Is there any animal more noble than your beloved childhood pet? In this moving essay from 3:AM Magazine, Adrian Nathan West explains a couple of lessons that he learned about love and devotion from his Labrador named Jake.
See Spot Run
Brooklyn Was Mine
Paula Fox's ostensible review of L.J. Davis' A Meaningful Life in the current New York Review of Books is really (pace N1BR) a transporting memoir of Brooklyn in the '70s.
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Miss Grief
Who was Constance Fenimore Woolson? It's about time everybody learned about this late nineteenth-century woman of letters who was a close friend and contemporary of none other than Henry James.
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James Salter on MH370
Well, this was unexpected. James Salter draws on his wartime flight experience to write a brief post about Flight MH370 for The New Yorker.
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The Literature of Skateboarding
Joel Rice has a new column up at McSweeney’s, in which he looks at “the literature of skateboarding.” All in all, this kind of reflective writing should pair nicely with Nick Courage’s fantastic Paris Review piece from last month. (Bonus: Rice’s column linked above also features a nice little bit of David Foster Wallace memorabilia.)
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Blocked
“Trump has blocked me from reading his tweets. I may have to kill myself.” Stephen King responds to news that the U.S. President doesn't want the author reading his Twitter account. Luckily, reports Entertainment Weekly, J.K. Rowling has stepped in, offering to DM King anything he misses (these are all sentences we regret having to write, fyi). See also: Elizabeth Minkel's consideration of Rowling's second narrative thoughts.
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On “America’s most misunderstood religion”
Recommended Reading: Walter Kirn’s “Confessions of an Ex-Mormon,” which has my vote for the best long form article on American religions since Lawrence Wright’s profile of Paul Haggis and the Church of Scientology.
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Downthread
It’s notable when a respected magazine publishes a short story written in the form of a comment thread. It’s even more notable when the author of that story is Bobbie Ann Mason. At The Nervous Breakdown, new fiction from the author of Shiloh and Other Stories.
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