HARPER’S MAGAZINE, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper’s Index.
Harper’s Magazine
LETTERS
EASY CHAIR • Continental Divide
THE MOURNING AFTER • By Maggie Nelson, from On Freedom, which was published last month by Graywolf Press.
WINNER FAKES ALL • From factors professional athletes have invoked since 2000 in explaining why they tested positive for banned substances.
END RHYMES • By Michael Robbins, from “A Conversation About Trees,” which appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of The Sewanee Review.
HEAVEN OR ST. LOUIS • By Patricia Lockwood, from an essay that considers the album It’ll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil, and is included in the collection Long Players, which was published in August by Bloomsbury.
CHAMBER OF SECRETS
PUBLISH OR PERISH • From game play of Small Press Tycoon, a publishingindustry simulation game released this year by Inpatient Press. The player begins the game with $1,000 and answers a series of multiple-choice questions.
NEGATIVE THINKING • From a letter written by the avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas to his peer and friend Stan Brakhage in April 1966. It is included in the anthology Letters as Films, edited by Garbiñe Ortega, which will be published this month by La Fábrica.
TANGLED UP IN BLUE • By Benjamín Labatut, from the book When We Cease to Understand the World. The book, a fictionalized retelling of a series of scientific and mathematical discoveries, was published last month by New York Review Books. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West.
PUMP ACTION • From images released this summer by the Ukrainian military of female soldiers preparing for a parade celebrating thirty years of independence from the Soviet Union.
WHITE SERPENT • By Nelly Sachs, from Flight and Metamorphosis, a poetry collection, which will be published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Sachs (1891–1970) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1966. Translated from the German by Joshua Weiner.
COLORED ANGEL LEVINE • By John Edgar Wideman. The story will be published in the collection Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone next month by Scribner. Dedicated to Bernard Malamud.
MINOR THREAT • MLB puts the farm system out to pasture
PARADISE LOST
TO BE A FIELD OF POPPIES • The elegant science of turning cadavers into compost
HARPER’S
THE BIG FRIEZE • Cartoonist Ben Garris on’s MAGA in winter
GOOD MOTHER • Custody and care in the shadow of colonization
“PUT ON THE DIAMONDS” • Notes on humiliation
THE REPUBLIC OF LITERATURE • From the novel Silverview
THREE POEMS
new books
THE LAST CIGARETTE • On Italo Svevo
STATUS ANXIETY • Has Jonathan Franzen found the key?
PLACEHOLDERS
FINDINGS