In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt, who would soon publish her first book on sex in the digital age, had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to catch glimpses of the clandestine nightlife scene thrumming around her. Witt charts her immersion into New York City's dance music underground. Emily would come to lead a double life. By day she worked as a journalist, covering gun violence, climate catastrophes, and the rallies of right-wing militias. And by night she pushed the limits of consciousness in hollowed-out office spaces and warehouses to music that sounded like the future. But no counterculture, no matter how utopian, could stave off the squalor of American politics and the cataclysm of 2020.
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.
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.
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.
