Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
The Age of the Essay
paulgraham.com
The cashier at the Union Square Barnes and Nobles told me that the essays books were on the 4th floor, but I didn't imagine how sparse the selection would be. I found 2 cases, 10 shelves total, something like 60 linear feat of essay book spines. I wondered if the 4th floor was a microcosm, and so I acted on my urge to count shelves to know
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The Art of the Impersonal Essay, by Zadie Smith
newyorker.com
Some of our best essays come from people who don ’t consider themselves writers: Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect, Carl Sagan an astronomer, John Muir an environmentalist. Writing wasn’t their main income, and they didn’t write to be writerly; they wrote to make sense of their mind, their culture, and their role in it. What makes the essay the... See more
Michael Deansubstack.comI believe an essay is the most flexible written medium, and it calls for a fusion of genres: the soul of a memoirist, the pen of a poet, and the rigor of an academic. By learning to shape a thesis, your essays will become more than gripping stories with beautiful sentences, they will help you and your reader make sense of the world.
Michael Dean • THESIS
My Writing Education: A Time Line
newyorker.com
The deracination of literature
unherd.com