Category Archives: Janet Malcolm

Having the Last Word

From the New York Review: * Janet Malcolm made her reputation writing about people who didn’t know when to shut up. Most of us like to talk about ourselves, and given the faintest encouragement will say enough to wind up … Continue reading

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Nobody’s Looking At You

From Janet Malcolm’s 2019 collection of essays: * [John] Roberts had a wonderful way of listening to questions. His face was exquisitely responsive. The constant play of expression on his features put one in mind of nineteenth-century primers of acting … Continue reading

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‘A trial jury is like an audience at a play that wants to be entertained’

Janet Malcolm writes: Ten years earlier I had published a two-part article in The New Yorker about a disturbance in an obscure corner of the psychoanalytic world whose chief subject, a man named Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, hadn’t liked his portrayal … Continue reading

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The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Janet Malcolm writes in this 1995 book: * Strangers who Hughes feels know nothing about his marriage to Plath write about it with proprietary authority. “I hope each of us owns the facts of her or his own life,” Hughes … Continue reading

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Iphigenia: Anatomy of a Murder Trial

Here are some excerpts from this 2011 Janet Malcolm book: * What they say in their opening statements is decisive, of course. If we understand that a trial is a contest between competing narratives, we can see the importance of … Continue reading

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