Readings Archives

The Report

by Lina Wolff,Translated by Saskia Vogel,

From “No Man’s Land,” a story from her collection Many People Die Like You, which will be published this month by And Other Stories. Translated from the Swedish. The report…

I Won’t Beg.

by francine j. harris,

From Here Is the Sweet Hand, a poetry collection, which will be published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I have before. I took off a skin. I put…

Worst Responders

From a 2017 complaint filed by David and Gretchen Jessen against Fresno County and the city of Clovis, California, for damages incurred during a police raid on their home. In…

Knife Play

by Franz Kafka,Translated by Michael Hofmann,

From The Lost Writings, a collection of fragments, which will be published next month by New Directions. Translated from the German. I was sitting in the box next to my…

Melancholy Science

by Martin Jay,

From “Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment,” an essay from the collection Splinters in Your Eye, which will be published this month by Verso. On July 22, 2011, a neofascist Norwegian terrorist named…

Soul Proprietor

From an interview with Tony Spell conducted in April by Victor Blackwell, an anchor for CNN. Spell, the pastor of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had been cited…

Fever Dreams

by Erin Gravley, Grace Gravley,

From accounts of dreams reported during the novel coronavirus pandemic, collected in March and April by Erin Gravley and Grace Gravley on their “i dream of covid” website. I was…

Near-Death Experience

by Judith Schlansky,Translated by Jackie Smith,

From An Inventory of Losses, a collection of fictive essays that will be published next month by New Directions. Translated from the German. On an August day a few years…

Old Ways

Edited by T. J. Smith,

From Foxfire: Story, a collection of oral histories as told by people in the southern Appalachian Mountains, published in April by Anchor Books. The stories originally appeared in Foxfire Magazine.…

The Gamblers

by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky,Translated by Joanne Turnbull,

From Unwitting Street, a collection of short stories that will be published next month by New York Review Books. Translated from the Russian. They were two in a square unheated…

From a study published in Biological Conservation by scientists at Nanjing University. The article, titled “Where there are girls, there are cats,” was published in February, then retracted without explanation.…

Night Trees

by Martha Ronk,

From a manuscript in progress. each tree sticks itself upward dark into light or light’s the medium for each to define itself aslant against air saturated with water pixelated molecules…

Rally of the Dolls

Translated by Syazween Zainal Ariffin,

From guidelines for women presented in a series of infographics issued by the Malaysian government in response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Translated from the Malay. Create a temporary workstation…

The Hills Have Eyes

From images hidden by cartographers in maps of Switzerland that have been published by the Swiss Federal Office of Topography. A man overlooking the town of Interlaken from a summit…

States of Care

From a report published in April by the Kaiser Family Foundation, detailing the amount of money each state received per COVID-19 case in the first round of grant funding under…

The Last Picture Show

The national box-office report for the weekend of April 17–19, reflecting all self-submitted earnings by theaters in the United States, where government orders aimed at halting the spread of the…

Burn After Eating

From responses to Freedom of Information Act requests regarding internal discussions about the food served at various government agencies and organizations. The documents, from between 2015 and 2020, were published…

Sick Sad World

by Elisa Gabbert,

From The Unreality of Memory, which will be published in August by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Viruses and bacteria hijack our minds; they make us act weirdly. For example, Toxoplasma…

Survive and Advance

by Albert Camus,Translated by Madison Mainwaring,

A letter written in 1943 in response to a request from the Committee of National Liberation in Algiers to outline the mood in France, which was under Nazi occupation at…

Viral Goods

From reports of items whose popularity has increased since the novel coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic in March. Antiseptic wipes Bleach Bicycles Freezers Cologne Ventilators Surgical masks Pornography featuring…

Buried in the Sand

by Tahar Ben Jelloun,Translated by Linda Coverdale,

From The Punishment, which was published in April by Yale University Press in its Margellos World Republic of Letters series. Originally published by Éditions Gallimard, the book recounts the author’s…

Staycation

by Rachel Torres, Tyler Torres,

From a real-time diary posted on Reddit by newlyweds Rachel and Tyler Torres, who were quarantined on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, off the coast of Japan, following the outbreak…

Still Life

by Joyce Carol Oates,

From Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars., which will be published this month by Ecco. The novel tells the story of John Earle “Whitey” McClaren, a sixty-seven-year-old businessman who is beaten…

One Size Submits All

From attributes and behaviors of subjects in TikTok videos that the company deemed inappropriate for the site. TikTok is a social network where users share sixty-second videos, often of themselves.…

1st Trial for the New Aubade

by Zoë Hitzig,

From Mezzanine, a collection of poems, which will be published this month by Ecco. Does the season match the birdsong, did I hear the birdsong over the white noise machine,…

Doctor Do Little

From bogus preventive measures and treatments for the novel coronavirus that have circulated online since January, some of which were initially promoted by politicians and celebrities. Driving a tractor Exposing…

Can’t Spare a Square

From a Facebook post that was published in March by the Newport Police Department in Oregon. Do not call 9-1-1 because you ran out of toilet paper. History offers many…

That Passed, This May Too

by Geoffrey G. O’Brien,

From a manuscript in progress. It was a typical February 29th, Chiming with the senses, Which reported pink White, and purple fires Lighting up eligible trees One by one at…

To Infinity and Beyond

by Maël Renouard,Translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty,

From Fragments of an Infinite Memory: My Life with the Internet, a memoir, which will be published in November by New York Review Books. Translated from the French by Peter…

Killing Time

by Jean Giono,Translated by Jody Gladding,

From Occupation Journal, a diary that Giono kept during the Nazi occupation of France, which was published last month by Archipelago Books. Translated from the French by Jody Gladding. tuesday,…

Readings

Excerpts from the best and most bizarre new books, testimonies, government documents, journals, news reports, speeches, and letters.

The Report

I Won’t Beg.

Worst Responders

Knife Play

Melancholy Science

Soul Proprietor

Fever Dreams

Near-Death Experience

Old Ways

The Gamblers

Cat Ladies

Night Trees

Rally of the Dolls

The Hills Have Eyes

States of Care

The Last Picture Show

Burn After Eating

Sick Sad World

Survive and Advance

Viral Goods

Buried in the Sand

Staycation

Still Life

One Size Submits All

1st Trial for the New Aubade

Doctor Do Little

Can’t Spare a Square

That Passed, This May Too

To Infinity and Beyond

Killing Time

Debug

Readings

Excerpts from the best and most bizarre new books, testimonies, government documents, journals, news reports, speeches, and letters.

From the Archive

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The Report

I Won’t Beg.

Worst Responders

Knife Play

Melancholy Science

Soul Proprietor

Fever Dreams

Near-Death Experience

Old Ways

The Gamblers

Cat Ladies

Night Trees

Rally of the Dolls

The Hills Have Eyes

States of Care

The Last Picture Show

Burn After Eating

Sick Sad World

Survive and Advance

Viral Goods

Buried in the Sand

Staycation

Still Life

One Size Submits All

1st Trial for the New Aubade

Doctor Do Little

Can’t Spare a Square

That Passed, This May Too

To Infinity and Beyond

Killing Time

August 2020

Debug