This week, our editors recommend longreads by Benjamin Wofford, Josh Dzieza, Evan Osnos, Alice Wong & Ed Yong, and Dan Kois.
Writing
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Great Fiction of AI
Can artificial intelligence write novels? Josh Dzieza looks at how independent authors have begun to experiment with AI writing programs like Sudowrite and Jasper to write their stories faster. The piece explores questions around ethics and authorship, and its design is A+. It requires a strange degree of sympathy with the machine, thinking about the […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Joan Didion’s Magic Trick
Caitlin Flanagan goes on a road trip through California — including Sacramento, Berkeley, and Malibu — visiting the homes of the late Joan Didion and exploring why her writing has had such a powerful effect on people. Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album created a new vocabulary of essay writing, one whose influence is […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘The Ways of Fiction Are Devious Indeed’
“Finding current relevancy—and outrage—in the accusations of plagiarism that have long haunted a classic of the West: Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Tale Spin
What is storytelling? Megan Marz explores stories, narratives, blog posts, and vibes in this Real Life essay. While I could recognize that blog posts were narrative constructions, and many of them had conventional arcs, they seemed to break with a tradition that to me defined what stories were. They appeared to leak literary expression back […]
Posted inFeature
Bones, Bones: How to Articulate a Whale
“I have sat inside her rib cage. And yet I know nothing about her.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
On Writing: An Abecedarian
“To be inside the cathedral of a language is to be inside a particular view of the world.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
John Updike, His Stories, and Me
“But now I’ve been a writer for 30 years, I can understand the impulses that I and he and probably every other writer have: to go after a subject we’re compelled by.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Ambiguous Loss of (Probably) Not Selling My Novel
In a period of trying to sell her novel, Danielle Lazarin reflects on art, waiting, and the space between grief and hope.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Sound of My Inbox
“In a newsletter, the reader is welcomed as a supporter, an ally — or perhaps even a friend.”