Censorship Now!!

"While putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled Censorship Now!! in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you'll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world."
—Washington Post
"Svenonius' new book is Censorship Now!!, and the title alone shows just how provocative the author can be. A collection of essays previously published by Vice, Jacobin, and others, it sets up numerous enemies—both real and straw—for Svenonius to knock down....It's all couched in a style that's part anarchist tirade, part postmodern critique, and part punk-rock snottiness—yet it's addictively ridiculous."
—NPR
"Censor it all. Film, TV, music, politics, books, news, art—censor all of it. That's the guiding principle of local radical punk Ian Svenonius' latest essay collection, Censorship Now!!"
—Washington City Paper, Critics' Pick
Named a Favorite Book of 2015 by Jason Diamond at Vol. 1 Brooklyn
"A new collection of essays by everyone's favorite supercilious rock theorist...Svenonius has always been the smartest kid in the room....In print, Svenonius is like that curmudgeonly pal that you adore because, even while his insight quivers between humor, paranoia, and antisocial ire, he never dispels your fascination in how he gets there."
—SF Weekly
"Ian Svenonius is best known as the frontman of bands like the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses, but he's also a brilliant cultural critic with a talent for coming up with the hottest takes you'll ever read. In this collection, Svenonius makes compelling arguments in favor of censorship and hoarding books and records, amid polemics against Apple and Ikea, the yuppification of indie rock, and the shaving of pubic hair."
—Buzzfeed
"The essays in Censorship Now!! are equally packed with modest proposals and mock-revolutionary rhetoric, but there are grains of truth in pieces like 'The Historic Role Of Sugar In Empire Building' and 'Heathers Revisited: The Nerd's Fight For Niceness'—they're just buried somewhere between tongue and cheek."
—The A.V. Club
"Censorship Now!! simultaneously deals in the heated rhetoric of insurgent calls to action, the seductive broad strokes of propaganda, and the clever winking of surrealist humor. Often when I'm really convinced Svenonius has gone off a paranoid deep end, the next sentence hits back with knowingly-hilarious exaggeration or profoundly spot-on analysis, realigning my perspective and making me wonder again....It's fitting that a book whose intentions are ambiguous begins with a call to censor art and ends by letting art do the talking."
—Pitchfork
"Svenonius' true might with these written words is in his eloquence, his persuasive elucidation of his arguments and his convincing invocation of history as backing evidence."
—Paste Magazine
"Ian Svenonius, former Sassiest Boy in America and frontman for legendary D.C. bands Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up...[has a] new essay collection, Censorship Now, [which] is wild with subject matter, including Ikea, Marion Barry, Christian pornography, hoarding, tipping in restaurants, and, yes, the role of sugar in empire-building..."
—KQED Arts
In this outrageous and hilarious new essay collection,...