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ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction
A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and rule-bending selection of nonfiction from Joshua Cohen, "a major American writer" (The New York Times) -- a powerful and fresh work of social criticism, examining the ways we can reclaim the power of attention in an age of constant distraction.
Rising star Joshua Cohen's first collection of essays, a fully realized work created from a selection of previously published and new nonfiction--essays, memoir, criticism, letters, diaries--covering an extraordinary array of topics: politics, literature, art, music, travel, the media, and psychology, on subjects ranging from Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, animals in literature, Gustav Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Edward Snowden, Gordon Lish, the closing of the Ringling Bros. circus, Google, Thomas Pynchon, and Azerbaijan. In thirty essays and forty short "interludes," Cohen directs his sharp gaze out upon the world, exhibiting his deep erudition and ability to draw connections between seemingly unlike things, showing us how to look at a world overflowing with information without becoming daunted. In each piece, Cohen projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his, and a voice as witty, powerful, funny, and distinct as any in American letters.
Rising star Joshua Cohen's first collection of essays, a fully realized work created from a selection of previously published and new nonfiction--essays, memoir, criticism, letters, diaries--covering an extraordinary array of topics: politics, literature, art, music, travel, the media, and psychology, on subjects ranging from Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, animals in literature, Gustav Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Edward Snowden, Gordon Lish, the closing of the Ringling Bros. circus, Google, Thomas Pynchon, and Azerbaijan. In thirty essays and forty short "interludes," Cohen directs his sharp gaze out upon the world, exhibiting his deep erudition and ability to draw connections between seemingly unlike things, showing us how to look at a world overflowing with information without becoming daunted. In each piece, Cohen projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his, and a voice as witty, powerful, funny, and distinct as any in American letters.
576 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 14, 2013
86 people are currently reading
1047 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Cohen
101 books590 followersJoshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980 in New Jersey) is an American novelist and writer of stories.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
July 10, 2022
3.5*...rounded down for the sheer, 700+ pp baggy trousersness of the whole thang...would definitely be a 4* 400pp book.
And there are some 5* essays in here to be sure. Mr. Cohen is a remarkbly well-read and -versed and -spoken youngish man. Particularly:
a) "On the Closing of the Ringling Bros. etc. etc. Circus" (something along the lines of, or of a piece with, or reminiscent of the blah-blah-blahishness of what DFW used to do for Harpers)
b) "The Last Summer" (a tandem "reading" of the fall of two shysters: Atlantic city, and DJT)
c) A GREAT long-but-not-long-enuff essay on Thomas Pynchon
d) A not quite as great but idiosyncratic and therefore quite interesting take on The Bern
e) A brilliant take-down and send-up of Jonathan Franzen and his The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus, which somehow also is neither of those two things.
f) An exhaustive and quite literal "Abecedarium" on English-language publishing in Paris which is
more interesting (and way more strange) than it sounds
g) An unparalleled expedition to and disquisition upon the "Mountain Jews" of the highlands outside Baku, Azerbaijan (their long history and present bizarre shenanigans), perhaps my favourite in the collection (along with the Pynchon, ofc).
Rounding it all out are solid, polymath-status-confirming pieces on photographer Stephen Shore, musician/composer John Zorn, Gordon Lish (the Ray Carver Whisperer), Aretha and Beyoncé, Leopardi's Zibaldone, the Olympic fencer Helene Meyer, the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, Georges Perec, Israeli dissident poet Yitzhak Laor..., ..., ..., ...,
...as well as scads of, a whole darn slew of, countless, innumerable, untold, umpteen shorter pieces, not to mention myriads upon myriads of very brief diary entries. These last (their name is Legion) just plain annoyed me for some reason (to the point of wanting to chuck the book in inspite of loving many of its longueurs).
Then there is that 170pp title essay. Jesus wept it was long. And involved. And serpentine in structure and wayyyy too leisurely in pacing. And impossibly erudite and maddeningly pedantic--and, were it (likely a mere subsection of?!) a doctoral thesis, surely inducive of early retirement for its entire dissertation committee, as it is both too comprehensive and somehow not nearly long enough... and certainly unpublishable. Yet, beside the Pynchon essay, it's the one I know I'll read again.
Yes, 3* is rather harsh for me, the 4*-and-up-guy (cos, you know, the 2*s and below, unless really, rilly annoying, they get quietly DNFed.
3* means I mostly liked it (If Lurve +Love -Irritation -Exasperation = Like).
But I am probably a Joshua Cohen aspirant-completist now, for good or ill. Mostly for good, i expect.
And there are some 5* essays in here to be sure. Mr. Cohen is a remarkbly well-read and -versed and -spoken youngish man. Particularly:
a) "On the Closing of the Ringling Bros. etc. etc. Circus" (something along the lines of, or of a piece with, or reminiscent of the blah-blah-blahishness of what DFW used to do for Harpers)
b) "The Last Summer" (a tandem "reading" of the fall of two shysters: Atlantic city, and DJT)
c) A GREAT long-but-not-long-enuff essay on Thomas Pynchon
d) A not quite as great but idiosyncratic and therefore quite interesting take on The Bern
e) A brilliant take-down and send-up of Jonathan Franzen and his The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus, which somehow also is neither of those two things.
f) An exhaustive and quite literal "Abecedarium" on English-language publishing in Paris which is
more interesting (and way more strange) than it sounds
g) An unparalleled expedition to and disquisition upon the "Mountain Jews" of the highlands outside Baku, Azerbaijan (their long history and present bizarre shenanigans), perhaps my favourite in the collection (along with the Pynchon, ofc).
Rounding it all out are solid, polymath-status-confirming pieces on photographer Stephen Shore, musician/composer John Zorn, Gordon Lish (the Ray Carver Whisperer), Aretha and Beyoncé, Leopardi's Zibaldone, the Olympic fencer Helene Meyer, the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, Georges Perec, Israeli dissident poet Yitzhak Laor..., ..., ..., ...,
...as well as scads of, a whole darn slew of, countless, innumerable, untold, umpteen shorter pieces, not to mention myriads upon myriads of very brief diary entries. These last (their name is Legion) just plain annoyed me for some reason (to the point of wanting to chuck the book in inspite of loving many of its longueurs).
Then there is that 170pp title essay. Jesus wept it was long. And involved. And serpentine in structure and wayyyy too leisurely in pacing. And impossibly erudite and maddeningly pedantic--and, were it (likely a mere subsection of?!) a doctoral thesis, surely inducive of early retirement for its entire dissertation committee, as it is both too comprehensive and somehow not nearly long enough... and certainly unpublishable. Yet, beside the Pynchon essay, it's the one I know I'll read again.
Yes, 3* is rather harsh for me, the 4*-and-up-guy (cos, you know, the 2*s and below, unless really, rilly annoying, they get quietly DNFed.
3* means I mostly liked it (If Lurve +Love -Irritation -Exasperation = Like).
But I am probably a Joshua Cohen aspirant-completist now, for good or ill. Mostly for good, i expect.
August 15, 2022
It's always preferable to go to the theater than to discuss dialectics.
This volume concludes with a multifaceted essay. One which stretches out over two hundred pages and contains a number of arguments upon the titular concept of Attention. I hated that essay. It felt like Cohen was pausing his effort to be a Chesterton or Borges and instead wanted to go all Umberto Eco, but not the cool one but rather the one who authored treatises on semiotics. I mean no criticism towards the late Maestro but this effort by Cohen was beyond tedious.
The earlier sections were more interesting but also uneven overall, culled from Cohen's journalism, his cultural critique and I'm guessing the introductions he wrote for books, few of which appear contemporary. There were times when he dazzled, his ruminations upon the Toledo School and the metaphysics of translation blew my mind. His time with the Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan and in Israel is nuanced, cautious and occasionally brilliant.
the book opens with a flurry of pieces regarding our harrowed political state of affairs. There's a portrait of PT Barnum in relation to Donald J Trump (DJT), a psychogeographic treatment of Atlantic City again through DJT but the Magic Pumpkin appears less menacing here more a cipher of extortion and less a distillation of the dark forces. The final is an account of Bernie Sanders giving a speech on Wall Street. This was interesting to the point of being disturbing if only in a self conscious sense.
This volume concludes with a multifaceted essay. One which stretches out over two hundred pages and contains a number of arguments upon the titular concept of Attention. I hated that essay. It felt like Cohen was pausing his effort to be a Chesterton or Borges and instead wanted to go all Umberto Eco, but not the cool one but rather the one who authored treatises on semiotics. I mean no criticism towards the late Maestro but this effort by Cohen was beyond tedious.
The earlier sections were more interesting but also uneven overall, culled from Cohen's journalism, his cultural critique and I'm guessing the introductions he wrote for books, few of which appear contemporary. There were times when he dazzled, his ruminations upon the Toledo School and the metaphysics of translation blew my mind. His time with the Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan and in Israel is nuanced, cautious and occasionally brilliant.
the book opens with a flurry of pieces regarding our harrowed political state of affairs. There's a portrait of PT Barnum in relation to Donald J Trump (DJT), a psychogeographic treatment of Atlantic City again through DJT but the Magic Pumpkin appears less menacing here more a cipher of extortion and less a distillation of the dark forces. The final is an account of Bernie Sanders giving a speech on Wall Street. This was interesting to the point of being disturbing if only in a self conscious sense.
October 23, 2018
Cohen's writing reflects his intelligence and sharp wit. He has a passion for the written word and is clearly a very curious individual about a wide swath of topics. So why am I giving this only three stars? I guess I am not as curious as he is. There are a lot of interesting pieces in this collection, but there are also several essays that cover topics that simply did not interest me. So, even though the pieces I liked are excellent, I'm going to settle with a strong three stars and call this a very good collection. Cohen's talent is obvious, however, and I am excited to read his 'Book of Numbers' in the near future.
Favorite pieces in this collection:
"Distraction"
"It's a Circle (On the CLosing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus)"
"First Family, Second Life (On Thomas Pynchon)"
"Zibaldone Diary"
"Hung like an Obelisk, Hard as an Olympian"
"Bibliothanatos, or Epigraphs for a Last Book"
"On the Transit of Toledo"
Favorite pieces in this collection:
"Distraction"
"It's a Circle (On the CLosing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus)"
"First Family, Second Life (On Thomas Pynchon)"
"Zibaldone Diary"
"Hung like an Obelisk, Hard as an Olympian"
"Bibliothanatos, or Epigraphs for a Last Book"
"On the Transit of Toledo"
June 18, 2024
We had a small heatwave during the time I was reading this and I read big chunks of it sitting outside in the sun with/after a couple of drinks. This enhanced it (though I can’t decide whether that’s ironic, as my attention wasn’t entirely focused). It’s a gigantic, hard-to-summarise collection of essays; the synopsis tries to corral its subject matter as ‘life in the digital age’, but it’s difficult to see how that was even arrived at. Two of the best essays in the book – one about Donald Trump’s ties to Atlantic City, the other about a trip Cohen takes to Azerbaijan – are almost impossible to describe. It’s a book you read for the style, not the subjects; a book I enjoyed and admired more as a whole than in its constituent parts.
There are vast disparities in the essays’ lengths: the piece on Anna Kavan, which I was looking forward to, turns out to be just a couple of pages, while the incredibly dense, 200-page title essay could be a book in itself – and indeed was published separately at one point. About that denseness: Attention is not in the business of spoonfeeding (which is absolutely part of the point of the whole book, I know that. But it did mean that some of the essays about people I hadn’t heard of left me none the wiser as to who they actually were) and goes on tangents that range from thrilling to impenetrable.
In the end it’s difficult to say who this book is for, really. It’s so discursive and scattergun that there’s no reason to read it unless you’re a fan of Cohen’s writing in general – which, fortunately, I am, but that does make it hard to recommend. If I’m going to persuade someone to read one 500+ page book by Joshua Cohen, it would still, always, be Book of Numbers.
There are vast disparities in the essays’ lengths: the piece on Anna Kavan, which I was looking forward to, turns out to be just a couple of pages, while the incredibly dense, 200-page title essay could be a book in itself – and indeed was published separately at one point. About that denseness: Attention is not in the business of spoonfeeding (which is absolutely part of the point of the whole book, I know that. But it did mean that some of the essays about people I hadn’t heard of left me none the wiser as to who they actually were) and goes on tangents that range from thrilling to impenetrable.
In the end it’s difficult to say who this book is for, really. It’s so discursive and scattergun that there’s no reason to read it unless you’re a fan of Cohen’s writing in general – which, fortunately, I am, but that does make it hard to recommend. If I’m going to persuade someone to read one 500+ page book by Joshua Cohen, it would still, always, be Book of Numbers.
August 23, 2018
I'm one of Mr. Cohen's fiercest supporters. His fiction is first rate. His Books column in Harper's was one of the few vital monthly columns about literature published in the United States. His journalism in GQ and other publications has caused me to renew subscriptions in the past.
So I'm a huge fan of Cohen. And spoiler alert: this book is full of insights about the America of today, but also about the state of literature and thinking about literature. In what other writer's work can you find a profile of Bernie Sanders AND an examination of what Zola and Stendahl meant by the novel "holding a mirror" up to society? (And, an aside: how many can extrapolate a thesis like "For many of my peers, to write about the present is to search for a mirror that will only show shadows"?) Or a profile of the last days of a circus AND a review of Zibaldone, a book I didn't know but that Cohen made me seek out?
Cohen's work is essential. With Moshfegh, he's one of two young American writers whose work I must read. All of it. Every published word.
So I'm a huge fan of Cohen. And spoiler alert: this book is full of insights about the America of today, but also about the state of literature and thinking about literature. In what other writer's work can you find a profile of Bernie Sanders AND an examination of what Zola and Stendahl meant by the novel "holding a mirror" up to society? (And, an aside: how many can extrapolate a thesis like "For many of my peers, to write about the present is to search for a mirror that will only show shadows"?) Or a profile of the last days of a circus AND a review of Zibaldone, a book I didn't know but that Cohen made me seek out?
Cohen's work is essential. With Moshfegh, he's one of two young American writers whose work I must read. All of it. Every published word.
September 4, 2018
"To my mind, Israel is the only contemporary Jewish subject, or the last contemporary Jewish subject not kitsch. Reading a popular novel about Israel (there aren’t more than a few) is like reading a Holocaust novel (of which there are many), but backward: the last page (death or escape from death) coming first, the first page (bourgeois respectability, bourgeois self-loathing) coming last.
Right to left: Popular Israeli novels are just novels about the Holocaust read right to left."
Right to left: Popular Israeli novels are just novels about the Holocaust read right to left."
Read
January 14, 2022Okay so but I won't make that comparison with DFW. But. I do think there's that pigeon=hole that works well for me, that being the Smart Young Talented Author of A FAT=Novel Writes Essays.
July 19, 2018
This book is not bad, it’s just not what I was expecting from the title. I was expecting a collection of essays focusing on attention, information excess, and things like that. Instead, the book has several essays, letters, diary notes, etc, on several random topics, from Donald Trump to the letter j. While I liked some of the short diary notes, I didn’t really enjoy reading some long political pieces. If you are familiar with the author and what he writes, then this book might be great for you.
I received an advance ecopy via NetGalley so I could read the book before its release date.
I received an advance ecopy via NetGalley so I could read the book before its release date.
October 30, 2018
I found this collection of essays to be incredibly insightful and thought-provoking. It's showed me a better way to think about the world around me, rather than focusing on the endless churn of daily headlines. The essay on the end of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (and how Trump has coopted the techniques of the three-ring circus) is a highlight, as is the essay on Trump and the fall of Atlantic City. Both these pieces go far deeper than the usual politics articles you see these days. But the pieces on literature, music, art, and technology are equally important--together, they give a full picture of the world right now.
Reading this book makes you regain a way of thinking that's almost completely lost in this day and age, when every second seems to bring some new bit of horrible news and some further outrage. This book helps you pause for a second and look at the big picture, going deeper into the root causes of what's going on in the world. I can honestly say that no book in the past decade has done so much to teach me how to think, instead of just what to think. It's a really urgent and necessary lesson right now, where all sorts of people seem more and more to be stuck in a kind of group-think that they can't ever get out of.
Reading this book makes you regain a way of thinking that's almost completely lost in this day and age, when every second seems to bring some new bit of horrible news and some further outrage. This book helps you pause for a second and look at the big picture, going deeper into the root causes of what's going on in the world. I can honestly say that no book in the past decade has done so much to teach me how to think, instead of just what to think. It's a really urgent and necessary lesson right now, where all sorts of people seem more and more to be stuck in a kind of group-think that they can't ever get out of.
July 6, 2020
5 stars if you're looking for something to put you to sleep
January 19, 2019
I am even bigger fan now. Great essays, interspersed with interesting fragments. Surprisingly, "abroad" topics work way better than the "home" topics. Thought the reportage from Cohen's native Atlantic City and Trump was excellent.
April 20, 2019
Consider the relationship between depression and taste, or discernment. Both lead to exclusion. Soon you can't stand any TV or movie or even any book. Soon nothing can satisfy. But while the depressed person encounters everything with a sense of pointlessness, what ultimately alienates the person of taste is the feeling of compromise, or of being compromised.
*****
Conversation Summary (Next Table)
A woman recounts a dream in which she had sex with a celebrity. Her boyfriend, or husband, gets angry. The woman says it was only a dream. Her boyfriend, or husband, gets up from the table. The woman, getting up too and following him, says it means nothing not just because it was only a dream, but also because the celebrity was dead. (As for me, my Polish is so bad I wasn't quite able to determine whether the celebrity had been alive in her dream or she'd been dreaming of necrophilia.) (Another shameful admission: I still can't quite accept the existence of such things as Polish celebrities.)
*****
Conversation Summary (Next Table)
A woman recounts a dream in which she had sex with a celebrity. Her boyfriend, or husband, gets angry. The woman says it was only a dream. Her boyfriend, or husband, gets up from the table. The woman, getting up too and following him, says it means nothing not just because it was only a dream, but also because the celebrity was dead. (As for me, my Polish is so bad I wasn't quite able to determine whether the celebrity had been alive in her dream or she'd been dreaming of necrophilia.) (Another shameful admission: I still can't quite accept the existence of such things as Polish celebrities.)
August 4, 2019
There's some profoundly good writing in this collection, and Cohen commands the language in a way very few contemporary essayists have or can (David Foster Wallace is the only comparable one who comes to mind). However, the overall impact of this book would be greatly augmented by subtraction - there are just too many essays included on subjects that are too obscure/inaccessible to even the most well-read, well-versed reader. Many of the pieces which could have been culled appear to be book forwards on such relatively marginal figures as Eimear McBride, Anna Kavan, Yitzhak Laor, Mathias Enard - subjects about which the average putative reader will have so little background knowledge as to make Cohen's claims both otiose and irrefutable.
More successful, however, are the pieces with a sociocultural slant (an essay on the circus, its history/cultural import, a longform piece on Atlantic City, its rise/fall and connection to one Donald J. Trump, the mountain Jews of Azerbaijan). Cohen is an extremely gifted writer, but he sometimes falls prey to the overwrought cleverness of his own vernacular, like a nascent home run hitter standing beside the plate, bat still in hand, admiring the arc of his latest moon shot for just a few seconds too long. Even the centerpiece of the entire collection, the titular essay, sags heavy in the middle under the weight of its own obscurity, and at 150+ pages, is a hard slog that occasions in all but the most patient reader an urge to skim passages far too dense to focus half-heartedly upon (making its title/subject matter too ironic by half).
Still, though, on average the positives outweigh the negatives. Brew up something strong and caffeinated, make sure you've got a dictionary handy, and enjoy the ride.
More successful, however, are the pieces with a sociocultural slant (an essay on the circus, its history/cultural import, a longform piece on Atlantic City, its rise/fall and connection to one Donald J. Trump, the mountain Jews of Azerbaijan). Cohen is an extremely gifted writer, but he sometimes falls prey to the overwrought cleverness of his own vernacular, like a nascent home run hitter standing beside the plate, bat still in hand, admiring the arc of his latest moon shot for just a few seconds too long. Even the centerpiece of the entire collection, the titular essay, sags heavy in the middle under the weight of its own obscurity, and at 150+ pages, is a hard slog that occasions in all but the most patient reader an urge to skim passages far too dense to focus half-heartedly upon (making its title/subject matter too ironic by half).
Still, though, on average the positives outweigh the negatives. Brew up something strong and caffeinated, make sure you've got a dictionary handy, and enjoy the ride.
July 10, 2019
I ended up giving up after getting through several chapters of this.
- Book shot into several chapters on American Politics right away. If I want to read about politics I'll go that route specifically, but I'm sick to death of it bleeding into everything.
- There were some interesting points made with some of the chapters, but almost halfway through and it didn't seem to be clearly converging on a point very obviously. This is probably because this book, as I understand it, is an anthology of standalone articles by the author
- Noteworthy that I did this through audiobook rather than physical. I think that's a poor format for this book in particular, since many of the articles list extensive names, dates, and facts quite quickly that don't suit the format well.
- Writing style is a little off-putting for me. Many long-form New Yorker-style authors tend to write in a style & prose that feels like it's trying to hard to be stylish and show-offy first, with the point of the article seeming almost secondary.
It just never picked up for me. There is just too much other good stuff out there.
- Book shot into several chapters on American Politics right away. If I want to read about politics I'll go that route specifically, but I'm sick to death of it bleeding into everything.
- There were some interesting points made with some of the chapters, but almost halfway through and it didn't seem to be clearly converging on a point very obviously. This is probably because this book, as I understand it, is an anthology of standalone articles by the author
- Noteworthy that I did this through audiobook rather than physical. I think that's a poor format for this book in particular, since many of the articles list extensive names, dates, and facts quite quickly that don't suit the format well.
- Writing style is a little off-putting for me. Many long-form New Yorker-style authors tend to write in a style & prose that feels like it's trying to hard to be stylish and show-offy first, with the point of the article seeming almost secondary.
It just never picked up for me. There is just too much other good stuff out there.
November 18, 2018
Great and thought provoking
Attention by Joshua Cohen is a great and thought provoking book driving into a variety of topics from musician John Zorn, neuroscience, novelist Charles Newman and the particle/ wave theory of light all connected to the study of Attention. Reading this book will enthral you and increase your vocabulary. Great read!
Attention by Joshua Cohen is a great and thought provoking book driving into a variety of topics from musician John Zorn, neuroscience, novelist Charles Newman and the particle/ wave theory of light all connected to the study of Attention. Reading this book will enthral you and increase your vocabulary. Great read!
January 28, 2022
ugh. This was a mixed bag for me. The author has so much insight and can be so tedious at the same time - the balance of these two factors within each individual essay varied substantially for me.
June 29, 2019
Joshua Cohen is a witty, intelligent writer who is able to convey the Life and Times of the intellectual in the modern day. This collection showcases the renaissance man who wrote it by connecting disparate stories and ideas into a cohesive (if sometimes abstract) narrative on Attention, Information Awareness, and how individuals [are able to] communicate with one another.
The ethnography of the Circus and its use as critique of the American political system was entertaining and brilliant. This is one of the highlights. While there were some shorter pieces I did not enjoy — reviews for works that seemed obscure to me — some reviews for obscure works I enjoyed nevertheless for their sharp humour. In recollection, it is the insightful, sharp pieces that stand out and even half of them would make the book worth reading. The many-part essay that gives a whirlwind tour of communication methods and their societal consequences in tandem with a history on the coining of "attentio" and its etymological development through philosophy and psychology to modern day stands as worthy of the ultimate piece in the collection. To boot, it ties in other stand-alone pieces (like the one with the glyph dream).
A bonus of this collection is the number of poems, notes and thoughts that intersperse the essays. The phone as holy grail is a personal favourite that had me laughing at least as loudly as the review/mini-bio on Hrabel.
I'm excited to read more from this author.
The ethnography of the Circus and its use as critique of the American political system was entertaining and brilliant. This is one of the highlights. While there were some shorter pieces I did not enjoy — reviews for works that seemed obscure to me — some reviews for obscure works I enjoyed nevertheless for their sharp humour. In recollection, it is the insightful, sharp pieces that stand out and even half of them would make the book worth reading. The many-part essay that gives a whirlwind tour of communication methods and their societal consequences in tandem with a history on the coining of "attentio" and its etymological development through philosophy and psychology to modern day stands as worthy of the ultimate piece in the collection. To boot, it ties in other stand-alone pieces (like the one with the glyph dream).
A bonus of this collection is the number of poems, notes and thoughts that intersperse the essays. The phone as holy grail is a personal favourite that had me laughing at least as loudly as the review/mini-bio on Hrabel.
I'm excited to read more from this author.
July 22, 2024
This took me a good while to get through (not helped by the break I took to read Compass) but it is undoubtedly a fantastic collection of essays, musings, and book reviews.
Cohen remains an erudite, incisive writer whose sense of humour so often permeates his writing. There remains intermittent flickers of Zionist sympathies, which were hard to stomach (particularly since the re-escalation of the Zionist onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza), but I still found this collection of writings to be a highly rewarding and worthwhile endeavour. His championing/exploration of Jewish writers of 'Mitteleuropa' and of the inter-war/post-war period is wonderful and has left me with lots added to my 'to read' list and his reflections on modern technology and life were always worthy of consideration.
Cohen remains an erudite, incisive writer whose sense of humour so often permeates his writing. There remains intermittent flickers of Zionist sympathies, which were hard to stomach (particularly since the re-escalation of the Zionist onslaught against Palestinians in Gaza), but I still found this collection of writings to be a highly rewarding and worthwhile endeavour. His championing/exploration of Jewish writers of 'Mitteleuropa' and of the inter-war/post-war period is wonderful and has left me with lots added to my 'to read' list and his reflections on modern technology and life were always worthy of consideration.
Read
August 18, 2021When your typical hack takes up a topic like 'attention', you can expect the sort of neat-and-tidy-malcolm-gladwell-bob's-your-uncle explanation that sells books in airports; suppress the details in favor of easy digestibility. To paraphrase Ezra Pound the average reader has such habitually slack attention that he will only read when and where the pap can be lapped off the page without any effort whatsoever. Cohen compels and invites a reading of these essays with a sustained attention and curiosity towards such a panoply of things. Often, I feel that I am not up the task.
I will need a running start before I make another attempt at this book. It's no Hegel, but perhaps I will work through Cohen's philosophy textbook before I return.
I will need a running start before I make another attempt at this book. It's no Hegel, but perhaps I will work through Cohen's philosophy textbook before I return.
January 27, 2022
I like Joshua Cohen, but I put off reading this for a long while -- in large part because I was annoyed by Cohen's facile hit pieces years ago in BOOKFORUM. This was clearly beneath a writer as brilliant as Cohen. Thankfully, these embarrassing early pieces are largely elided in this fantastic essay collection, which covers a remarkably wide range of topics. The Atlantic City essay is one of the highlights. But Cohen goes wild on everything from obscure writers to the Internet itself. This cat has read everything and has thought out damn near every angle that, even when you disagree with him, you want to see where he's going to go. Which is the mark, of course, of a first-rate writer.
January 23, 2019
“A writer stands outside of a story yelling, ‘Open sesame!’ and then, what do you know, the story, as if it were a seed opens. And treasure is found inside. That treasure, of course, is just another story, and it all begins again.”
A wide-ranging compendium of essays from the endlessly curious Joshua Cohen. I liked almost all of it and learned a great deal, but I liked the final large section (Attention: A (Short) History) less than I expected. His tone suddenly became stiff and didactic, contrasting with his free, humorous, and interesting style in the prior 400 pages.
August 1, 2020
I'm wavering between a 3.5 and 4 stars for Joshua Cohen's mammoth essay collection, Attention. I loved a lot of the early essays here, but some of them are too navel-gazingly pretentious even for my tastes. Then comes the title essay, a book length (160 pages!) essay tracing the intellectual history of concepts relating to attention. Let's just say that, to me, there's a reason that slab of wordwork was affixed to this book and not its own publication. If it wasn't there, the 400 page version of this book would easily reach the 5 star range, even with Cohen's frequently opaque writings about Israel in here.
November 14, 2021
The title, I now see, having finished reading-slash-paging through the book, is a pre-emptive defense. Yes, these pieces are overwordy, abstruse and (whisper it) kind of annoying, but you probably only think that because you’ve lost the ability to slow down, focus and PAY ATTENTION. Anyway, that’s my admittedly cynical interpretation. There are some good ideas in here, and the quality of writing is high, but damn there’s just too much meandering sludge. My attention is strong, and Cohen tested it mightily. Editors, we need you!
July 19, 2021
Keeping my attention focused was at times challenging, but thah had more to do with too much than not enough erudition on display. Looking up the meaning of mondegreen was distracting but necessary; there is not enough time in the day to track down all the allusions, but those I did were generally worth it, whether or not I will actually expand my vocabulary. This was quite a distraction on the way to reading his new novel N.
May 15, 2019
Well played, Mr Cohen. As the book goes along, it gets harder and harder to dedicate one’s attention to an increasingly esoteric and intellectually elevated discourse. Call me a Philistine, I suppose, as I gave up around page 470 (out of 545). Ok, maybe half-Philistine? Give me a little credit, folks...
August 8, 2019
Reading Cohen is always a mixed bag. Intentional or not (and as a person not averse to dense, difficult reading), his attempts at concision often lead to a lot of inelegant, compressed word salad that's just plain unpleasant to read. There were, however, always gems of collected wisdom to keep me going, and the short history of attention alone was worth the price of entry for me.
April 12, 2019
There's a vocal constituency who prefer David Foster Wallace's relatively straightforward nonfiction to his maximalist fiction. After reading the impressive range of essays in Attention, I'm beginning to feel the same way about Joshua Cohen.
January 22, 2019
A smattering of topics in this one but most that did not interest me. Found myself bored halfway through and stopped 3/4 of the way.
September 17, 2019
3-1/2. Wildly varying in quality.
October 5, 2019
Pretty boring.
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