Readers' rating:
Published May 2021
368 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
"Astute and consistently surprising critic" (NPR) Olivia Laing investigates the body and its discontents through the great freedom movements of the twentieth century.
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century―among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X.
Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.
In a Guardian excerpt from her book Everybody: A Book About Freedom, Olivia Laing looks at Wilhelm Reich and his legacy.
"Impassioned and provocative... This lucid foray into some of life's deepest questions astonishes."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This is an expansive book, bold in scope and speculative range, an invitation to ongoing conversation rather than bland assent...Yet Laing's Reichian utopianism, with its ultimate horizon of a body without fear, coexists with a clear-eyed sense, at work in all its granular explorations of sexual politics, art and ideas, of how and why that horizon seems always to be vanishing. And this tension, between defiant hope and sober realism, only enriches her intensely moving, vital and artful book." - Josh Cohen, The Guardian
"Revelatory... Dreaming beyond conventional wisdom and restrictive visions, Laing emboldens us to seek liberation across difference in the face of turmoil. Everybody is a galvanizing book during a time of incredible hesitation."
- Lauren LeBlanc, Boston Globe
"[Laing] masterfully shares stories of fascinating artists and historical figures... Her net, in short, is breathtakingly, ambitiously wide... Everybody is a nonpareil study that delights the intellect." - BookPage
" A fleet, gracious tour of bodily distress and joy... Laing writes in great looping sentences, both precise and evocative." - Annalisa Quinn, NPR
"Laing creates a penetrating examination of the political and cultural meanings ascribed to bodies as well as the relationships of bodies to power and freedom... Intellectually vigorous and emotionally stirring."
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Laing's finely crafted blend of incisive memoir and biography vitalize this unique chronicle of the endless struggle 'to be free of oppression based on the kind of body' one inhabits, a work of fresh and dynamic analysis and revelation." - Booklist (starred review)
"Laing is seeking a strategy to unravel our binary thinking about physicality: life or death, liberty or confinement, health or disease. Only by looking beyond these dualities, she insists, can we begin to understand what freedom means. In that sense, the book's title makes for an instructive play on words. On the one hand, it is universal, "everybody" as a synonym for "everyone." On the other, it is highly individual — every body, as in hers or yours or mine. The body is what we have in common as well as what sets us apart. Embodied, we live in proximity to one another yet remain fundamentally alone." - The Los Angeles Times, David L, Ulin
"This is an astonishing project, written with equal parts stirring passion and capable intellect. Laing puts into words experiences I had never before seen in print, and the world is better for it. I love this book." - Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
"Everybody is a riveting and fascinating innovative historiography of twentieth century Euro-American radical thought…Brainy, open-hearted, and bold." - Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse and Let the Record Show
"A freewheeling and joyful exploration of the works and lives of a range of artists and thinkers who brought libidinal and creative energy together with spectacular results. Laing's particular gift lies in her unique ability to line up unlikely juxtapositions―of artists, ideas, and works―and then draw clear and illuminating insights from such constellations. What her earlier work did for loneliness, this book does for liberation." - Jack Halberstam, author of Gaga Feminism
"Reading Everybody felt like hanging out with my absolute smartest friend having, somehow, the precise conversation I need to have in this historical moment. Olivia Laing's mind is a thrill to watch, and the connections she draws between the body, sex, art, and freedom made the world around me buzz with new depth and possibility, connections revealed and illuminated. Rare is the book that makes you feel more alive just in reading it, but Everybody does just that." - Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
"A provocative inquiry into the body's power and vulnerability, Everybody combines deep research, historical gossip, unsung queer lives, and deliciously readable prose. Laing reckons with her own gender and embodiment alongside major and minor theorists, artists, and activists, casting fresh light on the unending struggles for freedom and autonomy." - Jenn Shapland, author of National Book Award finalist My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
"Laing's Everybody animates flesh with the incandescent force of histories both individual and collective. Through her incisive lens, the body―that knot of mind, matter, culture, and society that we dwell inescapably within―becomes almost impossibly fascinating." - Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
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Photo: Jonathan Ring
Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She writes for the Guardian, the New York Times, and Frieze, among many other publications. Her books include Crudo, The Trip to Echo Spring, and The Lonely City which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and translated into fifteen languages. The recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction, she lives in London, England.
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