Voice and its Uses: George Estreich on Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights and...
Part 1By the time I was halfway through Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald’s new book of essays, I knew I wanted to write about it. I had notes. I had ideas. I thought I could write something short,...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Nov 29, Ander Monson on Living in the Delay
I write to thee, on the first day of liturgical Advent in the ever-elongating year 2020, of the usefulness of delay. I mean the feeling of being on a plane reading an Albert Goldbarth poem and coming...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Nov 30, Pamela Pierce on Melissa Faliveno, Twister, and...
I came to Melissa Faliveno’s “The Finger of God,” the opening essay in Tomboyland, at the same time that I was re-watching every episode of Friday Night Lights on Hulu. Friday Night Lights lasted for...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 1, Mike Martone and His Steam Memoir
“Stop digging.” I am thinking of that old adage as I start this essay. I traced it back to the early 80s when I started writing. The Law of Holes. The Law of Holes is attributed to the politicians...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 2, Nicole Walker, Cruelty for Christmas
Perhaps during a pandemic wasn’t the best time to read Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty. Perhaps one should look for more escapist literature when the day-to-day business of life seems already...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 3, Wren Awry, Gnocchi on the Picket Line
Gnocchi on the Picket LineStrikes, occupations, and labor revolts swept across northern Italy in the 1960s and 70s. In 1969, workers and student collaborators marched toward the Fiat factory in...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 4, Hea-Ream Lee on Susan Neville's Iconography and...
The book I’ve returned to most in this most cursed year of our Lord 2020, a year in which each day lurches uneasily into the next, is Susan Neville’s Iconography. That is to say, lately I’ve been...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 5, Craig Reinbold, Yes to the Flesh?
I've been reading Melissa Matthewson's Tracing the Desire Line. It strikes me that how we read someone else -- what stands out to us from their writing -- is maybe just a reading of...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 6, Caryl Pagel, Already Read: Notes on Angela...
What? The woman turns, stirring something meaty with red sauce. She’s lost in thought, remembering Women Talking while listening to Jack. Spoon in hand, she leans over, pushing her face closer to the...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 7, Corinna Cook, A Clockwork for the Land in Beth...
One day, a Norwegian glacier museum burns to the ground. The glacier beyond it continues its incremental melting. “That’s the thing about a world on fire,” writes Beth Peterson. “You wonder if when the...
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2020 Advent Calendar, Dec 8: Brooke Juliet Wonders, Instructions for Building...
Soon after her story collection Her Body and Other Parties blew up, I added two of Carmen Maria Machado’s essays to my creative nonfiction syllabus: “The Trash Heap Has Spoken,” about body image and...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 9, Genia Blum, Found in 'Found, Again' by Renée E....
My homeopath is a real doctor, but he’s not like my previous doctors who threw entire pharmacies at me as soon as they heard “difficulty sleeping” during a five-minute consultation.Dr. Preis suspects I...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 10, Darcy Jay Gagnon, The Blue Jay Dances to Brian...
When I think of my golden era for authors who made me interested in modern writing, I predominately think of Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich. These are both writers that are masters of narrative, just...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 11, Lucas Mann, The Road that Doesn't End: On Jill...
When the world shuts down, time moves differently. There is a compression to each day, the sameness of the lived moment pushing in on itself. The past and the future start to pulse and ripple into and...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 12, George Estreich, Vesper Flights and the...
This is part 2 of an essay on Helen Macdonald’s writing. You can read part 1 here. To understand the difference between H is for Hawk and Vesper Flights, you can look at the grammar of their titles:...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 13, Scott Morris on Sarah Viren's Generosity
If you have not yet read Sarah Viren’s essay “The Accusation,” then you should do so now. Right now. Seriously, don’t read any further because the post below will contain spoilers—I know, spoilers...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 14, Bethany Maile, Exceptional Upbringings
The New York Times review of Tara Westover’s Educated begins with a comparison. J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, another rural-rags-to-cultural-riches story, had already blitzed through bestseller lists....
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 15, Nicole Sheets on Joanna Eleftheriou's This Way...
In my youth, December was an escalating series of carols until—boom—we hit Christmas Eve and its candlelit choruses of “Silent Night.” When I discovered the season of Advent as an adult, it made so...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 16, Susan Neville, Celluloid
It is raining DNA outside. The (seeds from the willow tree ) are mostly made of cellulose, and it dwarfs the tiny capsule that contains the DNA…. It’s the DNA that matters. It is raining instructions...
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2020 Advent Calendar: Dec 17, Kyoko Mori, Conflict and Compassion: reading...
There has been a war and people have seen so many houses reduced to rubble that they no longer feel safe in their own homes which once seemed so quiet and secure. This is something that is incurable...
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