Trauma survivors are not unsafe when someone undermines their subjective notions of reality. They’re unsafe when they can only trust those who confirm what they already believe.
The Corpse Singing On The Radio
Scott Beauchamp writes about the first time he saw a dead body in Iraq, his experience reading the Stoics during combat, and his later turn to a philosophy capable of responding to injustice.
I wanted my reviews to be like legal opinions, well-founded, well-reasoned, and as fair as I could make them without donning black robes and buying a gavel.
First Year Healthy – Michael DeForge
An imaginative take on the difficult project of reintegrating into mainstream society after a mental health crisis that diagnoses our social and cultural systems as incapable of caring for others.
The Utopia of Rules – David Graeber
This book of essays stands out less for the questions it asks, than for the assumptions that it refuses to question.
The Foundling’s War – Michel Déon
An underreported entrance into the forum of American letters.
It’s not going to be a Manson Family memoir; it’s going to be funny and weird and a little bit gross or shocking, but also with a lot of beauty and affection in it too.
Words might not always be good enough, but they’re the best we have, and Maggie Nelson is one of the best writers alive to use them.
In a country no larger than a small city both in population and area, degrees of separation are limited. Maybe it’s the volcanic geography of the island that has helped to establish and foster such independent identities.
Dear Herculine responds to the trauma of shame in a curious way, by failing to do precisely what shame is supposed to induce one to do: cover up.