just tear gas and water hoses, and Mexican children tied up with strings. These are a few of their favourite things. Quarry every mountain, wreck every stream.”
The titular essay emulates Ellmann's lauded novel which I am yet to resume after getting through 80 pages and it sets the tone for the rest of the book. She airs "her scruples and her scorn", inviting us to complain alongside her. The best essay by far is " Three Strikes", written in tandem with and as response to Woolf's "Three Guineas", deploring the state of women in the world & calling for swift redressal through three strikes - household, labour, and sex. Second best, "The Lost Art of Staying Put", a diatribe against travel & travelers, expounds in great detail about the planetary harm caused by the activity as well as punching the discourse around it.
Ellmann weirdly casts women as perennial victims devoid of agency who don't willfully participate in the systems that are set up to exploit them. Her feminism is of the old kind; I can't discern much effort at intersectionality. She quite fails to recognize all the harm white women have caused in their services to patriarchy. So there's no room for nuance about how women of colour or queer, trans, disabled women are at more disadvantage. Men are the be all and end all source of the problem. Her solution of transferring all assets over to women fails to consider that it doesn't matter who holds the reins in capitalism. Girlbossification won't bring change.
To be honest, Ellmann's persona is very like some old boomer who's shaking her fists at the incomprehensible behavior of the young in her life. Most it is of course affected and tongue-in-check, but one does wonder. She has a propensity to find things to complain about and that too at a considerable length, but I cannot deny that it's really entertaining. All the smaller essays do tend to bleed into each other and they become repetitive with no fresh points to make. A common thread across the book is men bashing and Trump bashing and while I approve of both—I will join in as well—it does get tiring to read the same rants and denunciations time and again. Moreover, in her aim to be provocative and sarcastic, Ellmann drops the ball on critical assessment of issues raised and I couldn't help but find her treatment sadly superficial.
Her rhetoric is definitely impressive though and her writing style is addictive. I laughed out loud in many places and it was genuine uproarious laughter. She references a lot of extraneous material without burdening her text or making it inaccessible. In the Woolf follow-up, she uses long and rambling very extensive footnotes (possibly longer than the main text itself) extremely effectively. I was also impressed by her essay on Little House on the Prairie, which seems like an outlier compared to the rest of the essays. There she hones in her gaze and explores the racial implications well. To give her her due credit, she does acknowledge, albeit briefly, that women are not messiah figures and are bound to fail in their ways but they must be first given the opportunity to have that choice, that power, that capital.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
July 6, 2021
Lucy Ellmann has a reputation for being an excruciatingly funny writer. It’s all been in novels, award-winning novels. Seven of them. Now, she has published Things Are Against Us, a collection of 14 essays, four of which have never been published before. Not being big on novels, this is my first exposure to her work.
It is angry. Ellmann complains about everything, and every aspect of everything. Even the TOC is labeled the Table of Discontents. Outside of orgasms and money, nothing seems to rate for her. She is against electricity. She is against travel. She is against teens explaining their morning routines on youtube. Mostly, she is against men. She sums up men early on:
“What riches there once were, what beauties! Raindrops on roses and crop tops on cuties. Now it’s just tear gas and water hoses, and Mexican children tied up with strings. These are a few of their favourite things. Quarry every mountain, wreck every stream.”
At times, it can be termed satirical. In by far her longest essay, she proposes a three strikes and you’re out series – of strikes against men. Her evidence of the need is with things like: “Men obliterate beavers so they can build their own dams! “
Strike one is withholding housework, since no man has any clue how to do it himself. Along the way, she declares a moratorium on discussing anyone’s looks. During the strike, there is to be no talking about anyone’s appearance for one year. “The beauteous would survive a slight lessening of attention and acclaim, and the rest of us could relax. After a year of such abstinence I’d bet we’d be cured of the habit and be much better conversationalists.“
Strike two is no more war work, which soon devolves into just no work at all. She specifies to “withhold women’s labour in the workforce, because after all, who wants to WORK?” (Her caps.)
Strike number three is the good old withholding of sex, from the playbook of the Ancient Greeks. Money for sex is the aim, a theme Ellmann comes back to in later essays as well. It’s all about the money, ultimately. She wants men to fork over all their money and let women run the world. This comes up throughout the book.
Three strikes and they’re out of wealth and power. And if that doesn’t work, there is a fourth strike she is holding in reserve: pizza. Ellmann hates pizza (too), and insists all women hate it. Men force it on them, whenever possible. Prevent pizza, and you can rule the world. Apparently.
That all this conflicts directly with her complaints about women spending so much time on fashion, makeup and jewelry, presumably to obtain favors from men, is not broached. We wouldn’t want sense to interfere with the essence of these essays.
This essay, called simply Three Strikes. is both improved and hobbled by an astonishing amount of footnotes. The footnotes are a good five times as long as the essay. It makes for very choppy reading, trying to make both streams work at the same times. The footnotes are full of references to books, websites, newspaper and magazine articles to back her anecdotal charges, which is good. But as literature, it needs work.
Things Are Against Us is the title of both the book and the first essay. The essay is about THINGS. The word THINGS is always capitalized, and appears seemingly hundreds of times, as virtually every little THING is grating, annoying, defective or malevolent. THINGS are out to get her, much like Woody Allen’s early battles with appliances. It is a jarring read, and brings up Ellmann’s mains stylistic tic – lists. She loves long lists of items to complain about. She can be creative with them, making them rhyme, or listing the items alphabetically, or adding something bizarrely irrelevant to break them up. But they do seem endless. The lists can be nouns, verbs or adjectives; doesn’t help. They quickly become predictable and forgettable.
She reminds me specifically of James Thurber, who used to do this in some of the hundreds of essays he published, mainly in the New Yorker. Thurber would write about a letter of the alphabet, or a topic of general interest, or of someone in his family. He would make lists; he would exhaust the subject. It got to be very unfunny and most tiresome.
Ellmann differentiates herself though, because she has created a persona to do all the complaining and expand on the bitterness. This nasty character can be as obnoxious as Ellmann wants her to be, and get away with it. The persona does not have to be rational, logical or even conscious of how obnoxious she is. She has created a distinct character. Think of Jack Benny being stingy. Or WC Fields hating small children. Or Bill Dana being a Mexican immigrant. Or Brent Terhune being a right wing extremist. Well done, Lucy Ellmann.
For Ellmann, a Midwesterner now living in Scotland, it began when she was a child, learning that Lake Erie was officially dead: no plants or animals could exist there any more. “This developed into a disdain for fashion, new buildings, the space program, tree surgery, polyester, pharmaceutical companies, men with short hair, witch-burning, and the Industrial Revolution.” It doesn’t have to make sense; a lot of people find this hilarious. You have to go with it.
Here and there she makes good points, of course. Men have trashed the planet (though she provides no evidence women would have done better). After that, they are going to Mars to do the same. Or this: “Who in hell cares about Robert Oppenheimer’s conscience, one of the tiniest things in the universe. Nuclear bombs should never have been produced. “
On the other hand, she seems to have some predilections that really need explaining. Pizza, for one. Crime fiction, she says, is an obscenity, and not reading it is a feminist act. She thinks everyone should stay home, because everyone now has the world at their fingertips: “You’re nothing as an artist these days unless you’ve spent a month in New Mexico, the Arctic, Trinidad, Tibet and Sumatra, and regularly attend the Venice Biennale. People forget that reality is wherever you are. It’s what you’re thinking about that matters.” So for Ellmann, Van Gogh would have been better off never discovering Provence and staying in rainy Belgium instead. In some way, this is both wacko and sidesplittingly funny.
There’s a very odd essay on teenage girls making youtube videos of their morning routines. Ellmann attacks viciously, as usual, calling them shallow, friendless shills for consumer products and so on. I’m sure she would have been one of them had it been possible in her time. I can’t imagine why she bothers to spend so much vitriol on these kids. Young people will reach for the stars however they can. Boys will go after sports scholarships, for a possible stint as a national sports star, for example.
(Maybe that’s Ellmann’s next subject? Oh, I can see it already: “These humongous sixteen year olds, strutting the streets with their thumbs hitting their sides, because their egregious upper bodies are so out of proportion their arms can’t hang properly. Their entire left arms are festooned with blue tattoos so dense their arms look like they’ve been mangled in one of those old-fashioned wringer washing machines men invented to keep women in their place. These boys’ necks are as big as my thigh, which is really saying something with all the pizza I’ve been force fed against my will over the years. They are proto-men, whose only thought is to induce severe concussion in other proto-men, are the future leaders of the world if we don’t stop them now.” That, in a nutshell, is what an Ellmann essay reads like.)
If social media is how young women see the fastest path to success, it’s because there is plenty of precedent. They are right. Good luck to them. The only reason I can think of for her cruelty is the laughs she will get from some readers. She’s like a Don Rickles of literature – the more vile the attacks, the funnier it all seems?
Another good fat target is available in A Spell of Patriarchy, yet another essay oozing hate: “Women now bring home the bacon and cook it too. And men praise us for our autonomy – which leaves them free to watch their requisite ten hours of porn a day, decide on gender quotas, and pollute rivers.” Here, once again, she slams the upper body strength of men, which is one of those THINGS that infuriate her throughout the book.
So while I appreciate the work Ellmann has put into creating this hateful persona, I don’t think I’ll be reading much more of it.
David Wineberg
It is angry. Ellmann complains about everything, and every aspect of everything. Even the TOC is labeled the Table of Discontents. Outside of orgasms and money, nothing seems to rate for her. She is against electricity. She is against travel. She is against teens explaining their morning routines on youtube. Mostly, she is against men. She sums up men early on:
“What riches there once were, what beauties! Raindrops on roses and crop tops on cuties. Now it’s just tear gas and water hoses, and Mexican children tied up with strings. These are a few of their favourite things. Quarry every mountain, wreck every stream.”
At times, it can be termed satirical. In by far her longest essay, she proposes a three strikes and you’re out series – of strikes against men. Her evidence of the need is with things like: “Men obliterate beavers so they can build their own dams! “
Strike one is withholding housework, since no man has any clue how to do it himself. Along the way, she declares a moratorium on discussing anyone’s looks. During the strike, there is to be no talking about anyone’s appearance for one year. “The beauteous would survive a slight lessening of attention and acclaim, and the rest of us could relax. After a year of such abstinence I’d bet we’d be cured of the habit and be much better conversationalists.“
Strike two is no more war work, which soon devolves into just no work at all. She specifies to “withhold women’s labour in the workforce, because after all, who wants to WORK?” (Her caps.)
Strike number three is the good old withholding of sex, from the playbook of the Ancient Greeks. Money for sex is the aim, a theme Ellmann comes back to in later essays as well. It’s all about the money, ultimately. She wants men to fork over all their money and let women run the world. This comes up throughout the book.
Three strikes and they’re out of wealth and power. And if that doesn’t work, there is a fourth strike she is holding in reserve: pizza. Ellmann hates pizza (too), and insists all women hate it. Men force it on them, whenever possible. Prevent pizza, and you can rule the world. Apparently.
That all this conflicts directly with her complaints about women spending so much time on fashion, makeup and jewelry, presumably to obtain favors from men, is not broached. We wouldn’t want sense to interfere with the essence of these essays.
This essay, called simply Three Strikes. is both improved and hobbled by an astonishing amount of footnotes. The footnotes are a good five times as long as the essay. It makes for very choppy reading, trying to make both streams work at the same times. The footnotes are full of references to books, websites, newspaper and magazine articles to back her anecdotal charges, which is good. But as literature, it needs work.
Things Are Against Us is the title of both the book and the first essay. The essay is about THINGS. The word THINGS is always capitalized, and appears seemingly hundreds of times, as virtually every little THING is grating, annoying, defective or malevolent. THINGS are out to get her, much like Woody Allen’s early battles with appliances. It is a jarring read, and brings up Ellmann’s mains stylistic tic – lists. She loves long lists of items to complain about. She can be creative with them, making them rhyme, or listing the items alphabetically, or adding something bizarrely irrelevant to break them up. But they do seem endless. The lists can be nouns, verbs or adjectives; doesn’t help. They quickly become predictable and forgettable.
She reminds me specifically of James Thurber, who used to do this in some of the hundreds of essays he published, mainly in the New Yorker. Thurber would write about a letter of the alphabet, or a topic of general interest, or of someone in his family. He would make lists; he would exhaust the subject. It got to be very unfunny and most tiresome.
Ellmann differentiates herself though, because she has created a persona to do all the complaining and expand on the bitterness. This nasty character can be as obnoxious as Ellmann wants her to be, and get away with it. The persona does not have to be rational, logical or even conscious of how obnoxious she is. She has created a distinct character. Think of Jack Benny being stingy. Or WC Fields hating small children. Or Bill Dana being a Mexican immigrant. Or Brent Terhune being a right wing extremist. Well done, Lucy Ellmann.
For Ellmann, a Midwesterner now living in Scotland, it began when she was a child, learning that Lake Erie was officially dead: no plants or animals could exist there any more. “This developed into a disdain for fashion, new buildings, the space program, tree surgery, polyester, pharmaceutical companies, men with short hair, witch-burning, and the Industrial Revolution.” It doesn’t have to make sense; a lot of people find this hilarious. You have to go with it.
Here and there she makes good points, of course. Men have trashed the planet (though she provides no evidence women would have done better). After that, they are going to Mars to do the same. Or this: “Who in hell cares about Robert Oppenheimer’s conscience, one of the tiniest things in the universe. Nuclear bombs should never have been produced. “
On the other hand, she seems to have some predilections that really need explaining. Pizza, for one. Crime fiction, she says, is an obscenity, and not reading it is a feminist act. She thinks everyone should stay home, because everyone now has the world at their fingertips: “You’re nothing as an artist these days unless you’ve spent a month in New Mexico, the Arctic, Trinidad, Tibet and Sumatra, and regularly attend the Venice Biennale. People forget that reality is wherever you are. It’s what you’re thinking about that matters.” So for Ellmann, Van Gogh would have been better off never discovering Provence and staying in rainy Belgium instead. In some way, this is both wacko and sidesplittingly funny.
There’s a very odd essay on teenage girls making youtube videos of their morning routines. Ellmann attacks viciously, as usual, calling them shallow, friendless shills for consumer products and so on. I’m sure she would have been one of them had it been possible in her time. I can’t imagine why she bothers to spend so much vitriol on these kids. Young people will reach for the stars however they can. Boys will go after sports scholarships, for a possible stint as a national sports star, for example.
(Maybe that’s Ellmann’s next subject? Oh, I can see it already: “These humongous sixteen year olds, strutting the streets with their thumbs hitting their sides, because their egregious upper bodies are so out of proportion their arms can’t hang properly. Their entire left arms are festooned with blue tattoos so dense their arms look like they’ve been mangled in one of those old-fashioned wringer washing machines men invented to keep women in their place. These boys’ necks are as big as my thigh, which is really saying something with all the pizza I’ve been force fed against my will over the years. They are proto-men, whose only thought is to induce severe concussion in other proto-men, are the future leaders of the world if we don’t stop them now.” That, in a nutshell, is what an Ellmann essay reads like.)
If social media is how young women see the fastest path to success, it’s because there is plenty of precedent. They are right. Good luck to them. The only reason I can think of for her cruelty is the laughs she will get from some readers. She’s like a Don Rickles of literature – the more vile the attacks, the funnier it all seems?
Another good fat target is available in A Spell of Patriarchy, yet another essay oozing hate: “Women now bring home the bacon and cook it too. And men praise us for our autonomy – which leaves them free to watch their requisite ten hours of porn a day, decide on gender quotas, and pollute rivers.” Here, once again, she slams the upper body strength of men, which is one of those THINGS that infuriate her throughout the book.
So while I appreciate the work Ellmann has put into creating this hateful persona, I don’t think I’ll be reading much more of it.
David Wineberg
August 4, 2021
Angry, provocative, political and funny.
July 16, 2021
More so a collection of rants rather than essays, Lucy Ellmann goes off in Things Are Against Us. This book continues on the strengths and themes of both Ducks, Newburyport (shortlisted for the Booker prize) and the author’s wider writing but in more digestible non-fiction form.
Things Are Against Us ★★★★★
In the delightfully whimsical opening essay, what starts off as a complaint about the “anarchy of THINGS” that cause minor problems – machines that conk out, duvet covers whose “deviltry is legendary” and grapefruits that will spit in your eye – is brought neatly round to the culpability of humans in always wrecking, polluting and shooting “THINGS”. She even blames humans for “lugging poor old boulders all the way to Stonehenge”. No surprise this is my favorite essay as it is most stylistically reminiscent of “Ducks, Newburyport” with its wide ranging subject matter drawn together by the repeated use of “THINGS”
The Underground Bunker ★★★★☆
“Men couldn’t oppress us any better if they really did get together in an underground bunker and plan the whole thing out. Which I half-suspect they do. How else would they all come up with the same identical thoughts on high heels, inflatable sex dolls, and the pay gap? (Though Trump’s taste in femininity always seemed a little corny.) In the absence of anything positive to contribute, male power rests on a tiresome combination of volition, violation, and volatility, along with booze, biz, bellowing, and boring the pants off you.”
Pygmalion in the White House ★★★★☆
One of the beauties of Ellmann’s essays is the unexpectedness of her references, and this one is loaded with them. I love the creative (A) to (Z) presentation of Trump’s America with an (A) to (Z) of hoped for solutions.
Three Strikes ★★★☆☆
“There are three forms of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labor strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two.”
This essay is modeled very explicitly on Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas plus David Foster-Wallace style footnotes which form a parallel essay in itself. Entertaining but a bit too far-fetched for me to take seriously…
A Spell of Patriarchy ★★☆☆☆
Ellmann outs Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller ‘Spellbound’ as a #MeToo film in this utterly boring essay.
Third Rate Zeroes ★★☆☆☆
More Trump rants and why most of the attention we give other’s looks is wholly unnecessary (she even argues that physical descriptions of fictional characters are unless).
Consider Pistons and Pumps ★★★☆☆
“Consider Pistons and Pumps. Sockets and plugs. Consider shafts. Cogs. Funnels. We cover the earth with stuff in the image of our genitalia. Almost every machine we produce is unashamedly coital, just one thing after another sticking out of something, or into something. And buttons, how we love pressing buttons! It must be some dim collective memory of the G-spot. Every president has to have his or her finger on the goddamn Button.”
The Woman in the House ★★★☆☆
A mini biography on Laura Ingals Wilder (was wondering what the narrator from Ducks, Newburyport was going on about).
The Lost Art of Staying Put ★★★★☆
All my introverts unite! An insightful/hilarious essay about travelling and how the human need to experience things has brought a lot of the problems such as pandemics, environmental destruction and famine.
Bras—a Life Sentence ★★★☆☆
No feminist essay collection is complete without a rant about bras, but Ellmann doesn’t add anything new here.
Morning Routine Girls ★★★★★
Let’s talk about influencers. So cynical. So good.
Sing the Unelectric ★★★☆☆
When the “primordial shit hits the electric fan,” and all current sources of energy are gone, what will you have?
Ah, Men ★★☆☆☆
Another book related essay is which Ellmann starts off with the problems of living in a patriarchal state and then delves into the problem with crime fiction.
Take The Money Honey ★★★☆☆
Female appropriation of wealth, property and power “…yanking cash out of male hands is a humanitarian act. It’s your new job, it’s your right… and it’s our only hope.”
Things Are Against Us ★★★★★
In the delightfully whimsical opening essay, what starts off as a complaint about the “anarchy of THINGS” that cause minor problems – machines that conk out, duvet covers whose “deviltry is legendary” and grapefruits that will spit in your eye – is brought neatly round to the culpability of humans in always wrecking, polluting and shooting “THINGS”. She even blames humans for “lugging poor old boulders all the way to Stonehenge”. No surprise this is my favorite essay as it is most stylistically reminiscent of “Ducks, Newburyport” with its wide ranging subject matter drawn together by the repeated use of “THINGS”
The Underground Bunker ★★★★☆
“Men couldn’t oppress us any better if they really did get together in an underground bunker and plan the whole thing out. Which I half-suspect they do. How else would they all come up with the same identical thoughts on high heels, inflatable sex dolls, and the pay gap? (Though Trump’s taste in femininity always seemed a little corny.) In the absence of anything positive to contribute, male power rests on a tiresome combination of volition, violation, and volatility, along with booze, biz, bellowing, and boring the pants off you.”
Pygmalion in the White House ★★★★☆
One of the beauties of Ellmann’s essays is the unexpectedness of her references, and this one is loaded with them. I love the creative (A) to (Z) presentation of Trump’s America with an (A) to (Z) of hoped for solutions.
Three Strikes ★★★☆☆
“There are three forms of strike I’d recommend: a housework strike, a labor strike, and a sex strike. I can’t wait for the first two.”
This essay is modeled very explicitly on Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas plus David Foster-Wallace style footnotes which form a parallel essay in itself. Entertaining but a bit too far-fetched for me to take seriously…
A Spell of Patriarchy ★★☆☆☆
Ellmann outs Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller ‘Spellbound’ as a #MeToo film in this utterly boring essay.
Third Rate Zeroes ★★☆☆☆
More Trump rants and why most of the attention we give other’s looks is wholly unnecessary (she even argues that physical descriptions of fictional characters are unless).
Consider Pistons and Pumps ★★★☆☆
“Consider Pistons and Pumps. Sockets and plugs. Consider shafts. Cogs. Funnels. We cover the earth with stuff in the image of our genitalia. Almost every machine we produce is unashamedly coital, just one thing after another sticking out of something, or into something. And buttons, how we love pressing buttons! It must be some dim collective memory of the G-spot. Every president has to have his or her finger on the goddamn Button.”
The Woman in the House ★★★☆☆
A mini biography on Laura Ingals Wilder (was wondering what the narrator from Ducks, Newburyport was going on about).
The Lost Art of Staying Put ★★★★☆
All my introverts unite! An insightful/hilarious essay about travelling and how the human need to experience things has brought a lot of the problems such as pandemics, environmental destruction and famine.
Bras—a Life Sentence ★★★☆☆
No feminist essay collection is complete without a rant about bras, but Ellmann doesn’t add anything new here.
Morning Routine Girls ★★★★★
Let’s talk about influencers. So cynical. So good.
Sing the Unelectric ★★★☆☆
When the “primordial shit hits the electric fan,” and all current sources of energy are gone, what will you have?
Ah, Men ★★☆☆☆
Another book related essay is which Ellmann starts off with the problems of living in a patriarchal state and then delves into the problem with crime fiction.
Take The Money Honey ★★★☆☆
Female appropriation of wealth, property and power “…yanking cash out of male hands is a humanitarian act. It’s your new job, it’s your right… and it’s our only hope.”
November 20, 2021
Lucy Ellmann is pissed and I am here for it. In this collection, she goes in on obvious targets: capitalism, climate change, misogyny, and Trump (who she describes artfully, amongst many other things, as a "lying liar"), but she also tackles airlines, travellers, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hitchcock movies, morning routine vlogs, the whole genre of crime fiction, the titular 'things', and...all men. While I did not agree with everything she says, I don't think you're meant to, and I took the point she was making every time.
This collection is caustic, it's vitriolic, it's whip-smart, and it's laugh-out-loud funny. In particular, America being described as "the worst boy scout jamboree in history. Or jerk circle,” made me die. The best essay for me was the titular essay 'Things Are Against Us', which I loved for its poetic style and all the hot takes. I also adored the searing critique of teenage morning routine vloggers, whom Ellman rightly points out are vapid and a result of monstrous capitalism.
In the description of the author at the end, Ellmann admits she hates filling out forms and cries when she doesn't get her way, and that resonated with me deep in my soul.
This collection is caustic, it's vitriolic, it's whip-smart, and it's laugh-out-loud funny. In particular, America being described as "the worst boy scout jamboree in history. Or jerk circle,” made me die. The best essay for me was the titular essay 'Things Are Against Us', which I loved for its poetic style and all the hot takes. I also adored the searing critique of teenage morning routine vloggers, whom Ellman rightly points out are vapid and a result of monstrous capitalism.
In the description of the author at the end, Ellmann admits she hates filling out forms and cries when she doesn't get her way, and that resonated with me deep in my soul.
November 7, 2021
Yipes. The hypnotic intelligence and soaring wit that informed every page of Ducks, Newburyport are almost wholly absent in this one-note squall. Ellmann's wearisome predilection for tautology makes a chore of working one's way through this relatively slim collection; she's the drunk at the end of the bar whose leather-lunged harangue—touching on everything from [checks notes] the horrors of electricity† to a frankly baffling denunciation of, um, YouTube makeup tutorials—is forever being short-circuited by synaptic misfires and solipsistic dead ends. (Ellmann's critical assessments amount to a sort of tidal expression of incredulity that anyone would be stupid and/or base enough to enjoy anything that she doesn't appreciate in turn. Among the elements on her I-Can't-Believe-You-Lowlife-Mouthbreathers-Like-That-Shit list include pizza, Doc Martens, crime fiction and travel.)
†"Electricity is a kind of ethereal rapist, interfering with everyone. It's a form of abuse."
†"Electricity is a kind of ethereal rapist, interfering with everyone. It's a form of abuse."
August 20, 2021
Firstly: Ellmann hates everything. Everything that's masculine, male or say, not female. Ellmann hates every 'thing' that ever existed, exists, or will exist. She hates technology, electricity, and social media; she hates bras, zips, and hooks; she HATES travel, airplanes, and exoduses; she hates all religion, consumerism, capitalism, and politics men have built; she hates football, spiderman, hunting, stocks, and every other leisure activity men have constructed for themselves. She hates that woman, being a more responsible and responsive counterpart, is still being supressed through invisible mental institutions. But more than everything, Lucy Ellmann hates Donald Trump.
Everything she hates, she hates for a reason that resonates deep within EVERYONE'S heart! And, I LOVE this woman for that!!
This might well be the most daring book ever - or at least in what I had read. Ellmann, through the book calls out to all the women of the world to take over the world, and explicitly, without doubt, never compromising, and without mercy retells the world's history and progress from a female point of view, and from an essentially intrusive ecological point of view. But this book, she establishes herself as a foremost Eco-Feminist, who is relentless in her pursuit, strong at voice, and clear with her opinions. Not that everyone should agree with her views, but when once she's done with her argument, we would have very little to do! The most essential book of the era, I'd call, Ellmann is one of the greatest English writers living!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Everything she hates, she hates for a reason that resonates deep within EVERYONE'S heart! And, I LOVE this woman for that!!
This might well be the most daring book ever - or at least in what I had read. Ellmann, through the book calls out to all the women of the world to take over the world, and explicitly, without doubt, never compromising, and without mercy retells the world's history and progress from a female point of view, and from an essentially intrusive ecological point of view. But this book, she establishes herself as a foremost Eco-Feminist, who is relentless in her pursuit, strong at voice, and clear with her opinions. Not that everyone should agree with her views, but when once she's done with her argument, we would have very little to do! The most essential book of the era, I'd call, Ellmann is one of the greatest English writers living!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
October 26, 2021
I often find it distasteful to begin a “review” (a word I try my very best to shy away from) by relating one work to another, but my lack of available brainpower can’t summon any better starting point at this moment. So, you’ll forgive me if I unnecessarily shadow this book under its predecessor.
If you liked Duck, Newburyport, you’re in for a majorly satisfying, essayistic romp with Things Are Against Us. Many of the characteristics of that novel - from its alliterative wordplay to solipsistic preoccupations with the modern world - return here, supersized in the process. I’m sure Lucy wouldn’t appreciate that turn of phrase, given fast food is haughtily criticized throughout.
I don’t recall laughing this hard at a nonfiction collection since reading David Sedaris, but this is a rare case of frequent, genuine, laugh-out-louds (not just the acronymised expression). What’s even more enjoyable about Ellman’s writing is the energy and intelligence she deploys in making her cases for – or rather, against – various facets of our twenty-first-century lifestyle. Nuclear power, YouTube influencers, international travel, and men (pretty much all of them) are excoriated without restraint or second thought.
While I, by virtue of my gender identity, am the target of much of her vitriol, I can’t help but relish as she rightfully and entertainingly dismantles much of what I consider to be routine features of my privileged cis existence. I can’t be angry because she’s absolutely fucking right... on pretty much everything. I think she may ought to reconsider using true crime novels as an article of evidence against men, given that the majority of the genre’s consumers are women. But that’s a small quibble, and there’s far too much detail here to let something that trivial spoil the fun.
So here’s the TL;DR: Cutting, witty, self-effacing, reflective, and endlessly funny, Things Are Against Us is a treat that you can blow through in a weekend. And if my experience is any indication, you will.
Thanks so much to Text Publishing for sending this my way! No, it's not sponsored content. They just lucked out that I enjoyed it.
If you liked Duck, Newburyport, you’re in for a majorly satisfying, essayistic romp with Things Are Against Us. Many of the characteristics of that novel - from its alliterative wordplay to solipsistic preoccupations with the modern world - return here, supersized in the process. I’m sure Lucy wouldn’t appreciate that turn of phrase, given fast food is haughtily criticized throughout.
I don’t recall laughing this hard at a nonfiction collection since reading David Sedaris, but this is a rare case of frequent, genuine, laugh-out-louds (not just the acronymised expression). What’s even more enjoyable about Ellman’s writing is the energy and intelligence she deploys in making her cases for – or rather, against – various facets of our twenty-first-century lifestyle. Nuclear power, YouTube influencers, international travel, and men (pretty much all of them) are excoriated without restraint or second thought.
While I, by virtue of my gender identity, am the target of much of her vitriol, I can’t help but relish as she rightfully and entertainingly dismantles much of what I consider to be routine features of my privileged cis existence. I can’t be angry because she’s absolutely fucking right... on pretty much everything. I think she may ought to reconsider using true crime novels as an article of evidence against men, given that the majority of the genre’s consumers are women. But that’s a small quibble, and there’s far too much detail here to let something that trivial spoil the fun.
So here’s the TL;DR: Cutting, witty, self-effacing, reflective, and endlessly funny, Things Are Against Us is a treat that you can blow through in a weekend. And if my experience is any indication, you will.
Thanks so much to Text Publishing for sending this my way! No, it's not sponsored content. They just lucked out that I enjoyed it.
Read
August 13, 2021The following reviews have been shared by Text Publishing - publisher of Things Are Against Us
‘As full of wit as wisdom…Urgent, angry and often very funny.’
Bookmunch
‘[Ellmann’s] ire is matched only by an irrepressible comic impulse…She’s out to foment revolution.’
Observer
‘Funny, sarcastic, playful and self-deprecating, but also provocative and fantastically experimental with language and structure. Ellmann is a master of lists, a seemingly prosaic procession of words builds to a rhythm and poetically creates original insight into how humans are ruining the planet and all of humanity.’
Readings
'[A] wickedly funny, rousing, depressing, caps-driven work of linguistic gymnastics hellbent on upbraiding the deleterious forces of the prevailing misogyny.'
Guardian
'[Lucy Ellmann's] blazing diatribes and comedic energy fuel the purposeful lamentation of these hilarious and potent essays.'
Saturday Paper
'Fiery, provocative…For all the wit and wordplay, Ellmann has important points to make, not least about the way that our flailing world is upheld.'
Independent
'A series of extremely entertaining rants.'
BBC Front Row
'[Ellmann] is just so wise and cynical and angry…she’s not a polite writer; she doesn’t hold back.’
RNZ Nine to Noon
'Something of a literary agent provocateur, lobbing essays like hand grenades into the public domain, [Lucy Ellmann] covers a wide range of topics in this collection...Whether satiric, wacky, or angry, Booker-shortlisted novelist Ellmann is interesting and fearless.’
SMH/Age
‘As full of wit as wisdom…Urgent, angry and often very funny.’
Bookmunch
‘[Ellmann’s] ire is matched only by an irrepressible comic impulse…She’s out to foment revolution.’
Observer
‘Funny, sarcastic, playful and self-deprecating, but also provocative and fantastically experimental with language and structure. Ellmann is a master of lists, a seemingly prosaic procession of words builds to a rhythm and poetically creates original insight into how humans are ruining the planet and all of humanity.’
Readings
'[A] wickedly funny, rousing, depressing, caps-driven work of linguistic gymnastics hellbent on upbraiding the deleterious forces of the prevailing misogyny.'
Guardian
'[Lucy Ellmann's] blazing diatribes and comedic energy fuel the purposeful lamentation of these hilarious and potent essays.'
Saturday Paper
'Fiery, provocative…For all the wit and wordplay, Ellmann has important points to make, not least about the way that our flailing world is upheld.'
Independent
'A series of extremely entertaining rants.'
BBC Front Row
'[Ellmann] is just so wise and cynical and angry…she’s not a polite writer; she doesn’t hold back.’
RNZ Nine to Noon
'Something of a literary agent provocateur, lobbing essays like hand grenades into the public domain, [Lucy Ellmann] covers a wide range of topics in this collection...Whether satiric, wacky, or angry, Booker-shortlisted novelist Ellmann is interesting and fearless.’
SMH/Age
August 1, 2021
Read her fiction. It's far superior.
Justifiably angry (against the patriarchy, not just for its oppression of women & children, but animals & the planet), but lacks any incisiveness to hone any argument. It plays it for laughs in many places.
I agreed the **** out of 95% of this book. But I just didn't think it helps progress our cause one iota.
The one essay I really enjoyed, about teenage girls' "Wake up/ Make Up" Youtube channels, has no data or facts to back up wha i think are pertinent points. And then I remember Jarett Kobek already wrote about all this in I Hate the Internet in a much more entertaining and convincing way.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjN4p...
Justifiably angry (against the patriarchy, not just for its oppression of women & children, but animals & the planet), but lacks any incisiveness to hone any argument. It plays it for laughs in many places.
I agreed the **** out of 95% of this book. But I just didn't think it helps progress our cause one iota.
The one essay I really enjoyed, about teenage girls' "Wake up/ Make Up" Youtube channels, has no data or facts to back up wha i think are pertinent points. And then I remember Jarett Kobek already wrote about all this in I Hate the Internet in a much more entertaining and convincing way.
Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjN4p...
November 27, 2021
The book is a short collection of essays. I originally loved Things Are Against Us - the titular and first essay in the book. Though the use of “THINGS” is overused, I liked it, there was even a hint of hope at the end. However, as the book went on I began to have concerns. In later chapters, the book turns into a second wave feminist novel, meant for people who believe in centering whiteness, white feminism and in the myth of two genders.
Ellmann gets lost in her own contradictions. On one hand, she claims to be a feminist - dedicating almost an entire book to furthering the cause of women. However, Ellmann’s feminism really REALLY does not seem to be for all womxn. Instead, it’s trapped in this baby-boomer narrow minded conception of the gender binary.
Congratulations! Ellmann mentions Indigenous rights and acknowledges systemic racism. However, any progressive thought is negated when she spends a chapter defending an author who “wasn’t as racist as she could have been.” Gross. Ellmann then spends a chapter discussing the evils of travel. While I agree with her on some level, Ellmann centres whiteness to such an extent that there is no room for any other rationale as to why someone might want to see the world. Truly, Ellmann’s writing takes up so much space in the room with it’s whiteness that it stifles, suffocates and disregards any other perspective.
Ellmann’s later works are filled with rage - at the young, at the world, at women too - the very women that she believes need to be uplifted. Ellmann’s concept is that there is still a heirarchy amongst women - the top: those just like her (Read: white, older, elite, etc.,) the bottom is designated for the vain, social-media users who, God Forbid(!) want to *exercise their rights over their own body* and get a breast reduction (read: anyone under the age of 55, non-white, individuals who can understand and enjoy the technology built by her generation). Ellmann is really out here and, through a thinly veiled book, essentially posits that all “women” can be equal if we think like her. However, if the *deplorable womxn* are still out there, doing what they want to their bodies and going on social media than there is no way than womxn can unite - as some will always be better than the others. In Ellman’s case, the whites, elite and privileged win out! Listen to them! Ignore the poor!
Aside from that, I would love to know what in her life has made her so angry. Because she is not angry at injustice for all. She is angry at injustice that she, as a white woman living in England (historically a colonizing nation) and from America (colonizing nation again) has faced in her life. I’d encourage those who like this book to look inwards and then go read an Indigenous author.
Ellmann gets lost in her own contradictions. On one hand, she claims to be a feminist - dedicating almost an entire book to furthering the cause of women. However, Ellmann’s feminism really REALLY does not seem to be for all womxn. Instead, it’s trapped in this baby-boomer narrow minded conception of the gender binary.
Congratulations! Ellmann mentions Indigenous rights and acknowledges systemic racism. However, any progressive thought is negated when she spends a chapter defending an author who “wasn’t as racist as she could have been.” Gross. Ellmann then spends a chapter discussing the evils of travel. While I agree with her on some level, Ellmann centres whiteness to such an extent that there is no room for any other rationale as to why someone might want to see the world. Truly, Ellmann’s writing takes up so much space in the room with it’s whiteness that it stifles, suffocates and disregards any other perspective.
Ellmann’s later works are filled with rage - at the young, at the world, at women too - the very women that she believes need to be uplifted. Ellmann’s concept is that there is still a heirarchy amongst women - the top: those just like her (Read: white, older, elite, etc.,) the bottom is designated for the vain, social-media users who, God Forbid(!) want to *exercise their rights over their own body* and get a breast reduction (read: anyone under the age of 55, non-white, individuals who can understand and enjoy the technology built by her generation). Ellmann is really out here and, through a thinly veiled book, essentially posits that all “women” can be equal if we think like her. However, if the *deplorable womxn* are still out there, doing what they want to their bodies and going on social media than there is no way than womxn can unite - as some will always be better than the others. In Ellman’s case, the whites, elite and privileged win out! Listen to them! Ignore the poor!
Aside from that, I would love to know what in her life has made her so angry. Because she is not angry at injustice for all. She is angry at injustice that she, as a white woman living in England (historically a colonizing nation) and from America (colonizing nation again) has faced in her life. I’d encourage those who like this book to look inwards and then go read an Indigenous author.
November 2, 2021
THINGS disappoint us, as does the title essay from this collection. It had the same hypnotising cadence as 'Ducks, Newburyport', but for me lacked the humorous tone. And why blaming things first and foremost and not humans? And putting the Large Hadron Collider in the list together with fascism, poverty, ... on the minus side of thousands of years of male rule? While the Chrysler Building is on the plus side? 'What a fucking liberty!' as Catherine Tate's Nan would say.
The next two essays, 'The Underground Bunker' and 'Trapped Family Fingers', were underwhelming as well, but luckily Ellmann was back at her best in 'Three Strikes'.
Sadly, the rest of the collection is quite mixed and, while I agreed with most that she wrote, I think that's also why I didn't like it that much: it reminded me too much of myself at times. To be clear, though: Ellmann is more articulate and a lot funnier, especially in 'The Lost Art of Staying Put' she's on a (sedentary) roll.
And finally: I've now really read enough about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
So, let's not complain too much, there were some very good complaints in this collection after all.
The next two essays, 'The Underground Bunker' and 'Trapped Family Fingers', were underwhelming as well, but luckily Ellmann was back at her best in 'Three Strikes'.
Sadly, the rest of the collection is quite mixed and, while I agreed with most that she wrote, I think that's also why I didn't like it that much: it reminded me too much of myself at times. To be clear, though: Ellmann is more articulate and a lot funnier, especially in 'The Lost Art of Staying Put' she's on a (sedentary) roll.
And finally: I've now really read enough about Laura Ingalls Wilder.
So, let's not complain too much, there were some very good complaints in this collection after all.
May 8, 2023
I bought this book because I loved Ducks, Newburyport. I was very disappointed with it.
I found the ranty tone wearing. While the lists were endearing in Ducks, Newburyport, in these essays, there were irritating. Little original thought. I feel like I have heard the arguments in these essays over and over again in newspaper and magazine articles. Yes, Trump was a twat, but we've heard that before. Let's move on. And I am sick and tired of all this man blaming. It doesn't get us anywhere.
The one idea that was interesting to me was that men were designed to pleasure women sexually and that sex should be all about women's pleasure. That's an idea that could take us places in this porn addled world. But Ellman didn't really flesh that one out.
I found the ranty tone wearing. While the lists were endearing in Ducks, Newburyport, in these essays, there were irritating. Little original thought. I feel like I have heard the arguments in these essays over and over again in newspaper and magazine articles. Yes, Trump was a twat, but we've heard that before. Let's move on. And I am sick and tired of all this man blaming. It doesn't get us anywhere.
The one idea that was interesting to me was that men were designed to pleasure women sexually and that sex should be all about women's pleasure. That's an idea that could take us places in this porn addled world. But Ellman didn't really flesh that one out.
January 10, 2023
"PATRIARCHY'S ONLY AN IDEA AFTER ALL. LIKE AN EVIL SPELL, WE ARE NOT BOUND TO IT."
Biting essays dissecting the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, beauty standards, economics, purity culture, war, horror movies and Hollywood tropes, presidential campaigns, plastic surgery, environmental ruin, the fractured justice system, and the hand that the patriarchy has played in all the aforementioned atrocities. While some passages left me feeling weary, teetering on annoyed, I have acquired a handful of talking points for my rants that I whip out to ruin dinner parties with. The history of celibacy being used as a tool of feminist political protest will most definitely be mentioned at the next light-hearted family gathering.
The eighth story provides us with a deep dive into the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder, where Ellmann pens an eloquent passage on the urgency of reparations and Land Back. The eleventh unpacks the YouTube Beauty Guru, a phenomenon that Ellmann believes is having a ruinous effect on the developing minds of, well, everyone. I want to defend my YouTube girlies, and I am literally watching my sixth VOGUE get ready with me of the morning as I type this, but I fear she may be spot on. My brain is putrefying and I'm letting it. I'm too busy learning about the pros and cons of eyebrow lamination.
The thirteenth tackles true crime, and the last essay, signed off with an exquisite and always-on-my-mind Audre Lorde quote, reads like that monologue from Fleabag, the one about our pain being “built in.” Certainly a favorite.
This book did not restore my hope in humanity, rekindle my faith in this place or ready me for another election season, nor was it meant to. “In times of pestilence… let’s complain.” Hilarious, well researched and insightful in some places, tedious and repetitive in others. Full of footnotes and Fran Lebowitz quotes, Things Are Against Us is a practice in venting. If that’s your thing, then enjoy!
Biting essays dissecting the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, beauty standards, economics, purity culture, war, horror movies and Hollywood tropes, presidential campaigns, plastic surgery, environmental ruin, the fractured justice system, and the hand that the patriarchy has played in all the aforementioned atrocities. While some passages left me feeling weary, teetering on annoyed, I have acquired a handful of talking points for my rants that I whip out to ruin dinner parties with. The history of celibacy being used as a tool of feminist political protest will most definitely be mentioned at the next light-hearted family gathering.
The eighth story provides us with a deep dive into the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder, where Ellmann pens an eloquent passage on the urgency of reparations and Land Back. The eleventh unpacks the YouTube Beauty Guru, a phenomenon that Ellmann believes is having a ruinous effect on the developing minds of, well, everyone. I want to defend my YouTube girlies, and I am literally watching my sixth VOGUE get ready with me of the morning as I type this, but I fear she may be spot on. My brain is putrefying and I'm letting it. I'm too busy learning about the pros and cons of eyebrow lamination.
The thirteenth tackles true crime, and the last essay, signed off with an exquisite and always-on-my-mind Audre Lorde quote, reads like that monologue from Fleabag, the one about our pain being “built in.” Certainly a favorite.
This book did not restore my hope in humanity, rekindle my faith in this place or ready me for another election season, nor was it meant to. “In times of pestilence… let’s complain.” Hilarious, well researched and insightful in some places, tedious and repetitive in others. Full of footnotes and Fran Lebowitz quotes, Things Are Against Us is a practice in venting. If that’s your thing, then enjoy!
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