---
product_id: 7519454
title: "Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers"
brand: "janet malcolmian frazier"
price: "€ 37.48"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/7519454-forty-one-false-starts-essays-on-artists-and-writers
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers

**Brand:** janet malcolmian frazier
**Price:** € 37.48
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Forty-one False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by janet malcolmian frazier
- **How much does it cost?** € 37.48 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/7519454-forty-one-false-starts-essays-on-artists-and-writers)

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    More than the title essay
  

*by A***T on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 12, 2021*

Malcolm is a consistently illuminating writer. The title essay is famously great, an essay that uses formal invention to address its subject more effectively than descriptive writing alone could.  While the title essay is justly praised, similarly compelling narratives fill the book. The unfortunately titled 'Girl of the Zeitgeist' is a phenomenal multi-perspective view of Ingrid Sischy when she was the editor-in-chief of Artforum, for example.While some details in some of the pieces can come across as dated, a common problem for magazine writing (same issue for some of the pieces in 'Against Interpretation' for example) but that is hardly a criticism.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Best nonfiction writer working today
  

*by R***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2013*

I like reading about the art world and creativity and even if I didn't I would like to read what Janet Malcolm Writes about it. It was a nice surprise to find that one of the players in her art world drama had gone to my high school in Cincinnati and I always wondered what happened to him. The role of esoteric art critic in New York City seems to be a natural extension of who he was as an outspoken, rebellious student in an elite, college preparatory high school in the Midwest. I also find it interesting when anybody can make some sense out of the mishmash of what I view as the New York City art world. I believe Tom Wolfe is correct when he said that the word makes the message in the art world. It is not what you see is what you get it is what you see is formed by the art critic you are listening to about that piece of artwork.

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    More of a deaf ear than I remember from the NYRB
  

*by K***G on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 21, 2014*

I mostly know Janet Malcolm from reading (some of) her essays in the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker.  And truth be told, the only one I remembered was the essay that became the book Iphigenia in Forest Hills. In short, I frankly bought this on pedigree and vague memories of good writing, a bad premise.So I put this book down after the first 5 essays, 2 on artists, 3 on writers. The first one, which gives the book its title, was entertaining, but she clearly got carried away with the *notion* of her essay (the 41 false starts reflecting on and relating to Salle's work), to the ultimate expense of her actual subject. The second, on Struth, gave me some hope as it was actually pretty good, albeit on an artist I know nothing about.Her writing on writers was all strikeouts for me: she doesn't get Wharton at all, her Woolf/Bloomsbury piece wasn't much more than an abbreviated biography, and her Salinger piece was momentously uninsightful.So I had to put this down. If there's a theme here, it's that Malcolm gets entranced with some idea or notion and, with that idea in hand, is as likely as not to misread her subject, or to forget them, or occasionally to notice something about them.  Unfortunately, that last option just wasn't happening often enough.

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*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-03-14*