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


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