A. Alvarez, “The Art of Suicide,” Partisan Review, 37 No. 3 (1970) (x)

god, Parul’s review of the newest Jenny Odell is so good (even though I wanted the Odell to be so good) (x)

Amuck! (1978)

Somewhere in the files of General Mills is a letter from the very-short-story writer Lydia Davis. In it, Davis, who is widely considered one of the most original minds in American fiction today, expresses dismay at the packaging of the frozen peas sold by the company’s subsidiary Cascadian Farm. The letter, like many things that Davis writes, had started out sincere and then turned weird. Details grew overly specific; a narrative, however spare, emerged. “The peas are a dull yellow green, more the color of pea soup than fresh peas and nothing like the actual color of your peas, which are a nice bright dark green,” she wrote. “We have compared your depiction of peas to that of the other frozen peas packages and yours is by far the least appealing. . . . We enjoy your peas and do not want your business to suffer. Please reconsider your art.” Rather than address her complaint, the company sent her a coupon for Green Giant.

Dana Goodyear, “Long Story Short: Lydia Davis’s Radical Fiction,” New Yorker (March 17, 2014)

Maggie Nelson on Judith Butler in Representations 158 (2022)

Maggie Nelson, “The Call,” Representations 158 (2022), pp. 57–63

Maggie Millner, Couplets (2023)

Alexander Chee, “Annie Dillard and the Writing Life,” in Mentors, Muses & Monsters (ed. Elizabeth Benedict, 2009)

Darryl Pinckney, Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-seventh Street, Manhattan (2022)

James Merrill, “Elizabeth, you should have / seen me today”

- eve babitz, black swans

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

Jonathan Franzen, “A Rooting Interest: Edith Wharton and the Problem of Sympathy” (x)

Émile Zola’s character notes for the protagonist of Nana (fucking screaming)

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (1975)

Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (1950)