Rachel Vorona Cote

Looks like I'm taking a transatlantic flight

WHERE

A whole philosophical treatise dedicated to it, perhaps?!

Beholding a vast mountain range, taking the first sip of a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino — comme ci, comme ça

For all we know, Burke’s 18th century tastebuds would be so stunned by the taste of Starbucks’ coked out novelty drinks that he *would* deem them examples of the sublime.

My freshmen mostly did not know Celine Dion, which was humbling. ELVIS, though!!

Psyched to have a new story at @theforge.bsky.social today, about hosting Jesus for dinner 🥣

I have clearly missed something discursive, but I love reading third person! George Eliot’s third person omniscient is my favorite point of view in all of literature.

Yeah, I don’t see the issue here. This seems like the ideal game plan to me.

I have not! I’ll look it up. Thank you for the rec.

I loved it; I hope you will too.

This is a fantastic review essay. Just placed a library hold

Spencer, thank you so much for reading! The book is excellent; I hope you love it.

*MilkWEED, yikes

✍️

Some forthcoming indie press books I'm excited to read:

G., John Berger, NYRB
Quake, Kitty Mrosovsky, McNally Editions
We Were Forbidden, Jacqueline Harpman, Transit Books
Attention-Seeking Behavior, Aea Varfis-van Warmelo, Graywolf
The Evolution of Fire, Angela Pelster, Milkweek Editions

This is evil and nauseatingly crass, but my guess is that it’s rhetorically on point for their intended audience, right? This mashup feels like a pretty accurate summation of MAGA’s vision of masculinity.

🗣️🗣️🗣️

Shuttering women’s and gender studies programs across the nation so that people will smile and nod at this shit with smooth, unbothered brains.

When I was sixteen years old, I interviewed someone professionally for the first time. The person? Usher.

(I did a bad job.)

I think that is such a keen insight

Grief is the endurance of love, despite absence. My mom died in 2017. I grieve her because I will love her for the rest of my life, knowing that I’ll never see her again. I’ll take the ache inherent to this form of love, which lacks a ready recipient, over indifference to my memories.

Really dislike the question “Can AI cure grief?” not only because I reject AI in most contexts, and certainly therapeutic ones, but also because framing grief in diagnostic terms is such an impoverished and frankly dangerous way to think about the ways we register and respond to loss.

Hello! I am a trans journalist looking to speak with trans kids and parents of trans kids across the US who have been impacted by the clinic closures---please get in touch or share!

I need to check her out

I'm giving this piece a final bump, in case you'd like some literary counterprogramming that still involves a healthy heap of moral anger.

All those DBQ (document-based question) exams in high school, seemingly for naught. Seriously, though, the extent of willfully poor reading comprehension amongst the ostensibly well-heeled and educated is pretty pitiful. Op-ed sections are not populated by magic! Someone is making those decisions.

Incel schoolboys with missiles, murdering seven-year-old schoolgirls to feel like big big hero men

Israel, immediately after vaporizing a bunch of little girls:

Has Contemporary Fiction Ignored the Working Class? Claire Baglin’s bracing On the Clock gives its readers a close look at work behind the fry station, and in the process asks what experiences are missing from mainstream letters.

I wrote about Claire Baglin’s seething debut novella for @thenation.com and spend considerable time interrogating how literature depicts working class labor (especially amid so many books/tv series/films set in the corporate workplace). I hope you’ll read! 🍟

www.thenation.com/article/cult...