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The Reading Life with Parul Sehgal, Book Critic at The New York Times | SSENSE

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In her 1973 Journal of Solitude, the novelist, poet, essayist, and diarist, May Sarton, correctly impugns the business of lunch dates. “They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning’s work,” she writes. “Lunches are just not good.” While I couldn’t agree more with Sarton’s diagnosis—how psychically disruptive it is to step away from one’s computer, rejoin the world, talk, be intelligible, order from a menu—early in October, I suggested exactly that. I was meeting Parul Sehgal, former editor and columnist at The New York Times Book Review, who in July of this year, joined the publication’s team of critics following Pulitzer Prize winning Michiko Kakutani’s decision to step down as the Times’ chief book critic. Kakutani, described by Vanity Fair upon her departure as “the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world,” and at, it’s worth noting, the last daily newspaper in America with a separate books section, held the position for nearly four decade

The Reading Life with Parul Sehgal, Book Critic at The New York Times | SSENSE The Reading Life with Parul Sehgal, Book Critic at The New York Times On Privacy, Profile Writing, and Avoiding the First Person Interview: Durga Chew-Bose Photography: Heather Sten In her 1973 Journal of Solitude , the novelist, poet, essayist, and diarist, May Sarton, correctly impugns the business of lunch dates. “They take the heart out of the day and the spaciousness from the morning’s work,” she writes. “Lunches are just not good.” While I couldn’t agree more with Sarton’s diagnosis—how psychically disruptive

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