The DFW-Franzen Saga
In this Awl piece, Michelle Dean weighs in on Jonathan Franzen’s declaration that David Foster Wallace “fabricated at least part of—and potentially a large part of—his nonfiction pieces.” The article…
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the awl
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“How to Write a Love Poem”
“Poetry occupies a cultural space in Contemporary American Society somewhere between Tap Dancing and Ventriloquism.” How do you claim some of this space as your very own? The Awl has…
Road-Tripping
What do you look for in a highway? Curves? Covered bridges? Buffalos? This article walks us through the seven U.S. roads “worth building a dream road trip around.” “And finally,…
Cartographic Controversy
“Map projections are just different ways of translating the dimensions of a globe onto a two dimensional surface. A sphere (or oblate spheriod, if you want to be fancy) can’t…
Drug Violence and the Lacking American Media Response
The recent massacre at a casino in Monterrey, Mexico marks the pinnacle of drug war-related violence. The response to this tragic episode by the American media reveal the frailties of…
Two Doses of Sugar
The Awl has got a sweet interview with none other than our very own advice columnist, Sugar, who is always ebbing our existential qualms with her eloquence. But what’s it…
Nostalgia: What Would Calvin Say?
An encounter with childhood Calvin and Hobbes anthologies inspires a rumination on the comic and nostalgia itself in this essay at the Awl. Tackling aspects of nostalgia that we often…
First Muses
Remember your first muse? “My first muse was a chubby, bespectacled, brown-eyed, sharply intelligent 13-year-old boy in Phoenix, Arizona in 1975. When he laughed at and loved my writing, I…
How To Title Your Book
Title-stress is apparently really common. This being so, authors have responded by finding various methods to assuage the agony and test the waters before finalizing the name of their work…
The Importance of Voting
“Valid objections all, but I’m urging you to please clap on your nasal clothespin and get ready to vote anyway, starting now. Now—before the real craziness begins, while you still…