essay
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Riding With the Queen
Over at the New York Times, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah profiles Toni Morrison in a tremendous essay: Morrison is a woman of guardrails and many boundaries; she keeps them up in order to do the work. The work “protects,” she told…
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Unlike Friends
All we knew was that Casper, with his genius IQ, his measured laugh, his wicked weltanschauung, was somebody really, really interesting to hang out with. A neighborhood kid like anybody else, only not like anybody else. One of us, only…
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Tautophrases and Narcissism
In a world where the selfie has become our dominant art form, tautological phrases like “You do you” and its tribe provide a philosophical scaffolding for our ever-evolving, ever more complicated narcissism. Colson Whitehead examines the relationship between “tautophrases” and contemporary narcissism…
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LeBron James as Personal Essayist
Beneath all personal essays, especially those that deal with trauma, a change, or, in James’s case, a tough decision, the implicit narrative is that the author is presently in a clear enough place to produce the prose.
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A Golden Age for Women Essayist?
On the New York Times, Cheryl Strayed and Benjamin Moser discuss whether this is a golden age for the female essayist. Probably because I’m of the opinion that as long as we still have reason to wedge “women” as a…
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Take a Stab: An Essay
In anticipation of the Best American Essays 2014, which will come out later this week from Houghton Mifflin, the New Yorker brings us an adaptation of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s introduction to the anthology—a historical investigation of the word “essay.” Sullivan…
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The Essayist Must…
Despite the horror and hopelessness (see below) that moves through the world, the essayist must have, even if it is well-buried under the most convincing costume of misanthropy, a deep and abiding love of humanity. Essayists set up beacons, send…
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Drought-Stricken Literature
“And a new literature of drought may be emerging—one with room for stories that recall the past, but also for the possibility of trouble on a scale we’ve never seen before” According to Anna North, water—or rather the lack there…
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Jack of Hearts
Magic isn’t about making the impossible happen. Surely that’s a big part of it, but more importantly, magic reminds us how it feels to be bewildered by something.
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“What I Remember”
Rumpus contributor Ray Shea has a new essay over at Hobart. It is a beautiful essay on anger, self control, and body issues. Take a peek: I want to say that I shrunk into my shoes and disappeared, but when…
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Is the Essay like Reality TV?
In an article about the contemporary form of the essay, Adam Kirsch states, “The new essay is exclusively about the self with the world serving only as a foil and an accessory.” This article compares essayists such as Rothbart and Crosley…
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On Apologizing and Forgiveness
It has been several years since all this went down, and from an outsider’s perspective I’ve mostly gotten over it. For a while it put a halt on everything good in my life, but eventually I stopped crying about it.…