Annals of Dead Presidents
A Swan of Old
“After only a few lines of Mallarmé, you are engulfed in fine mist, and terror sets in.” Here’s a piece from The New Yorker on contending with the supreme enigma of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry.
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Creating Markers of the Moment with Sanjena Sathian
Sanjena Sathian discusses why she chooses to use concrete pop culture references that ground her work to our current time period.
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Recommended Reading: The Barista’s Burden
Recommended Reading: For the writers who make coffee for their day jobs, Lucy Schiller discusses the burden of being happy all the time as a San Francisco barista in “Service with a Smile.” The essay is the first in a weekly series by The Riveter, a magazine spotlighting original longform journalism by women. Pair with Jason Diamond’s essay on being mistaken for a professional barista.
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Two Good Things
USA Today is running an excerpt of Denis Johnson’s much buzzed about new doorstop Tree of Smoke.The New Yorker Food Issue, to my mind the highlight of the New Yorker publishing year, has arrived. Somehow I look forward to this one as much as I did the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue when I was twelve. Much of the good stuff isn’t online, but you can get a taste of the food writing on offer with a series of short essays under theme “Family Dinner.” Aleksandar Hemon, Gary Shteyngart, Nell Freudenberger, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Sedaris, Anthony Lane, and Donald Antrim are on the menu.
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