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Authority

Essays on Being Right

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Authority

By: Andrea Long Chu
Narrated by: Andrea Long Chu
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Since her canonical 2017 essay 'On Liking Women', the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Andrea Long Chu has established herself as a public intellectual straight out of the 1960s. With devastating wit and polemical clarity, she defies the imperative to leave politics out of art, instead modeling how the left might brave the culture wars without throwing in with the cynics and doomsayers.

Authority brings together Chu’s critical work across a wide range of media—novels, television, theater, video games—as well as an acclaimed tetralogy of literary essays first published in n+1. As a critic, Chu places The Phantom of the Opera within a centuries-old conflict between music and drama; questions the enduring habit of reading Octavia Butler’s science fiction as a parable of slavery; teases out the ideology behind Hillary Clinton’s (fictional) sex life; and charges fellow critics like Maggie Nelson and Zadie Smith with a complacent humanism.

The unifying theme of the book is authority and taste in literature, art, culture and politics: how do we decide what's good, and how do we convince others that our judgement is correct?

'A galaxy-brain-level thinker' Torrey Peters
'One of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today' Brandon Taylor
'Thrilling... Authority reminds us we haven't yet felt all there is to feel' Kaveh Akbar

© Andrea Long Chu 2025 (P) Macmillan Audio 2025

 Activism & Social Justice Art Essays Politics & Government Social Sciences Socialism

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Critic reviews

A careful dismantling of revered cultural figures, the zeitgeist, and liberal society in general. Her writing is razor-sharp, personal, and vociferous in its proclamations, but it’s also fun – it’s got bite
Fun reading... [Chu] combines the expert and the naif in a single voice, which chimes with a similar dualism in her reader
A galaxy-brain-level thinker... Within these pages is the best salon in contemporary America.
A critic for right now--and for the ages. Authority is, all at once, a dizzyingly smart challenge, a call to action, and a pure joy to read.
Andrea Long Chu is one of the most charismatic and original thinkers at work today. These essays made me want to call a friend and get into an argument—about literature, about culture, about life.
Provocative, beautiful and addictive… I couldn't stop reading.
Zadie Smith once said that what is admirable about Didion isn't the style, but 'the authority. The authority of tone.' I feel the same about Andrea Long Chu. So much authority, precision and originality - what a motivational, and joyful read, from start to finish.
In an era of ethical infantilization, shitty cynicisms, and limpid rhetorical hygienics, Chu names exactly, irreducibly, what she sees and feels and believes... Like all truly great works of criticism, Authority makes remaining alive feel not just possible but worthwhile. It reminds us we haven’t yet felt all there is to feel.
Reading Andrea Long Chu is always an exhortation to dismantle some authority--outer, inner, or usually both. The writing is triggering, exhilarating, and illuminating. She demands we think counterintuitively, radically, and exactingly, with paradoxical precision and irreverent urgency. This collection coalesces around the dialectic of freedom and authority—and shows us that challenging this binary is vital to us as thinkers, readers and citizens.
One of the most exciting critics working today.
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