15 years of serious blogging has created almost 2000 posts here – some of which are extended essays to be grouped together, with some editing and an introduction, to become mini-books. This is the process in which I am currently engaged around the topic of populism – sparked by a reading of The Populist Moment – the Left after the great Recession by Arthur Borriello and Anton Jaeger (2023).
This post, however, is more by way of a tribute to the format of the extended essay or short book for which I’m beginning to notice an admirable growing trend. ”The Populist Moment”, for example, is only 147 pages long and another Verso book (this time about the Italian right) - First They Took Rome - is just 174 pages. For several years, I’ve been urging authors and publishers to exercise more self-discipline – so this is indeed a welcome trend.
But the unannointed king of the contemporary extended essay is Perry Anderson whose extended essays in the London Review of Books have become the stuff of legend. ”Highly readable but serious” is the best way to describe the writing of this Marxist historian who has been based variously in the UK and the US and is the subject of a very inadequate Wikipedia entry. This Jacobin article does him more justice. I tried to google for other prominent extended essayists but all I got were guidelines for writing extended essays for the InternaČ›ional Baccalauriat!
George Orwell and Arthur Koestler wrote extended essays but the only contemporary exponent of the art I’ve come across is Aurelien
Some recommended reading
Contesting the Global Order – the radical political economy of Perry Anderson and Immanuel Wallerstein by Gregory Williams (2020)
The H Word – the peripeteia of Hegemony Perry Anderson (2017) is 156 pages
Pessimism of the Intellect – history of the New Left Review Duncan Thompson (2007)
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