Pure Flame
How the Village Voice Met Its Moment, February, 2024
On Madonna October, 2023
On Vivian Gornick May, 2015
On Kim Gordon and Kurt Cobain February, 2015
4 Columns
The Worst Person in the World (Feb, 2022)
Smooth Talk (Oct, 2020)
Cabaret (Sep, 2020)
Normal People (April, 2020)
Little Women (Jan, 2020)
Gloria Bell (March, 2019)
Tully (May, 2018)
I Love You, Daddy (Nov, 2017)
Capital New York
56 Up (January, 2013)
Django Unchained (December, 2012)
Zero Dark Thirty (December, 2012)
Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (September, 2012)
Cosmopolis (August, 2012)
Movieline
The Dark Knight Rises (July, 2012)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (June, 2012)
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present (May, 2012)
Project X (March, 2012)
Act of Valor (Feb, 2012)
The Future (July, 2011)
Inside Job (Oct, 2010)
A Film Unfinished (Aug, 2010)
I Am Love (June, 2010)
Splice (May, 2010)
Greenberg (March, 2010)
A Prophet (Feb, 2010)
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The Reeler
Be Kind Rewind (Feb 2008)
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Knocked Up (June 2007)
Away From Her (May 2007)
Exterminating Angels (March 2007)
The Lives of Others (Feb 2007)
The Painted Veil (Dec 2006)
The Secret Life of Words (Dec 2006)
Volver (Oct 2006)
IFC Interviews
Interview with Natasha Lyonne (July, 2010)
Interview with Debra Granik (June, 2010)
Interview with Mathieu Amalric (November, 2007)
Interview with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (January, 2007)
Ruben Östlund and Force Majeure, Jan/Feb 2015
The Essential Jacques Demy, Sept/Oct 2014
Eula Biss’s On Immunity: An Inoculation, October 2014
On Black Mirror, December 2014
On (Not) Visiting the 9/11 Memorial, September 2014
Rachel Monroe’s Savage Appetites, Dec/Jan 2019
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women, Summer 2019
Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, Fall 2014
Norman Rush’s Subtle Bodies, Fall 2013
Visiting Graham Greene’s London, Summer 2013
If One Part Suffers, January 2024
Revisiting Waking Life, August 2013
The Commitments: On Before Midnight, August 2013
“The Long Hello,” review of Barbara Stanwyck biography, November 2013
This Is the End and Canadian sell-out anxiety , June 2013
what purpose did i serve in your life, by Marie Calloway, June 2013
“Indeed I did not think of myself as a woman first of all.… I wanted to be pure flame.”
—Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover
“During one of the texting sessions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our relationship, my mother revealed the existence of someone named Janis Jerome.”
So begins Michelle Orange’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of maternal legacy—in her own family and across a century of seismic change. Jerome, she learns, is one of her mother’s many alter egos: the name used in a case study, eventually sold to the Harvard Business Review, about her mother’s midlife choice to leave her husband and children to pursue career opportunities in a bigger city. A flashpoint in the lives of both mother and daughter, the decision forms the heart of a broader exploration of the impact of feminism on what Adrienne Rich called “the great unwritten story”: that of the mother-daughter bond.
The death of Orange’s maternal grandmother at nearly ninety-six and the fear that her mother’s more “successful” life will not be as long bring new urgency to her questions about the woman whose absence and anger helped shape her life. Through a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism, Pure Flame pursues a chain of personal, intellectual, and collective inheritance, tracing the forces that helped transform the world and what a woman might expect from it. Told with warmth and rigor, Orange’s account of her mother’s life and their relationship is pressurized in critical and unexpected ways, resulting in an essential, revelatory meditation on becoming, selfhood, freedom, mortality, storytelling, and what it means to be a mother’s daughter now.
New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick
Walrus magazine Best Book of 2021
“Rich and moving … Orange skirts the traps of the mother-daughter memoir by going beyond personal history. She interleaves memories of her mother and maternal grandmother with discussions of writing by Simone de Beauvoir, Adrienne Rich and Susan Sontag, among others. Their thoughts on motherhood and feminism don’t perfectly align, nor do they match the views of Orange’s own mother, who climbed the corporate ladder and agitated for equal pay but who never considered herself a feminist. This is a good thing: Different voices and perspectives are allowed to coexist, thus undercutting any universal truths about women and motherhood … After my first reading, certain scenes haunted me for a week … Pure Flame may be Orange’s legacy. It is already her gift.” —Maggie Doherty, The New York Times
“Throughout the book, her mother’s voice emerges with striking clarity, proud and generous, ardently meritocratic, puzzled by her daughter, and sometimes hurt by the distance that has grown between them. It is Orange’s precisely rendered recollections that move and startle the most.” —Michael Prior, The Walrus
“Sometimes achingly sad, but often warm and evocative, this reckoning between mothers and daughters is a brilliant work of feminist critique.” –Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle
“Michelle Orange goes there with a cool head and an open heart, and the result is a mesmerizingly compelling memoir and crucial contribution to untangling the most overly problematized relationship in human history.” –Flying Books, Toronto
“Powerful…a vision of two women…fighting to discover the small spaces where their ideas of womanhood might still be mutually intelligible. “ –Veronica Esposito, Lithub
“Orange embarked on this fiercely intelligent memoir–which doubles as a critique of feminism and maternal failure–to try to come to terms with her mother’s decisions and their decades-long estrangement.” –The Globe and Mail
“The prismatic effect of Orange’s multidimensional approach is brilliant, illuminative, and moving.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“In a weave of memoir, history, and reflection, Orange judiciously considers the lives of her mother and her mother’s mother within the larger context of women’s ongoing battles for equality and liberation … In gleaming prose of tensile strength, Orange considers the painful paradoxes of women’s lives and mother-daughter relationships, drawing on the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, and Adrienne Rich, while tracking her seemingly indomitable mother’s long-brewing lung disease and her ultimate battle between mind and body.” —Booklist
In Pure Flame, Michelle Orange geniusly rewrites and reinvigorates what Adrienne Rich called “the great unwritten story.” In doing so, she recasts the notion of maternal legacy and fills it with pointed mystery and informed sincerity. Pure Flame is a tutorial in bending creative nonfiction. –Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
The best book I’ve read this year, Pure Flame is both a pleasure to read and a work of high seriousness. A meditation on mothers and daughters and an unsparing, stylishly written, and profoundly loving exploration of her own relationship with her mother, the book is as original as it is powerful. To be with Orange as she reckons with each stage of her mother’s life and with her own shifting assessments is to experience a joy that is at once intellectual and moral: this is a book that expands and breaks your heart, not with sentimentality but with its intelligence and compassion. –Adelle Waldman, author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
There’s an irresistible question at the center of this book: In her attempt to avoid becoming her mother, did Michelle Orange lose herself, and her mother too? The book changes as it goes around corners: a mystery novel, an inquiry, a call-and-response poem–Pure Flame is a provocative, meditative, funny, feminist adventure about two women trying to tell each other the stories that matter while there’s still time.” –Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
Opening Pure Flame is like stepping into a cathedral. Michelle Orange makes elaborate leaps of association and elegant sentences seem effortless to construct, but only a writer as skilled as Orange can make a reader feel like a collaborator, rather than a mere witness to the artistry. Pure Flame is as lyrical and idea-driven as it is propulsive and moving. I already can’t wait to reread it. –Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl
This Is Running for Your Life
LA Review of Books interview with Elissa Bassist (Sep, 2013)
Wag’s Revue interview with Abby Koski (Summer, 2013)
Other People Podcast with Brad Listi (April, 2013)
The Paris Review interview with Michele Filgate (April, 2013)
The Millions interview with Hannah Gersen (March, 2013)
Believer interview with Pasha Malla (Feb, 2013)
Village Voice interview (Feb, 2013)
Harper’s “Six Questions” interview (Feb, 2013)
Flavorwire interview with Tobias Carroll (Feb, 2013)
Rumpus interview with Stephen Elliott (Feb, 2013)
Q & A with Publisher’s Weekly (Dec, 2012)
Other Interviews
Interview with the Virginia Quarterly Review (Summer, 2009)
Interviewed by The Danforth Review (Feb, 2009)
Interviewed about The Sicily Papers for “The Living Writers Show” (Nov, 2006)
Zulkey.com interview (Oct, 2006)
Habeas Whitney (Feb, 2012)
Interview with Every Man in this Village is a Liar author Megan Stack (Nov, 2010)
The Theory of Relatability and Rethinking Justin Long’s Face (Oct, 2010)
Re-commencement: Notes on an English Professor’s Retirement (Sept, 2009)
“Do I Know You?” And Other Impossible Questions (June, 2009)
The Theory of Receptivity and Some Thoughts on Ethan Hawke’s Face (May, 2009)
Fade to Orange: Famous on Famous/Film Links Forever (Feb, 2009)
Fade to Orange: “He Is So Totally That Into Me” Edition (Feb, 2009)
Fade to Orange: International Film Link Incident (Jan, 2009)
Fade to Orange: Film Link Implosion (Dec, 2008)
On Manhattan, then and now (March, 2017)
Cameraperson feature (Sep, 2016)
Derek Jarman’s Will You Dance With Me? (Aug, 2016)
On Spike Lee’s BAM retrospective (June, 2014)
Nymphomaniac Volume II (April, 2014)
Into Great Silence (March, 2007)
The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (March, 2007)
The Golden Compass (Dec, 2007)
Chuck Close: A Portrait in Progress (Dec, 2007)
Interview with Christopher Honoré and Louis Garrel (March, 2008)
Interview with Etgar Keret (April, 2008)
Bigger, Stronger, Faster (May, 2008)
The Tourist (Dec 2010)
Every Sha La La La, Every Oh No (January, 2003)
Of A Piece: An interview with John Orange (January, 2002)
This Is Running for Your Life: Essays (FSG): Amazon, Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or your local indie bookstore.
Pure Flame (FSG)
Anthologies
Best Canadian Essays 2020
Basta Cosi, Parts One to Twelve.
“Political Theaters,” on satire and the new political television, February 2014
Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, April 2009
Self-Portrait of the Artist, Spring 2021
The Real Real: On the History of American Documentary, Fall 2020
On Tiger King, Summer 2020
Couples Therapy and the Guru as Protagonist, Winter 2019
On Freedom, Democracy, and Big Tech, Summer 2019
Death and Decluttering, Spring 2019
The Tale and Cruelty with a Point, Fall 2018
Ways of Seeing and Being on YouTube, Summer 2017
The Career Woman in Elle and Toni Erdmann, Spring 2017
On Weiner and Author: The JT Leroy Story, Fall 2016
Chantal Akerman and No Home Movie, Spring 2016
Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog, Winter 2016
“Beirut Rising,” Summer 2009
Elegy in a Pre-Post-Pandemic World, May 2021
On Shame and Wonder: Essays, January 2016
Essays Shortlist, May 2015
Patricia Clarkson profile, August 2010
“Sunny Spies Under Those Sunny Skies” Covert Affairs feature, July 2010
“Taking Back the Knife: Girls Gone Gory in Jennifer’s Body,” September 2009
Lynn Shelton profile, July 2009
“Sessions and the Single Man” In Treatment feature, April 2009