Late Style in Film (2026)

The purpose of this post is to announce that my new book, called Late Style in Film, is now available for purchase from Sticking Place Books. You can order it here, in either paperback or hardcover (although the latter won't be available for a couple more days); there's a nice discount if you buy it directly from the publisher.

If you’ve been here before, you may have seen or read the piece I wrote about the late style of Howard Hawks that I shared around Thanksgiving of 2024. I’d originally written that as a sample chapter to send out to publishers along with a book proposal I’d put together that summer, a venture I eventually became disenchanted with and more or less dropped for the time being. So as to not let that piece lay dormant and unread, I published it here, in the case that the book it was intended to be a part of never did come together.

But I guess enough people read that and word got around, leading to an out-of-the-blue message from Sticking Place Books’ Paul Cronin encouraging me to write the actual book and offering to publish it. The contract was signed in January 2025 and the rest is history. If you like the book, you can thank Paul, because I’m not at all sure it would have ever happened without him.

A description of the book can be found at the link provided above, but if you’re interested in knowing more concretely what kind of stuff is included in the book, here’s a short list:

• a foreword from legendary film scholar (and fellow Wisconsinite) Joseph McBride
• an introduction to contemporary debates about the idea of late style in film
• an overview of the history of late style thinking in general, with special attention given to recontextualizing Theodor Adorno and Edward Said’s contributions amid larger, more diverse discourses
• an attempt to redefine late style towards more concrete, inclusive, and productive ends
• an exploration of film history’s two “golden ages” of late style (roughly, the 1950s-1970s and the 2000s-present)
• a look at how auteurism and late style have interacted throughout film history
• an argument for the kind of philosophy of viewing that I believe late style thinking should be inspired by
• three long, in-depth, one-of-a-kind chapters engaging with the late period work of filmmakers Howard Hawks, Charles Chaplin, and Alfred Hitchcock that demonstrate late style criticism in action
• a brief concluding note that extrapolates late style thinking to more generalized effect
• a bonus list of 100 of my favorite late films (one per director)
• and much more!

As a year-plus, nights-and-weekends kind of labor of love, I hope you get as much out of reading it as I put into the research and writing of it. Be sure to share to the book’s existence and/or your enjoyment of it (or even lack thereof!) with anyone you know that might be interested, online or off, as word of mouth remains the best marketing tool at my disposal. Thanks, and much gratitude to all the family, friends, online acquaintances, and anyone else who in one small way or another helped or supported me in making this a reality.