From Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I’ve always loved snakes. Love includes fear—for everyone, I think,…

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From “Four Tales,” which was published in the Fall 2023 issue of The Massachusetts Review. Everyone knows that to be a self-respecting Eastern European émigré writer, you must learn to…

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From the transcript of an August 2023 ceremony marking the unveiling of a time capsule discovered under a nineteenth-century monument at the United States Military Academy at West Point. jennifer…

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From Up Late, which was published last month by W. W. Norton. I was working as a lawyer in Poland for a large firm trying to cash in on the deregulation…

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See the solution to last month’s puzzle.

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From a letter sent in January by a young girl living in Cumberland, Rhode Island. Dear Cumberland Police Department, I took a sample of a cookie and carrots that I…

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From blog posts by Sam Altman since 2013. Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your…

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From The Archive of Feelings, which was published this month by Other Press. Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann. It’s a source of joy every time, to find the…

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From reviews of the children’s animated television series Bluey published in media outlets since 2021. Beloved kids’ program Cute and highly relatable A real gem A damn good show Instantly…

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From notes made on custom license plate applications flagged for review by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles since 2012. superju: (My nickname is Juju.) Superiority of religion, “super jew.”…

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On the enduring legacy of Marshal Pétain

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On May 21, 1991, in the third-floor men’s room at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a student noticed a hand dangling beneath one of the partitions, already turning blue.…

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I was getting awfully suspicious of environmentalists. Their solutions to problems had an inordinate amount of impracticality about them, more than they would have tolerated in their own lives, and…

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Some years ago, before I became an American citizen, I held a visa that prompted immigration officials to quiz me about my work. These exchanges often went badly. If you…

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Unplanned Obsolescence What Justin E. H. Smith perceives as the younger generation’s parochial attitude toward art [“My Generation,” Essay, September] is in fact a healthy skepticism regarding claims about universalism…

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From Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa, which will be published next month by Harvard University Press. In the sixteenth century, opinions of the famed Doctor Faustus…

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From The Rebellious CEO, which was published this month by Melville House. Sol Price was the founder of Price Club, whose parent company merged with Costco in 1993. Sol Price…

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From The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, which will be published this month by New Directions. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne. Esther was weeping. She tried to…

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From Molly, which will be published next month by Archway Editions. Two days before her suicide, Molly and I went to visit the High Museum, where we’d been together many times.…

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From Earlier, which was published last month by Semiotext(e). After we lose 25 South Portland Avenue (owned) to bad financial management, we move into 232 Carlton (rented). The owner is a doctor…

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From I Love Russia, which was published last month by Penguin Press. Translated from the Russian. Kostyuchenko is a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper. I am five,…

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From an exchange between the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a non-profit organization that promotes animal rights, and the Georgia-based Macon Bacon baseball team in June 2023. physicians committee for…

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From a press release by Comité Champagne, which represents the champagne industry. On April 17, 2023, Comité Champagne and the General Administration of Belgian Customs destroyed a shipment of 2,352…

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From Terminations, which was published last month by Flood Editions. Saying “world” backward sounds like gulping a marble. The moon helps the oceans haul their miles. * In laughed-at handwriting:…

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The grand, gruesome theories of René Girard

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From genres featured in the Paléo Festival, an annual music festival in Switzerland, since 2017. Silky pop Crazy pop Kaleidoscopic literary pop Luminous hopscotch pop Astonishing synthetic pop Planetary pop…

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Researchers found that, over the course of an academic year, middle schoolers grew increasingly unpopular and more likely to misuse alcohol if they were considered unattractive and unathletic, and that…

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The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán

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