Things to Read
For the website Shepherd, I recently wrote a piece highlighting five books that had influenced me when I was working on Gradual . (Aubrey Fox did a companion piece, which can be found here .) It was a fun assignment because it offered a chance to tip my cap to some of the writers who have helped to inspire me. We listed a bunch of them in the Acknowledgments section of the book, but maybe I will also try to use this space to highlight them in the days ahead. For now, here are a few recent clips from writers that I like: Partisanship & Denial by William Deresiewicz (Salmagundi) -- "I f you say the other side is worse, you let yours off the hook. And we have to stop letting ourselves off the hook: not despite the fact that the other side is worse, but precisely because of it. The other side is terrible, is evil, and that is why we have to win. But you do not win by ignoring reality." I Don't Want to Smell You Get High by Thomas Chatterton Williams (The Atlantic)
