Lucy Ellmann Flies Off the Handle

At the Chicago Review of Books, Lucy Ellmann discusses her new book, Things Are Against Us, a nonfiction collection that offers many of the surprises and insights from her fiction. “My essays aren’t exercises in fact-finding, I’m glad to say,” Ellmann explains. “They’re merely vehicles for the expression of opinion. Fiction allows me to get my opinions across too, but sometimes it’s fun to just fly off the handle. My essays are also full of good advice, since the only real self-help is self-hatred, and that I can teach. Otherwise, the job is the same as in fiction: to write things the way they ought to be written.”