The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays

Starred review from November 1, 2023
From Gilgamesh and Beowulf to Elmore Leonard and Richard Pryor, a brilliant critic unpacks centuries of artists and their works. In this collection of 24 astute, consummately readable, and often droll essays on mostly literary topics, written between 2007 and 2021, New Yorker critic Acocella opens with a thorough history of vampires in popular culture, from Bram Stoker and the Victorians through Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer. Here and throughout, the author's wit and insight make anything worth reading about. Regarding vampires as "a persecuted minority," she writes, "sometimes they are like Black people (lynch mobs pursue them), sometimes like homosexuals (rednecks beat them up). Meanwhile, they are trying to go mainstream." In most cases, the essays are inspired by the appearance of a new book about the subject, and Acocella often counters the opinions of previous biographers--e.g., regarding Edward Gorey's supposedly closeted homosexuality: "The worst part is that the secret [Mark] Dery assumes Gorey was most frantically hiding was that he was homosexual. Again, one must ask, Really? If so, then walking around in a green-dyed fur, with half a dozen rings on his fingers, was not a good cover." Refreshingly free from academic baggage, Acocella notes that she also does not feel constrained to separate the work from the life. This operates to great effect in her essay on Little Women, in which she surprisingly declares Jo's relationship with Professor Bhaer the most romantic in the book. She shows us how Alcott's treatment of marriage in her fiction, as distinct from her life, has left "confused feminists" and "displeased" queer theorists in her wake. Among all the delightful writing inspired by Agatha Christie in recent years, Acocella's 2010 essay shines, and "Prophet Motive," on Kahlil Gibran, is worth the price of admission. A top-notch collection full of information, elegance, and humor.

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Starred review from December 4, 2023
Essayist Acocella (Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints) shines in this splendid anthology of literary criticism originally published in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books between 2007 and 2021. Interrogating the enduring appeal of such classics as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, Acocella argues in the title essay that the allure of Bram Stoker’s Dracula lies in how the novel stirs up tension by using multiple first-person narrators unaware of “all that the others have told us,” leading readers to wonder “when are these people going to figure out what is going on?” Other entries profile such figures as Pliny the Younger, Richard Pryor, and Andy Warhol; Acocella contends that the detailed character portraits sketched by Alexander Waugh, Evelyn’s grandson, in Fathers and Sons, a group biography of the male writers in the Waugh family, remind readers of “the inherited vigor of English literature—the sheer, knotty concreteness of it, sometimes rude, always robust.” The pieces brim with erudition and playfulness (“I read all sixty-six of Christie’s detective novels, and I have guessed exactly two of the culprits”), offering approachable insights into literary masterpieces both new and old. Smart and accessible, this is a blast. Illus. Agent: Robert Cornfield, Robert Cornfield Literary.

February 1, 2024
The title signals that this is no staid book of criticism. As a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, Acocella, recently deceased, investigates dance, art, and psychology with verve and expertise. This percolating retrospective collection (from 2007 forward) presents two dozen delving essays catalyzed by new biographies and other releases and flowering into fresh and stimulating considerations. Literature is the primary realm under review here, with Acocella pondering the legacy of ancient stories--Beowulf, particularly as translated by J. R. R. Tolkien; Gilgamesh; the Book of Job--on to Grimm's fairy tales. Her lively analysis of language and usage (the prescriptivists versus the descriptivists) illuminates shifting social perspectives. Beginning with Bram Stoker's Dracula and the immortal vampire phenomenon, Acocella offers spirited, witty, and insightful looks into the lives and works of a thrilling array of writers, including Agatha Christie, Edward Gorey, Kahlil Gibran, Angela Carter, Graham Greene, Natalia Ginzburg, Elmore Leonard, and Marilynne Robinson, as well as Andy Warhol and Richard Pryor. In each ardently researched, fluent, and intriguing inquiry, Acocella thinks through persistent conundrums and marvels over human complexity and creativity. Acocella's acuity and artistry will be missed.

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