Health and Safety: A Breakdown
Haunting ... Witt...writes with such cool precision that it’s hard to imagine her fully losing herself in sentimental projects, even with chemical assistance ... As important as Andrew was for her, exactly what it was that made him such an enthralling presence is never quite conveyed ... It’s a testament to Witt’s skills as a writer that this book is enhanced, and not diminished, by her refusal to reconcile such contradictions.
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Her journey of self-discovery dovetailed with an existential crisis about her career in journalism, which earned her increasing stability and prestige but fell far short of changing the world. Undergirding this professional dilemma, though, was a more relatable concern, which she renders in exacting and mournful prose: the evergreen search for a satisfying life in an unfeeling, chaotic country ... Witt’s directness and sincerity are disarming.
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he attempts to capture, through memoir, sociology, and a kind of club ethnography, the many meanings and embodied states of a night out, while also situating them in an evolving subculture ... Making clubbing the subject of literary journalism is no easy task: It can be fraught and self-indulgent, a cool-kid version of the journalist who writes a memoir about an erstwhile hobby ... Not just a memoir of clubbing, but a critical and cultural history of a time and place worthy of its own periodization ... Witt’s descriptions are compelling. Her enthusiasm for capturing the experience is also grounded in her sociological and historical observations on dance music ... Even the most personal passages here can end up being the most arresting.
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