Reprinted from Jonathan’s eponymous newsletter. I’ve been thinking a lot about attention. My semester of teaching first-year writing just ended, which means I’ve been mulling over what went wrong during the class. And the things I think most went wrong had to do with attention. (Things went right, too, but I tend to dwell on the negative.) I won’t go into detail,…
When I taught theology, the doctrine my students found most offensive was neighbor love. The idea that you are obligated to love the person right next to you, regardless of anything they might have done to “deserve” your love, was patently absurd to them. Now I teach writing. You have to have something to write about, so my students write about…
Last week I flew out of the airport in Buffalo, New York, and saw a new thing: Sally, a machine that makes salads. It was just opposite my gate and next to a Which Wich? outlet where humans make sandwiches with their own two hands. Sally is basically a vending machine, except it makes food to order. It also lays bare…
I have an essay about work and meaning in the current issue of The Hedgehog Review. The essay has elicited some good responses from friend and stranger alike; I’m grateful for all. I always have mixed feelings when people write to say my essays about work resonate with their experience. On the one hand, my entire goal is to put words to the experience…
“Don’t quit your day job” is the extremely clever advice hecklers yell at comedians they judge to be not very funny. (As if 99% of performers – or writers or other artists – could ever afford not to have day jobs.) Australian standup comic Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special “Nanette” isn’t especially funny, but that’s part of its point. In the middle of the special, she…
By Jonathan Malesic Every American, it seems, believes in the dignity of work. Americans overwhelmingly see ourselves as hardworking, attesting to the value they place on work. Rival politicians like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Sherrod Brown all make appeal to the dignity of work in in addressing voters. At first glance, this seems to be a widely-shared…
