"There''s only one word for Ellen Willis''s work-- exhilarating! Her essays combine passion and moral clarity, anger and a steady commitment to having fun. Best of all, she channels the secret ecstatic undercurrents of late twentieth-century American popular culture, which we need now more than ever. This anthology is espresso for the feminist soul."--Barbara Ehrenreich "Ellen Willis was one of the few great critics of her generation. She was theoretically sophisticated, historically informed, and courageous in her commitment to freedom. Her prose was lyrical and melodic and she was always unsettling!"--Cornel West "Fearless sweet reason, exacting style, and an unbounded sensuous spirit make Ellen Willis''s radical essays among the finest that America has ever produced."--Sean Wilentz "It''s incredible that decades after it first made waves, Ellen Willis''s writing is still as relevant as ever. From abortion and parenting to music and politics, Willis''s cultural critiques stand the test of time and fascinate over and again.
The Essential Ellen Willis reinvigorated me and reminded me why I do the work that I do. It should be required reading for anyone interested in feminism, politics, and everything in between!"--Jessica Valenti "Gathering 53 career-spanning pieces, this is an act of reclamation, a reminder of what a piercing and brilliant writer Willis was."-- Los Angeles Times "Willis often finds her stride in complexity, and here she intricately examines and interrogates the notions of freedom she holds dear. It''s a moving example of a wonderful mind at work."-- Bookforum "One of the great pleasures of The Essential Ellen Willis is watching the journalist and critic figure out how feminism translates into daily life, both for herself and for other women. Willis is intellectually rigorous and deeply idealistic, but also very fun-and her combination of curiosity, wit, skepticism, and enthusiasm grounds her work firmly in the real world."-- New York Magazine''s The Cut "Achieving the kind of lucidity that never flees complexity was always her goal. Spotting the antipodes hidden in seeming allegiances--and vice-versa--was one of her specialties.
Re-encountering insights and stray observations of Willis''s that had stayed messily filed in my brain for 30 years or more was an ongoing pleasure."-- The American Prospect "These essays aren''t ''relevant'' in the sense that you could print them now without an explanation, or in the sense that they''re on-trend with current feminist discussions. But they''re immensely important, because they''re signposts in the evolution of a writer and of a movement."-- In These Times "Reading Ellen Willis'' criticism has always been simultaneously invigorating and depressing for me--invigorating as a reminder that feminist thought can be radical and liberating and nuanced, but depressing when viewed against a 21st-century feminist landscape that too often prizes self-purification and bad-faith consensus over critical thinking and powerful ideas, which have come to seem like two more nice things we can''t have anymore."-- Flavorwire "To read Ellen Willis now reacquaints you with those attractive or pervasive fictions that obscure real power relations and halt progress."-- Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Part of what makes Willis perennially compelling is that she was a utopian thinker, the rigorous rather than the hippie dippy kind now beloved of 1960s detractors. These essays are still capable of making you dizzy with possibility.
"-- Fresh Air "''The Essential Ellen WIllis'' is just that: Essential."-- Text Zur Kunst "Her writing is lucid, sociological, yet big picture, and it''s willing to go deep and personal about not just what the music meant to her, but also the words."-- The Pitchfork Review "With a clarity of thought and the kind of fury that pangs and never scabs over, Willis diagnosed, snarled, and illuminated what she considered to be a central plague of her day: the way our economy limits our creative and cultural expressions."-- Dissent "Her complex, forceful writing on a range of knotty issues made her a challenging writer. Her insistence on the validity of her own experience, and her oft-repeated demand for freedom and pleasure, made her an exhilarating one."-- Forward "No one sounded like Willis then, and no one sounds like her now: wry, playful, humble, genuinely searching, intellectually formidable."-- New York Times Book Review "As befitted her exceptional minority, Willis went on to transcend her entrance through the cellar''s back door and become one of the most significant writers in an era when rock writers turned into brilliant public intellectuals."-- The Buffalo News , Editor''s Choice "As a feminist media scholar, I was especially struck by Willis''s commitment to recognizing the range of pleasures found in media consumption and sexual practice rather than resorting to easy vilification.
"-- Bitch "The most delightful thing about Willis is her consistent championing of the pleasure principle; she was a passionate proponent of sexual freedom throughout her life and a generous, idealistic spirit whose staunch enthusiasm for personal liberty remains infectious, and empowering."-- Bust "Stunning, provocative, erudite, fun, challenging, witty, dire, brave, and above all incisive."--Jenny McPhee, author of A Man of No Moon and No Ordinary Matter "Willis was an extraordinarily clear thinker about things that matter."-- Digital Insider "A remarkably beautiful, bullshit-free passage."-- Critical Mass "[Ellen Willis] was virtually incapable of writing a poor sentence or conceiving an unsurprising insight. Her rigor was unmatched, her fearlessness an inspiration."-- Boston Review "Throughout her work there is an unflagging sense of hope, a belief in the idea that a better world can be achieved through collective effort and social and political transformation. "-- Women''s Review of Books "Her rigor was unmatched, her fearlessness an inspiration.
In every piece, wit lilted like an aria over a basso continuo of moral seriouisness. "-- Boston Review.