In this week's The New Yorker, I have what seemed to me an urgent piece. It's about attention (why we're losing it, how to get it back). But it's also about coming together, a secret international order, and what happens between a person and a work of art. newyorker.com/magazine/2024/…

The man who wrote “I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.”

theparisreview.org/interviews/431…

One of my favourite recent short stories by Madeline ffitch Harper's Magazine among the 2024 O. Henry Prize winners. Another favourite by Tom Crewe Granta in the very list. Félicitations!

harpers.org/archive/2023/0…

William Bronk on reality explains, if not all of it, a lot of it

Returning from the post-proposal recession to perhaps even write the Book

I've got several theories but am inclined to pigeonhole the case as a French exit

Finally indulging on the Brandon piece London Review of Books on Zola and yes yes yes

The best sentence I've read today and I did also read Cusk

In June I’ll be talking to Rachel Cusk at an Intelligence Squared event in London about her extraordinary and devastating novel Parade. Tickets: eventbrite.co.uk/e/rachel-cusk-…

Uff Canetti killing it in The Book Against Death

For so many obvious reasons, new Lauren Oyler is the perfect travel book to end a week-long NYC bender with

Every American interview I do: 'So tell us about your writing routine! What's your favorite coffee?'

Every European interview I do: 'Can truth be objectively defined? What is the nature of knowledge?'

My list's a 50/50.

Play It As It Lays
Ada
The Waves
Septology
Second Place
More Die of Heartbreak
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
Old Masters
Eros the Bittersweet
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

'The animals, sesame-white and eternally calm, preserved in cylindrical jars of clear thick glass.'
I wrote a little essay-ish investigation into the question 'What is an animal?'

karlsonkarola.com/what-is-an-ani…

The list of 183,000 books used to train AI products is revealed by The Atlantic. Can't even fathom how infuriating it must feel to find one's book on the list

Entertaining x provocative: Lorna Finlayson taking on the utilitarian animal rights philosophers in the latest London Review of Books link: lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/…

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Every time I read this passage from Hélène Cixous' Dedans I am yet again convinced this is the most beautiful proposal existing.