Ten Favorite Books Written in the Ecstatic Register
(By “the ecstatic register,” I mean prose that foregrounds its music, aiming for high feeling and rhapsodies of decoration—the Molly Bloom soliloquy, for instance. The ecstatic is the most difficult register to maintain because when it falls short of its ambitions it quickly becomes embarrassing; one lapse and that balloon floating so lightly in midair will go twirling across the room, making the noise balloons make. Here are ten books that maintain such a register successfully—that stay afloat, without losing air—arranged by how clearly they illustrate its use.)
Thereafter Johnnie by Carolivia Herron
The Remnants by Robert Hill
Lonesome Ballroom by Madeline McDonnell
Blind Argus by Gesualdo Bufalino
The Torturer’s Wife by Thomas Glave
The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Farther Along by Donald Harington
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
No Animals We Could Name by Ted Sanders
— August 1, 2025