John Jeremiah Sullivan’s “Diary” for the Financial Times features the Mars Curiosity, Quaker school songs, and all sorts of family bonding.
“I have always wondered.”
The Pen Reveals
What does handwriting tell us about its author? The Atlantic investigates. Our own Kevin Hartnett explains why he writes by hand.
Helping Hands
In the late seventies, when Susan Sontag was recovering from cancer, she hired an assistant to help her catch up on correspondence. Her editor recommended Sigrid Nunez, who began working for Sontag and ended up moving in with her. Nunez now recalls the experience with a mixture of gratitude and pain. In Dissent, a look at the economy of creative assistants.
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The Marshmallow Mystery
Would you eat the marshmallow or would you resist temptation? That is the question. Our own Michael Bourne gets to the meat of why the mallow experiment fascinates us at The New York Times Magazine. “The tale of the marshmallows, as presented in Goleman’s book, read like some science-age Calvinist parable. Was I one of the elect, I wondered, a child blessed with the moral fortitude to resist temptation? Or was I doomed from age 4 to a life of impulse-driven gluttony?”
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Internet’s End
Recommended Reading: Sam Frank’s interview with Infomaniacs author Matthew Thurber.
John Jeremiah Sullivan is the most overrated writer currently being overrated. I just got done reading “Diary” and all I can say is, That’s it? That’s what passes for the best American letters has to offer, according to most of the blogosphere and a good portion of the Quality Lit world. I felt the same way about 80% of Pulphead. So now I think I’ve read enough of John Jeremiah Sullivan to have an educated opinion. I wouldn’t say his writing is bad, it’s not, it’s good, it’s fine, I guess. More laconic Midwestern earnestness. Yawn.