Essays touting the joys of excess and capitalism... I think. Honestly, I was not in the right frame of mind when I tried to read this collection of essays, and stopped shortly after the first few pages as I was having trouble making sense of what the author was trying to say. Fairly good rating on Goodreads, overall, so I may give this collection a try at another time.

I took a chance in this book although normally I don’t read these types. However, I was sent a widget and plowed ahead.
I didn’t get much out of the book. I thought I might find some useful tips about declutterring because I have too many books and totes, but I quickly became lost in the author’s mishmash of titles and commentary.
Most of the references the author made I’d never heard before except for Kondo, who I have no,use for since she preaches limited books.
I’m sure this book might be helpful for some readers, but it wasn’t for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts expressed are my own.

I usually use this Substack to promote my reviews of and thoughts on fiction. That keeps this place focused on my overarching goal of examining other worlds, whereas nonfiction usually keeps me so entrenched in the “real one.” I do, however, read some nonfiction (my goal is usually 12+ a year), and since I’ve gotten to review this one in advance, I decided to post it here. So without further delay, read on!

All Things are Too Small is a collection of essays written by cultural critic Becca Rothfeld (you can find her Substack here). I’ve only stumbled on Rothfeld’s criticism recently, but found her thoughts on wunderkind author Sally Rooney, and her takes on gender, to name two essays, particularly interesting. I can’t say that I’ve read a lot of academic criticism, aside from articles in my English undergrad studies, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of it. Rothfeld’s writing strikes a great balance for me: well-written enough and complex enough to satisfy me with new ideas, while being mostly pretty comprehensible to anyone scared away from truly “academic” writing.

The marketing around ATaTS positions it as a collection of essays defending excess against the ascendant minimalist threat. This is what drew my attention to the book in the first place, since it’s an idea I’m fascinated by. In my college years I was caught up in the minimalism trend: the allure of ruthlessly culling my possessions until I could, at a moment’s notice, leave my boring American life behind to backpack around Europe was particularly gripping. What I wanted were not things, but experiences. I tried to meditate, to sort the clutter of my mind into something sleeker, cleaner. The popularity of Marie Kondo represents maybe the height of the minimalist victory, as many of us began to assess our possessions on whether or not they “sparked joy,” and eliminate (though not after saying a fond farewell to) those that didn’t make the cut.

The book’s first two essays, All Things are Too Small and More is More, are the ones that most directly deal with this idea. I found them to be some of the more thought-provoking essays in the book, though one of them centers on dissecting a particular kind of fragmented autofiction that is both critically popular in the literary fiction world today, and a kind of book I rarely - if ever - read. The core of her argument, and the one I found most compelling whenever it surfaced in other essays, is that minimalism focuses on eliminating everything that isn’t necessary to life, but that the joys of life, the things that make us human, are the things we don’t simply need, but the things we want. Rothfeld argues that art and beauty are generally “excessive,” and it’s these things that go beyond our bare subsistence that make life worth living.

But venture much further in the book, and it quickly becomes obvious that the “anti-minimalism” theme of the whole book is just marketing, an attempt to find something, anything, to tie these disparate essays together. In reality, the book finds Rothfeld blending sociological insight, classic auteur film, her own life’s narrative, and political ideology into a scattershot collection that varies in quality.

I enjoyed Normal Novels (the essay I’d already read comparing the work of Sally Rooney to, of all things, Fifty Shades of Grey), and The Flesh, It Makes You Crazy (looking at body horror and the erotic through the lens of auteur filmmaker David Cronenberg), while others like Other People’s Loves and Our True Entertainment Was Arguing are centered on pieces of fiction I either haven’t experience or have entirely forgotten, and thus didn’t get as much out of.

My favorite essays here are the ones most tied to the (marketed) central premise, such as the aforementioned first two, Wherever You Go, You Could Leave (a take-down of the mindfulness idea market), Murder on the Installment Plan (tracing the history of serialized stories through the mystery/crime novel, and my favorite, Only Mercy.

Only Mercy is an exploration of sex in the post #MeToo era, particularly framed around the idea of consent, and deliberately proposing a conception of sex and consent that differs from ideas popular among the post-liberal right (the sexual revolution has gone too far and women actually want stable, emotional, monogamous, child-bearing sex), and the left (our sexual desires are shaped by unequal cultural values, and though any adult can have any kind of sex they want with any other adult(s), it behooves us to try to change our desires to be more egalitarian).

Rothfeld diagnoses her two example approaches to sex as both failing to consider sex in its own right, as a thing people might do and enjoy regardless of its other meanings. To spoil her ultimate conclusion - Rothfeld views sex, and particularly kink, as play. In this way, she brings it back to the vaguely-overarching theory of the collection: play, like art, is not strictly necessary. You might say, it’s excessive, something done for its own sake, because it’s fun, because it’s enjoyable, because it makes life work living.

It’s not brought up at all in the essay, but for me, I couldn’t help carrying that conception of play to my favorite hobby and creative endeavor: running role-playing games for my friends. It’s a form of play that isn’t so different from imaginative make-believe on the playground, but one that takes our adult interests into consideration. Contemporary society doesn’t give adults much acceptable outlets for play; in many circles it even considers play to be incompatible with responsible, sober adulthood. For many people, it’s just sex, if they’re lucky, that feels this way.

For me, play is the ultimate end, a good in and of itself. If the world I want ever comes to pass, the egalitarian world where peoples’ basic needs are met, what is left? Our wants. Our fun. Our play. Our pointless, excessive play.

Overall, this is an intriguing collection of criticism that I didn’t always agree with, or, frankly, understand, but whenever it kept closest to its vague central thesis of the importance of the excessive, the maximalist, the playful, it both challenged me and gave me new ways of thinking about the parts of life most important to me.

Rating: ****

All Things Are Too Small is set to publish on April 2, 2024.

I was not familiar with Rothfeld prior to this, but was intrigued by the concept of someone standing up and proudly proclaiming against minimalism and the holiness for Less - of everything. In this era in which we are constantly confronted by the bizarre dichotomy of the morality of the minimal (as exemplified by everything from tiny houses to minimalist architecture/design to simplifying schedules) and the accessibility of excess (in big box stores where you're encouraged to buy 12 packs of everything to super-sized foods in restaurants and the social media craze to show off your possessions and successes), I was curious to see where a critical consideration of the benefits of more would lead. Unfortunately, I did not find her writing style to my taste and I struggled with this one from early on. In a book praising excess and maximization, I did not expect such dry prose and frequent quoting of "experts" to make her points. Frankly I expected lush and descriptive language, in keeping with the theme. It's possible that her style of analytics and my style of reading simply don't mesh, but this was not a good fit for me and I must confess I didn't find it very interesting or engaging.

As a longtime admirer of Rothfeld’s criticism, this book was a highly anticipated read for me. This excitement dimmed slightly through the opening essays, where Rothfeld aims to situate the thesis of the text (as stated in the subtitle of the book: a “praise of excess”) in the political writings of John Rawls and chooses, rather surprisingly, to contrast her philosophy of maximalism with Marie Kondo’s guide to organization. There are some superficial points of disparity between Rothfeld’s embrace of the excessive and the ethos of the minimalist (namely—is it good or desirable to have more or less stuff?). But the two are so obviously distinct that the comparison does not help to elucidate Rothfeld’s positive view in much detail.

At her least persuasive, Rothfeld relies heavily on quoting those she disagrees with a sardonic bite, presumably expecting her reader to share these feelings of disdain for, e.g., the purported literary value of YA fiction and blandly philistine maxims to reduce one’s book collection to only the “necessities.” Even if she is correct in her assessment of these claims, I’m left wanting an explanation for how she came to these opinions rather than a theatrical dismissal of them.

Her strongest authorial voice is when she speaks as herself, weaving in personal narrative with critical analysis to intimate and honest effect. Rothfeld has a rich understanding, both in the texts that she consumes and in interpreting her own lived experience, and writes in a profoundly lyrical tone that renders the text not only deeply insightful but also luxurious. Although the essays follow no clear order and some have no apparent connection to the main claims regarding maximalism (such as the somewhat random dalliances into true crime, sexual consent, and Sally Rooney), there is something delightfully informal about the meandering soliloquies and I found myself jotting down lovely turns of phrases, looking up the books and films that are referenced, and musing over some of Rothfeld’s particularly striking characterizations. The text is intellectual without feeling dry or educational, and warmly personal without resorting to over-familiarity or effusiveness. Finally, Rothfeld’s strongest (and, in my opinion, least-explored) strength is in her wonderful marriage of the classic and the contemporary, such as an essay where she uses the films of Bergmann as a framing device for investigating the experience of stalking an ex’s new girlfriend online (or is it the other way around, where the personal shapes the critical? The text’s ambiguity here adds a meta-level of blurring between the self and the projection, which is a theme around which the essay orients). At times, she leans quite heavily into the nearly archaic—for instance, she predominantly discusses films from the 40s and 50s, and even her more contemporary movie references, such as to Cronenberg’s filmography, are still quite dated. It is clear that, literarily, she jumps through time more comfortably, as when she compares Rooney’s opus to both Jane Austen and the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy— initially surprising bedfellows that Rothfeld deftly ties together. These cross-temporal comparisons add a novel complexity to her criticism that I longed (and still long!) to see more of—not only in her choices of art, but in her reflections more broadly.

As a debut work, “All Things are Too Small” is an impressive feat. I don’t think it would be remiss to describe Rothfeld as a contemporary Sontag in many respects. The shortcomings of the work serve only to leave the reader hungry for more (more explanation, more details, more examples), exemplifying the very all-consuming desire that Rothfeld is concerned with understanding. And at her finest, Rothfeld’s writing soars dazzlingly. 4 out of 5 stars.

The ARC for this text was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.