A U.S. district judge explains how the criminal justice system “bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the movies and television portray, or what the average American believes.” Essential reading at a time when factors ranging from outrageous grand jury decisions to the podcast “Serial” have drawn attention to the courts and their workings.
The Instagram feed of journalist Jeff Sharlet
In September, Sharlet, a magazine feature writer, began to take portraits of people he met during his insomniac forays to a 24-hour donut shop. The images are paired with long captions to become mini-profiles of nightshift workers and street characters, a form some call the “InstaEssay.” The best way to read them is as they unfold, informal and immediate. “It’s not the news,” Sharlet wrote for a Long Form collection of his nightshift shots. “It’s not journalism in any conventional sense. It’s, Look at this! It’s, I saw these people, and I wanted you to see them, too.”
“The Real Mr. Difficult, or Why Cthulhu Threatens to Destroy the Canon, Self-Interested Literary Essayists, and the Universe Itself. Finally” by Nick Mamatas, for the Los Angeles Review of Books
Mamatas makes the unlikely, audacious argument that Lovecraft was not an eccentric pulp writer of remarkably lasting appeal, but an experimental proto-postmodernist to rank with the likes of David Foster Wallace or William Gaddis. Even if you’re not convinced, where else but in an essay can you enjoy the spectacle of a writer going so far out on a limb?
“An Answer to the Novel’s Detractors” by Adelle Waldman for the NewYorker.com
A meticulously well-argued response to some recent complaints that the novel is inadequate to the task of describing how we live now.
“Forget About James Franco” by Bill Morris for the Millions
Morris’ essays for the Millions are funny, loose-limbed and persuasive. (I owe him eternal gratitude for being the critic who finally persuaded me to read Charles Portis.) Here, he simultaneously chides and soothes those who fume over the undeserved success of celebrity novelists.Comfort and Joy
She did not want him to shovel the snow, because she loved how unspoiled the yard looked without boot prints or footpaths, and it was Christmas Eve, their seventeenth one together, there was nowhere to go and it was freezing out, but she did not want him to turn up the heat, because she liked to wear all of those layers of silk and wool, and she liked how the children went to sleep earlier when the house was cold, stocking caps on their tiny heads, and — well, geez, the things she needed for happiness always surprised him, but he did what she asked, he always did, and at night, in bed together, under many ancient blankets, he was glad for the heat they made together.
“All About My Mother” by Meghan Daum, for the Guardian
Nowadays, anyone can win likes, faves and commendations for bravery by blarfing up a raw account of some grueling or traumatizing experience on the Web, however indifferently it may be written. Daum’s essay on her mother’s life, illness and death, the mature product of many years of work and thought, is another creature entirely: funny, frank, stripped of self-pity and posturing. This is the personal essay at its very best.
“The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins” by John Gray for the New Republic
This review of Dawkin’s recent autobiography isn’t the only piece to observe the ways that the biologist, in his inquisitorial campaign against religion, has made a false idol out of science itself. It’s just the best-written, and the most comprehensively argued.This time of year when I turn up the thermostat, I think of Mom, who was always turning up the thermostat, and how when Dad would catch her he launched into, “They call me Heat-Miser,” prancing and bellowing that whole ridiculous song.
And when I think of Dad at this time of year, I think of a Christmas gift he gave Mom once, a huge, colorfully wrapped box, which she opened only to find inside another wrapped box, and Dad laughed as she opened that box to find another wrapped box, and then another, and so on, boxes inside boxes (everything from Dad was always a joke, a big laugh, an absurd story, a ridiculous reenactment, an outlandish flattery (as I grew older, I made attempts at heartfelt conversation with the man, but these only set him to searching for more ludicrous diversions (what I mean is, Dad was like that big delightfully wrapped box: when I tried to peel it open, I found inside another gaudy box, and inside that box another box, etc. (but the hidden passages and underground sentiments of my parents’ relationship were always a mystery to me, and for Mom, I guess, Dad was different, or seemed different (she actually laughed when she opened that last small box, with its ridiculous contents, another joke
A U.S. district judge explains how the criminal justice system “bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the movies and television portray, or what the average American believes.” Essential reading at a time when factors ranging from outrageous grand jury decisions to the podcast “Serial” have drawn attention to the courts and their workings.
The Instagram feed of journalist Jeff Sharlet
In September, Sharlet, a magazine feature writer, began to take portraits of people he met during his insomniac forays to a 24-hour donut shop. The images are paired with long captions to become mini-profiles of nightshift workers and street characters, a form some call the “InstaEssay.” The best way to read them is as they unfold, informal and immediate. “It’s not the news,” Sharlet wrote for a Long Form collection of his nightshift shots. “It’s not journalism in any conventional sense. It’s, Look at this! It’s, I saw these people, and I wanted you to see them, too.”
“The Real Mr. Difficult, or Why Cthulhu Threatens to Destroy the Canon, Self-Interested Literary Essayists, and the Universe Itself. Finally” by Nick Mamatas, for the Los Angeles Review of Books
Mamatas makes the unlikely, audacious argument that Lovecraft was not an eccentric pulp writer of remarkably lasting appeal, but an experimental proto-postmodernist to rank with the likes of David Foster Wallace or William Gaddis. Even if you’re not convinced, where else but in an essay can you enjoy the spectacle of a writer going so far out on a limb?
“An Answer to the Novel’s Detractors” by Adelle Waldman for the NewYorker.com
A meticulously well-argued response to some recent complaints that the novel is inadequate to the task of describing how we live now.
“Forget About James Franco” by Bill Morris for the Millions
Morris’ essays for the Millions are funny, loose-limbed and persuasive. (I owe him eternal gratitude for being the critic who finally persuaded me to read Charles Portis.) Here, he simultaneously chides and soothes those who fume over the undeserved success of celebrity novelists.Comfort and Joy
She did not want him to shovel the snow, because she loved how unspoiled the yard looked without boot prints or footpaths, and it was Christmas Eve, their seventeenth one together, there was nowhere to go and it was freezing out, but she did not want him to turn up the heat, because she liked to wear all of those layers of silk and wool, and she liked how the children went to sleep earlier when the house was cold, stocking caps on their tiny heads, and — well, geez, the things she needed for happiness always surprised him, but he did what she asked, he always did, and at night, in bed together, under many ancient blankets, he was glad for the heat they made together.
“All About My Mother” by Meghan Daum, for the Guardian
Nowadays, anyone can win likes, faves and commendations for bravery by blarfing up a raw account of some grueling or traumatizing experience on the Web, however indifferently it may be written. Daum’s essay on her mother’s life, illness and death, the mature product of many years of work and thought, is another creature entirely: funny, frank, stripped of self-pity and posturing. This is the personal essay at its very best.
“The Closed Mind of Richard Dawkins” by John Gray for the New Republic
This review of Dawkin’s recent autobiography isn’t the only piece to observe the ways that the biologist, in his inquisitorial campaign against religion, has made a false idol out of science itself. It’s just the best-written, and the most comprehensively argued.This time of year when I turn up the thermostat, I think of Mom, who was always turning up the thermostat, and how when Dad would catch her he launched into, “They call me Heat-Miser,” prancing and bellowing that whole ridiculous song.
And when I think of Dad at this time of year, I think of a Christmas gift he gave Mom once, a huge, colorfully wrapped box, which she opened only to find inside another wrapped box, and Dad laughed as she opened that box to find another wrapped box, and then another, and so on, boxes inside boxes (everything from Dad was always a joke, a big laugh, an absurd story, a ridiculous reenactment, an outlandish flattery (as I grew older, I made attempts at heartfelt conversation with the man, but these only set him to searching for more ludicrous diversions (what I mean is, Dad was like that big delightfully wrapped box: when I tried to peel it open, I found inside another gaudy box, and inside that box another box, etc. (but the hidden passages and underground sentiments of my parents’ relationship were always a mystery to me, and for Mom, I guess, Dad was different, or seemed different (she actually laughed when she opened that last small box, with its ridiculous contents, another joke
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