Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers

A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for Criticism, this collection brings together essays by Janet Malcolm published over several decades, largely in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. The essays examine painters, photographers, writers, and critics. The title essay, "Forty-One False Starts," uses serial attempts to capture painter David Salle's essence to create a portrait of the artist. Other essays explore Bloomsbury's efforts to create visual and literary work; Edward Weston's photographic nudes; and photographer Thomas Struth's work, which reflects on the Nazi past while conveying lightness of spirit. Malcolm examines Edith Wharton's fiction in "The Woman Who Hated Women" and discusses Cecily von Zeigesar's Gossip Girl novels in "Advanced Placement." In "Salinger's Cigarettes," she analyzes how Salinger's characters cannot tolerate the ordinary human flaws that most people accept in themselves and others. Malcolm's subjects span visual artists, literary figures, and cultural critics across multiple decades of work.