Things Are Against Us

"Ellmann captures the pathos of the everyday, how one might use pie crusts and film synopses to dam in pain ... her] commitment to compilation and description suggests a resistance to hierarchies and] flickers with tenderness."--The New Yorker

Things Are Against Us is a collection of satirical essays. They treat subjects such as the obstinancy, incorrigibility, and recalcitrance of THINGS, which have a lot to answer for; Laura Ingalls Wilder's unimpressive descriptions of the construction of bobsleds, railways, and complicated dresses, and the astonishing amount of food Almanzo Wilder ate in a day; our efforts to stand on our own two feet, put our best foot forward, remain footloose and fancy-free, only inevitably to put our foot in it; the first suggestion the internet offers when you Google the word 'women' (spoiler: it's shoes); the nobility of buttons; and what the rejection of tourists by Jordanian donkeys should mean for global air travel. Ingrid Bergman and Jane Austen come into it somewhere (Helen Gurley Brown was forcibly removed).

Early versions of some of these essays appeared in international outlets of record, but others are brand-new.