April 25, 2023
Becca Rothfeld is soon to be non-fiction book critic of the Washington Post. She has written essays and criticism for the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic, the Yale Review, Bookforum, and more. She is a contributing editor at the Point and the Boston Review and her first essay collection, All Things Are Too Small, is forthcoming from Holt in the US and Virago in the UK.
Alexis Jimenez Maldonado: You joined the Center’s community as a Graduate Fellow in 2020. What drew you towards pursuing a fellowship with the Center?
Becca Rothfeld: I’ve always had an interdisciplinary orientation: not only am I interested in both philosophy and literature, and not only am I interested in far too many different branches of philosophy, but my graduate work was in aesthetics, a field that required me to engage with art history, literary critics, literary scholars, and so on and on, to say nothing of actual art. From the first, I was intrigued by the Center’s interdisciplinary focus.
Alexis: Could you describe your fellowship experience?
Becca: My fellowship was during 2020-2021, when I was moldering in my apartment and despairing about the state of the world, and our workshops were a lifeline that kept me sane every week. They were pretty much my sole forays into “society” during a year of isolation.
Alexis: How, if at all, did the fellowship influence your graduate work?
Becca: The most concrete answer to that question is that the chapter on which I received feedback as part of the fellowship will appear in the Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art. The less literal-minded but perhaps more frustratingly abstract answer to that question is that my experience as a fellow taught me to ask questions from a wider range of interdisciplinary perspectives, which in turn helped me think more actively about the diverse audiences that jointly make up “the public.” And of course, envisioning “the public” is a core component of writing for it.
Alexis: Your research focuses on the relationship between different sorts of values, in particular the relationship between aesthetic and moral values. Can you explain what you mean by the "relationship between aesthetic and moral values?”
Becca: Broadly speaking, I’m interested in the various ways that goodness and beauty are related to one another. For instance, in a recent paper, I ask whether beautiful artworks are morally better because they’re beautiful, or whether ugly artworks are morally worse because they’re ugly. Other questions in the vicinity include: are artworks less beautiful when their creators are evil? Are people who are more aesthetically sophisticated inclined to be more morally virtuous?
Alexis: Could you talk about how those academic interests connect to the mission and work of the Center?
Becca: Questions at the heart of my academic work are certainly relevant to ethical questions that have loomed large in public life in recent years, for instance questions about what we should do with the work of artists who have committed transgressions in their personal lives. But I think it’s less my specific research agenda than my broader approach, with its interdisciplinary emphasis and public ambitions, that are aligned with the Center’s mission of fostering civic discussion about values.
Alexis: You are a widely published critic and essayist, the winner of the first annual Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Balakian Prize for excellence in reviewing. Can you talk about how you began and developed this remarkable career?
Becca: I didn’t set out to develop a career, nor did I start writing book reviews with any sort of plan. I’m still shocked by how well things have panned out for me, because I’ve just been guided by one fairly impractical principle: write about what interests you, and don’t compromise unless you have to. I always knew I wanted to go to graduate school—before I realized people actually made a living as writers, the academy always seemed to me like a haven for reading and thinking—but I knew I had to find something else to do immediately after college, because all of my professors had advised me to wait at least a year before applying to PhD programs. I was lucky enough to get a job at The New Republic, where I was introduced to a sort of writing I didn’t know existed: intelligent, probing literary criticism that was for the general public but that was every bit as rigorous as scholarship. I wrote for The New Republic a little bit, although my actual job was to copy-edit and fact-check the books section, and I continued freelancing when I started graduate school. The rest is history.
Alexis: You recently accepted a position as a non-fiction book critic at The Washington Post, congratulations! How has the transition been?
Becca: Surprisingly seamless! I grew up in DC, so I’m already familiar with the city, and I’ve always thought of public writing as continuous with philosophy (which is why I’ve sometimes been frustrated at the insularity of academic philosophy).
Alexis: Can you talk more about what you’ll be doing in your new role? What part of the job are you most excited about?
Becca: My job is simple, which is not to say it’s easy: every week, give or take, I review a new work of non-fiction. (“New work” can mean new translation or new edition.) My favorite sort of review is the review-cum-essay, which uses a book or a series of books as an occasion for a broader meditation. I have a few of those coming up, and while I’m not allowed to divulge much information about our coverage plan, I’m especially looking forward to writing them.
Alexis: What do you do in your spare time, do you have any hobbies?
Becca: I’m too much of a single-minded obsessive for hobbies, I’m sorry to say. Reading and writing don’t feel like jobs to me, and they are what I spend pretty much all of my waking hours doing. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m arguing with other people who also read and write about reading and writing, and so I’m “reading” and “writing” in some extended way. With that said, I try really hard to make sure I’m always reading at least one book “for pleasure.” Of course, many of the books I review are pleasurable to read, but what I mean is that I make sure I’m always reading at least one book I’m not reviewing, for the sheer joy of it. The various virtuous activities that I try to do on a regular basis so as to ensure that I don’t die prematurely, for instance running and eating vegetables, qualify less as “hobbies” and more as “chores.”
Alexis: Do you have a podcast that you are listening to or a show that you are watching?
Becca: I’m not big on podcasts; I do go in for binges of bad television every so often, but I’m not in the midst of one now. I’ve been slowly watching and/or re-watching the movies the philosopher Stanley Cavell discusses in his book, Pursuits of Happiness. They’re old Hollywood screwball comedies; they’re great. My favorite is His Girl Friday.
Alexis: What are you looking forward to in the next few months?
Becca: I’m looking forward to completing the final revisions of my first book!