Readings Archives

The Tsadik, the Roshe, and the Ugly

From an essay that appears for the first time in English in Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: A Spiritual Reappraisal, 1946–1955, a collection of his pseudonymous essays for the Yiddish…

Little White Lies

From a Department of Justice report on the Tulsa race massacre that was published in January, before President Biden left office, and conducted by its Cold Case Unit, Civil Rights…

Word Search

by J. M. Coetzee, Mariana Dimópulos,

From Speaking in Tongues, by J. M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos, which will be published this month by Liveright. j. m. coetzee: I was writing something yesterday, concentrating intensely on getting into words…

Role Models

by Jessa Crispin,

From What Is Wrong with Men, a study of how portrayals of the American man have changed in films starring Michael Douglas, which will be published next month by Pantheon.…

Doge with a Bone

From posts shared in February on the subreddit r/fednews, a “platform for U.S. Federal employees to discuss work-related topics, share perspectives, and stay informed.” I work in grants and since…

Like the Circles Under Your Eyes

by C.D. Wright,

From The Essential C. D. Wright, which will be published this month by Copper Canyon Press. clouds jammed into the foreground big toe in the suckhole with all our know-how…

This Garment Called Life

by Hélène Bessette,

By Hélène Bessette, from Lili Is Crying, which will be published next month by New Directions. Translated from the French by Kate Briggs. It’s like this, says Lili. I left…

Answering Machine

From a press conference given in March by Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario. reporter: As you have acknowledged, a trade war is going to hurt. Food-bank use was already…

Birds to Song

by Crystal Simone Smith,

From Runagate, a collection of poems that draw on archival records of chattel slavery. The book will be published this month by Duke University Press. jack (and paul) Escaped by…

Mortal Coils

by Cutter Wood,

From Earthly Materials, which will be published this month by Mariner Books. Assuming 128 grams a day and a lifetime in the vicinity of seventy-five years, you’ll leave behind around…

Heavens? No

by Deborah Eisenberg,

From Issue 11 of Deadlines and Divine Distractions, which was published in December. Dearest (If I may): Do (and here I’m charitably speculating that my previous letters have for some…

Home Front

From interviews given to a researcher by six Ukrainian women in May and June of last year and provided to Harper’s Magazine. The researcher’s identity has been withheld to protect…

Poetic License

by Walter Benjamin,

From “Notes on Baudelaire’s Parisian Tableaux,” which was published for the first time in English in the Fall 2024 issue of October. Translated from the French by Michael Krimper. Baudelaire…

Eye of Death

by Ariana Reines,

From The Rose, which will be published this month by Graywolf Press. Me & Amanda went to see David Blaine the night of the Scorpio Eclipse. He held his breath…

Plates of Fruit, Cut and Peeled

by David Seung,

From Silkworm’s Pansori, which was published last month by The Song Cave. Persimmons on a leafless tree: unlaid eggs in a butchered hen. The old woman picks from the sagging…

Cocktail Hour

by Nell Zink,

From Sister Europe, which was published last month by Knopf. Demian was among the first guests to arrive, taking a taxi. He had intended to get through the evening by…

Live and Learn

by W. G. Sebald,

From Silent Catastrophes, which was published last month by Random House. Translated from the German by Jo Catling. Few have reflected as thoroughly as Elias Canetti upon the fateful processes…

Speech Pathology

by Maggie Nelson,

From Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth, by Maggie Nelson, which will be published this month by Wave Books. In speech therapy we played a board game in which…

Something Amis

by Rachel Cusk,

From the introduction to a reissue of Martin Amis’s novel London Fields, which was published in November by Vintage, in Britain. The curse of Englishness is something whose magnitude we…

Dream State

From reports of dreams collected in The Third Reich of Dreams, by Charlotte Beradt, a new translation of which will be published next month by Princeton University Press. Beradt gathered…

Johannes’s Veneer

by Kristian Vistrup Madsen,

From a lecture delivered last year by Kristian Vistrup Madsen at the University of Applied Arts, in Vienna. There’s nobody like Vermeer. Or is there? His modest known output of…

Early Modern Love

From “I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer”: Letters on Love and Marriage from the World’s First Personal Advice Column, edited by Mary Beth Norton, which will be published next month…

Not Against the Rules

by Mónica de la Torre,

From Pause the Document, which will be published this month by Nightboat Books. It hailed golf balls back in June. Notebook got nicked, got soaked. What month is it. She…

The Simple Life

by Jenny Erpenbeck,

From Things That Disappear, which will be published in the fall by New Directions. Translated from the German by Kurt Beals. The great advantage of an outhouse is that you…

Is This Real?

by Laila Lalami,

From The Dream Hotel, which will be published this month by Pantheon. Morning light silvers the glass-brick windows of the Safe-X library. A sign taped to the wall above the…

Gaza … Gaza

by Nasser Rabah,

From Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, which will be published next month by City Lights. Translated from the Arabic by Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, and Khaled al-Hilli. The gifts…

Hope Springs Paternal

by Julie Buntin,

From “I Was So Hopeful for You,” collected in the anthology What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, which will be published in May by Simon & Schuster. Before…

The Firepower of Christ

From messages that have been displayed by churches in the United States since 2017. This is not a gun-free zone We say it again: we are not a gun free…

Scott

by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,

From F. Scott Fitzgerald Remembered, which will be published this month by Camden House. I did protest against traipsing across Carolina to see Scott. I felt a sense of ignominy…

Drug Bust

From a case file compiled by the Dongemond Police in the Netherlands. This photograph documents a garden gnome owned by a drug dealer. The four-and-a-half-pound lawn ornament was later discovered…

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