Essential Ellen Willis

"Out of the Vinyl Deeps, published in 2011, introduced a new generation to the incisive, witty, and merciless voice of Ellen Willis through her pioneering rock music criticism. In the years that followed, Willis's daring insights went beyond popular music, taking on such issues as pornography, religion, feminism, war, and drugs. The Essential Ellen Willis gathers writings that span forty years and are both deeply engaged with the times in which they were first published and yet remain fresh and relevant amid today's seemingly intractable political and cultural battles. Whether addressing the women's movement, sex and abortion, race and class, or war and terrorism, Willis brought to each a distinctive attitude--passionate yet ironic, clear-sighted yet hopeful. Offering a compelling and cohesive narrative of Willis's liberationist "transcendence politics," the essays--among them previously unpublished and uncollected pieces--are organized by decade from the 1960s to the 2000s, with each section introduced by young writers who share Willis's intellectual bravery, curiosity, and lucidity: Irin Carmon, Spencer Ackerman, Cord Jefferson, Ann Friedman, and Sara Marcus. The Essential Ellen Willis concludes with excerpts from Willis's unfinished book about politics and the cultural unconscious, introduced by her longtime partner, Stanley Aronowitz. An invaluable reckoning of American society since the 1960s, this volume is a testament to an iconoclastic and fiercely original voice."--

Cover -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION: TRANSCENDENCE -- The Sixties Up from Radicalism -- INTRODUCTION -- Up from Radicalism: A Feminist Journal (US Magazine, 1969) -- Dylan (Cheetah, 1967) -- The Cultural Revolution Saved from Drowning (The New Yorker, September 1969) -- Women and the Myth of Consumerism (Ramparts, 1970) -- Talk of the Town: Hearing (The New Yorker, February 1969) -- The Seventies Exile on Main Street -- INTRODUCTION -- Beginning to See the Light (Village Voice, 1977) -- Janis Joplin (The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock 'n' Roll, 1980) -- Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life (Village Voice, May 1979) -- Memoirs of a Non-Prom Queen (Rolling Stone, August 1976) -- The Trial of Arline Hunt (Rolling Stone, 1975) -- Abortion: Is a Woman a Person? (Village Voice, March and April 1979) -- Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography (Village Voice, October and November 1979) -- The Family: Love It or Leave It (Village Voice, September 1979) -- Tom Wolfe's Failed Optimism (Village Voice, 1977) -- The Velvet Underground (Stranded by Greil Marcus, 1979) -- Next Year in Jerusalem (Rolling Stone, April 1977) -- The Eighties Coming Down Again -- INTRODUC…