Do we know that definitively?“As A Father Of Daughters, I Think We Should Treat All Women Like My Daughters” by Mallory Ortberg, for the Toast
Something by Mallory Ortberg, the funniest writer on the Internet, is obviously a must — but which piece to pick? Oh, the riches! Ortberg’s got multiple running riffs on her web site, the Toast, from captions appended to old paintings (“Women Having a Terrible Time at Parties in Western Art History”) to her justly celebrated “Dirtbag” series (“Dirtbag Zeus,” “Dirtbag Hamlet” and, yes, “Dirtbag Paul Atriedes”!). But this is the piece that best embodies Ortberg’s, faux-naive, blood-drawing wit.
“Modern Library Revue #43: Dance to the Music of Time” by Lydia Kiesling
Thrilled as I am that Kiesling has become a frequent contributor to Salon, nothing can supplant in my heart her long-running series of pieces on the Modern Library for the Millions. Reading Powell’s series of novels surveying one man’s life in the 20th century coincided with Kiesling’s pregnancy, and the interplay between the two drawn-out experiences makes this essay particularly memorable.
“The Truth About Anonymous’s Activism” by Adrian Chen, for the Nation
Chen is a journalist specializing in Internet culture who consistently exposes the excesses of its most egregious braggarts and self-styled renegades. Here he reviews a largely admiring book about the swaggering hackers of Anonymous. By the time he’s done, all that’s left is a rag, a bone and bedraggled Guy Fawkes mask.
“Black Body: Rereading James Baldwin’s ‘Stranger in the Village’” by Teju Cole for the NewYorker.com
On what would have been Baldwin’s 90th birthday, the Nigerian-American novelist visits the Swiss town where Baldwin wrote one of his most famous essays
“What Muriel Spark Saw” by Parul Sehgal for the NewYorker.com
A short celebration of the elusive author of “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” that deftly evokes the astringent flavor of her fiction.
“Gilding the Small Screen: or, ‘Is it just me or did TV get good all of a sudden?’” by Javier Grillo-Marxuach for the Los Angeles Review of Books
Grillo-Marxuach, who has written for “Lost” and many other series, has a startling, but convincing theory: “Every show of the Second Golden Age of television is essentially ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’: a sustained exploration of the consequences of divorce — and absent and abandoning parenting — on the now-grown children of the first generation to experience it as a widespread social custom.”
“The Future of the Culture Wars is Here, and It’s Gamergate” by Kyle Wagner, for Deadspin
A patiently honed and crafted essay has its pleasures, but there are times when a more urgent blog post is what’s called for — like when a bizarre eruption takes over the Internet and a smart, articulate writer has been thinking hard about the forces behind it for a long time.
“Why Innocent People Plead Guilty” by Jed S. Rakoff, for the New York Review of Books