This Week in Essays
A weekly roundup of essays we’re reading online!
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Posts Tagged: New York Magazine
Ten Minutes of Motherhood: A Conversation with Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy on The Rules Do Not Apply, the illusion of control, and language’s inability to express grief.
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Reality Scooped: Talking with Tony Tulathimutte
Recent Whiting Award winner Tony Tulathimutte discusses his first novel, Private Citizens, the state of satire in 2017, “booby-trapping” identity politics, and productivity in the Internet age.
...moreThis Week in Essays
Bookbinding may be a dying art, but at Lit Hub, Dwyer Murphy tells the story of a man who keeps his business going strong on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For Hazlitt, Suzannah Showler takes a measured look at the prepper community and at the idea of preparation itself.
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Heather Havrilesky
We are in a chaotic mess of a world, and our lives are going to be chaotic messes no matter how victorious and shiny we manage to become.
...moreNo Means No
Porn performers consent to have sex on-camera, but Stoya objects to the idea that she — or any other performer — is just a collection of orifices to which she’s signed away unrestricted penetration rights. The number of times you’ve said “yes” does not in any way disempower you to say “no” at any point, […]
...moreThe Origin of Performativity Theory
She made it clear that the body is not a stable foundation for gender expression. For New York Magazine, Molly Fischer profiles gender theorist and philosopher Judith Butler, focusing on how Butler’s theory of performativity has disseminated into pop culture in the thirty-six years since its inception in Gender Trouble, and how the conversations around gender […]
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Female Friendships and Online Literary Sexism
As an essayist who often writes from personal experience and who’s working on a memoir, I believe deeply it is a feminist act for women to tell their stories.
...moreThe Allure of Witchery
New York Magazine has an excerpt from Alex Mar’s new book, Witches of America.
...moreIt Takes A Village
…to make a Selena Gomez album. According to an article that appeared in New York Magazine‘s October 5th issue, no less than thirty-eight people worked on the star’s latest album, Revival, including Gomez herself—a pretty impressive number of contributors for a solo album. The article charts out a who’s who of Revival track-by-track in what becomes […]
...moreLetter to Everyone Else
Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to storm the literary world over at Rolling Stone and New York Magazine, and if those accolades weren’t enough, Toni Morrison has decreed him to “fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died.”
...moreFigure Drawing, Or, The Posthumous Persona Of David Foster Wallace
On the eve of a new biopic and on the long tail of posthumous publishing and popularization—Christian Lorentzen takes a long, compassionate, critical look at David Foster Wallace and on the ways in which a prolific writer gets written into the public memory—as intellectual behemoth, creative luminary, contemptuous snob, major depressive, motivational speaker: A writer who courted […]
...moreThe Battle for Reputation
In anticipation of Zachary Leder’s upcoming biography, The Life of Saul Bellow: To Fame and Fortune, Lee Siegel grapples with the author’s tainted and troubling reputation for Vulture.
...moreJoy to the World
Over at New York magazine, Adam Sternbergh’s written an intricate, affecting, and (honest to god) shocking elegy in awe of the emoji. If he comes to a single conclusion, it’s that every single one of them is here to stay: Over 470 million Joy emoji are being sent back and forth on Twitter right now—which […]
...moreSit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
Science of Us explains why it felt so great to write that angry letter to your boss (even if you never sent it): When we talk with someone with whom we don’t feel completely safe, our social editor jumps in on full alert and our guard is up. Writing is different. If you ask your editor […]
...moreDetails Emerging for Amtrak Writing Residency
The Amtrak Writer Residency—an impromptu marketing program conceived of over Twitter—finally seems to be taking shape. After Alexander Chee mentioned his enjoyment of writing on trains, Amtrak jumped at the chance for some positive press and announced a residency program that would pair writers with sleeper compartments on long haul routes. Despite the creation of a […]
...moreOases in the Bookstore Desert
While many of Manhattan’s bookstores are closing shop or fleeing to outer boroughs, a few continue to thrive in the “bookstore desert.” New York Magazine takes a look at how six independent bookstores throughout New York City are making it work.
...moreDon’t Tell Your Kids They’re Smart
One of the most important ways to encourage your children academically and intellectually is to praise them for being smart—or is it actually the complete opposite of that? For New York Magazine, Po Bronson investigates how praising children for intelligence rather than effort can hinder their emotional and academic development. A preview: …it’s been noted that […]
...more“Inside, I Still Feel Like I’m 15 to 18 Years Old”
Ever wonder why the high-school years are the focus of so many movies, books, and fun memories you can’t get over despite years of therapy? New York Magazine‘s Jennifer Senior (whose surname is presumably not intended as a pun) investigates the matter from cultural, sociological, and neurological angles. As it turns out, the high-school experience really does follow […]
...moreTweeting Drone Strikes
I started this Twitter account because I expected no one to follow it. In some ways, that was the point — I didn’t really think anyone wanted to be interrupted by all this data. The fact that 19,000 people want their timeline to be flooded with reports of old U.S. drone strikes is beyond surprising […]
...moreLou Reed Does it Again
You’ve probably heard about Lou Reed’s multilayered Poe ventures which have taken on various artistic forms—a concept album, formerly a theater piece, and now a graphic novel. And that’s not all. The latest of his Edgar Allen Poe-themed projects is a collaboration with Metallica. How can Lou Reed take on Poe so multi-artistically? It’s stressing […]
...moreAn Internet Revolutionary
Julian Assange may have more sidekicks than we know of. You can read about how Bradley Manning, a gender-questioning soldier, came to subvert the American military’s authority over information regarding the war in Iraq. He has simultaneously earned the title of WikiLeaks hero and U.S. traitor, on account of the classified information he leaked over […]
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Sam Anderson
“An ideal, awesome job,”—that’s how Sam Anderson, at several points in our conversation, describes his position as book critic for New York Magazine.
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