Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction

by Lionel Shriver

Overview

“A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don’t. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person.”—Wall Street Journal

A striking collection of essays from the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Should We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That, and The Post-Birthday World.

Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces “under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous” points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us.

Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver’s piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes.

In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language “crimes,” while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Many an essay in Abominations reflects sentiments that have “brought hell and damnation down on my head,” as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with “cancellation” more than once.

Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. In revisiting old pieces and rejected essays, Shriver updates and expands her thinking. “Enlightened” progressive readers will find plenty to challenge here. But they may find, to their surprise, insights with which they agree.

A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, Abominations reveals this provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063094307
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/17/2024
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Although Lionel Shriver has published many novels, a collection of essays, and a column in the Spectator since 2017, and her journalism has been featured in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, she in no way wishes for the inclusion of this information to imply that she is more “intelligent” or “accomplished” than anyone else. The outdated meritocracy of intellectual achievement has made her a bestselling author multiple times and accorded her awards, including the Orange Prize, but she accepts that all of these accidental accolades are basically meaningless. She lives in Portugal and Brooklyn, New York.

Hometown:

Brooklyn, New York, and London, England

Date of Birth:

May 18, 1957

Place of Birth:

Gastonia, North Carolina

Education:

B.A., Barnard College of Columbia University, 1978; M.F.A. in Fiction Writing, Columbia University, 1982

Website:

http://www.talkaboutkevin.com

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I The Private Sector

Women of Letters Talk for Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, Indonesia, 2013 7

"Putting Away Childish Things," Sermon in Manchester, England, 2013 11

"Terminal Friendship," The Guardian, 2010 21

"My Teenage Diary," The Guardian, 2015 27

"The Big Story," Financial Times, 2013 31

Greg Shriver's Memorial Tribute, Durham, North Carolina, 2009 37

Part II "What Did You Do in the War, Mommy?"

"Fiction and Identity Politics," Brisbane Writers Festival Opening Address, 2016 45

"Liberals Now Defy the Etymology of the Word," The New York Times, 2016 58

"Writers Blocked," Prospect, 2018 64

"Cruel and Unusual Punishment," Harper's Magazine, 2019 75

"Lefty Lingo," Harper's Magazine, 2019 84

Part III Confessions of an Expat

"Bye-Bye Belfast," 1997 95

"No Exit," Harper's Magazine, 2019 120

"Patrios," Harper's Magazine, 2019 130

Part IV Getting the Blood Running

"Ode to the Hacker," Prospect, 2011 141

"London's Unofficial Olympic Sport," The Atlantic, 2012 146

"Your Gym Routine Is Worthless," Unherd.com Review-Essay on Alison Bechdel's The Secret to Superhuman Strength, 2021 151

Part V Against The Grain

"I Am Not a Kook," The New York Times, 2016 159

"Ikea's Real Genius," The Spectator, 2018 164

"Our Institutions No Longer Understand What They Are For," The Spectator, 2018 168

"Dear WriteNow," The Spectator, 2018 172

"He, She, and It," Prospect, 2016 177

"A Monumental Matter," The Spectator, 2017 185

"Would You Want London to Be Overrun by Americans like Me?" The Spectator, 2021 189

"The Criminalization of Making Money," New Criterion, 2010 193

"Quote-Unquote," The Wall Street Journal, 2008 204

"Lionel Shriver Is Grateful for Pandemic Quarantine (No She Isn't)," Los Angeles Times, 2020 213

Part VI End Papers

"In Defense of Death," Population and Development Review, 2010 221

"I Was Poor, but I Was Happy," The Guardian, 2014 233

"Friendship Agonistes," Prospect, 2011 237

"'I'll Never Put Up with Life in a Care Home,' and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves," The Observer, 2021 245

"Just Because We've Been OK Doesn't Mean We'll Stay That Way," Ramsay Centre Virtual Address, 2020 254

"Catastrophizing Is My Idea of a Good Time," The Spectator, 2038 268

"The Nobody at Cannes," Standpoint, 2011 272

"Semantic Drift," Harper's Magazine, 2019 275

Acknowledgments 285

Editorial Reviews

Shriver’s roving curiosity, her libertarian inclinations and her trans-Atlantic orientation (she resides mostly in England and lived for more than a decade in Northern Ireland) make her a rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don’t. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person.” — Wall Street Journal

"Should be mandatory reading for college freshmen." — Bret Stephens, New York Times

"Lionel Shriver is oddly unpredictable—and that’s what keeps her interesting. She seems to actively resist satisfying expectations." — Washington Post

"A razor-sharp observer of contemporary life who brings an acutely personal viewpoint to global issues in ways that feel both intimate and universal." — Booklist

"Spirited, incendiary, entertaining, and sure to ruffle some feathers." — Kirkus Reviews

"Shriver's fans . . . will make room on their shelves for it." — Publishers Weekly

“Shriver has always been constitutionally inclined toward defiance.” — Ariel Levy, The New Yorker

“Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age.” — Los Angeles Times

"Shriver is a master of the misanthrope.” — Time

“Shriver has always seemed to be at least a few steps ahead of the rest of us.” — New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

08/08/2022

Novelist Shriver (Should We Stay or Should We Go) collects more than two decades’ worth of her nonfiction writing in this hit-or-miss compendium. Topics range from the personal, such as the death of the author’s brother, to the pedantic—as with a look at Shriver’s “battle” against comma splices. Shriver also navigates a slew of professional controversies: in her opening address at the 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival, she said she hoped “the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’ is a passing fad (albeit one not passing fast enough),” and goes on, in “a slight expansion” of a New York Times op-ed (rather than the “the crimped, eviscerated” version that the paper published), to respond to a writer who was upset by the address: “This is a performance of injury, an opportunistic and even triumphant display of injury.” While her prose is reliably strong, some of the stances she takes in service of being a self-proclaimed iconoclast can be a slog to get through, especially when they near condescension. (Of a diversity questionnaire sent to Penguin Random House authors, she writes “You can self-classify as disabled, and three sequential questions obviously hope to elicit that you’ve been as badly educated as humanly possible.”) Shriver’s fans, though, will make room on their shelves for it. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Shriver has always seemed to be at least a few steps ahead of the rest of us.

New York Times Book Review

Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age.

|Los Angeles Times

"Shriver is a master of the misanthrope.

Time

Shriver has always been constitutionally inclined toward defiance.

Ariel Levy

Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age.

Los Angeles Times

"Shriver is a master of the misanthrope.

Time

2022-06-29
Sharp, witty contrarian views.

Journalist and novelist Shriver gathers 35 pieces from her copious output of essays, columns, talks, and opinion pieces, many from the Spectator, where she has been a columnist since 2017, and Harper’s, where she inhabited the “Easy Chair” for a year. A preacher’s daughter born in the U.S., Shriver has lived in the U.K. for more than 30 years, 12 of them in Belfast, and has strong, cranky, shrewd opinions on culture and politics on both sides of the Atlantic. A supporter of Brexit, she “dislikes affirmative action, opposes lockdowns for the suppression of disease, abhors soaring national debts, defends free speech even when people use it to say something unpleasant, and resists uncontrolled mass immigration.” Describing herself as a “socially liberal economic conservative,” her views on issues such as cultural appropriation, #MeToo, and the left’s “preening sanctimony” have generated vehement criticism and led, she admits proudly, to her being canceled three different times. Her wide range of topics includes tennis, urban cycling, fitness, the quality of Ikea furniture, happiness, friendship, and the use—or not—of quotation marks in fiction. In a sermon about her alienation from religious faith, she characterizes religion as “flattening and anthropocentric; it makes the world too known and so too small.” In a memorial tribute, she praises her older brother for having been an iconoclast, “naturally disobedient, defiant, and headstrong.” Many pieces reflect Shriver’s dismay at the “weaponized sensitivity” that has created “an oppressively gendered world, in which identity is more bound up in one’s sex than ever before.” As a straight, White, female novelist, she rails against the idea that creating characters of different ethnicity, race, disability, sexual identity, religion, or class opens her work “to forensic examination” and derision. “The contrived taboo of so-called cultural appropriation,” she asserts, “means we can safely write only autobiography.”

Spirited, incendiary, entertaining, and sure to ruffle some feathers.

Kirkus Reviews