Janet Malcolm's "Nobody's Looking at You"

I see Janet Malcolm has a new essay collection out called Nobody’s Looking at You. Malcolm is one of my favorite writers. I first encountered her work in 1976, when I read her transfixing New Yorker review of an exhibition of photographs by the team of Nina Alexander and Herta Hilscher-Wittgenstein. I’ve been reading her ever since. Her new book contains several New Yorker pieces, including her superb “Performance Artist” (September 5, 2016). That’s the one where she says of pianist Yuja Wang, “She looked like a dominatrix or a lion tamer’s assistant. She had come to tame the beast of a piece, this half-naked woman in sadistic high heels. Take that, and that, Beethoven!”

Parul Sehgal, in her “Janet Malcolm, a Withering Critic, in a Nostalgic Key” (The New York Times, February 5, 2019), says of Nobody’s Looking at You, “There is stirring, beautifully structured writing here.” I look forward to reading it.