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Advent 2022, Dec 4, Paul Crenshaw covering Steve Edwards
The LastPaul Crenshaw*Sometime in early October we lose the last caterpillar. Lose isn’t the right word, but we can’t find any more, which is a different kind of loss, so we keep looking, as if we’re...
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Advent 2022, Dec 5: Patrick Madden, f-Words: An Attempt at an Essay on Style...
f-Words: An Attempt at an Essay on Style (feat. Brian Doyle)Patrick Madden Years ago, when he was visiting BYU, Brian Doyle offered me what I think was meant as a compliment, saying that one potential...
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Advent 2022, Dec 6: Jamie Etheridge, Oysterless Bay
Oysterless BayAfter Blair Braverman’s "Useless Bay"Eleven miles across, averaging 10 feet deep, the bay looks nothing like the blue mirror my mom grew up admiring. Muddy, silt-thick water from the...
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Advent 2022, Dec 7: Amy Barnes, Bah, Numb Bug
Bah, Numb Bug, Dec 7, 2022After Sabrina Orah Mark's "Bah, Humbug," The Paris Review, January 16, 2020It is December in Tennessee and warm. There are three Lego minifigurines on the mantel. I’m trying...
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Advent 2022, Dec 8, Andrew Maynard on Rabih Alameddine
Reading “How to Bartend” as a Map for Avoiding Our (My) Worst Tendencies, While Thinking About Misguided Viral Videos and the Middle School EssayAndrew MaynardSet the occasion, tell them why we’re...
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Advent 2022, Dec 9, Chelsea Biondolillo, Wrestling with Joni Mitchell's "River"
Wrestling with Joni Mitchell’s “River.”Chelsea Biondolillo*“Out of sheer rage I’ve begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid.” D.H. LawrenceYou should begin...
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Advent 2022, Dec 10, Andrew Bertaina on Lia Purpura
on Lia PurpuraAndrew Bertaina*I begin, as I often do, in irritation. Many things irritate me, but I suppose this isn’t supposed to be an essay about my irritations. In fact, as easily as I am irritated...
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Advent 2022, Dec 11, Ivy Taylor on the Tangible
On United States of America v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster (or, In Praise of the Tangible)Ivy Taylor*The specific facts of Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster demand attention. The...
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Advent 2022, Dec 12: Dave Madden, On Ending and Unending
On Ending and UnendingDave Madden*At the start of Essay Daily’s 2020 Advent, Michael Martone wrote (per Aquinas) that "without death life has no meaning.... Death defines, shapes incident into a shaped...
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Advent 2022, Dec 13, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Museums of Natural History: Essay...
Exhibit OneI’ve long collected what’s been buried. As a child, I spent afternoons digging with my tiny pail, later with an industrial shovel because plastic was no match for my obsession. I dug...
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Advent 2022, Dec 14, Brooke Champagne on Vivian Gornick
Style Over Substance (At Least for Today):Revisiting The Situation in the Story in the CNF ClassroomHere’s the situation: I’m sitting at my computer, reflecting on two decades’ worth of teaching...
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Advent 2022, Dec 15, Megan Neary, An Hour of Splendor
An Hour of SplendorMegan Neary *I have loved E.B. White since I was an elementary school child, eagerly listening to my teacher read the class Charlotte’s Web. We’d come in red and sweaty from running...
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Advent 2022, Dec 16: Sol Kim Cowell, The Final Girl
The Final Girl: Groups, Series, Histories, and TransnessSol Kim Cowell*All bodies are gendered—even if it’s through the absence of it altogether—but few people are as intimately aware of this nature...
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Advent 2022, Dec 17, Michael Martone, Ten and a Half Short Essays on the...
Ten and a Half Short Essays on the Short EssayMichael Martone*Train Car GraffitiThe tags have largely disappeared from the urban canvases of subway cars and commuter coaches. Metal alloys were...
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Advent 2022, Dec 18, Julie Lunde, 100 Essayistic
100 Essayistica cover of Philip Ording’s 99 Variations on a Proofwhich is a mathematical cover of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in StyleJulie Lunde*If you give an essayist a math problem, for instance:...
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Advent 2022, Dec 19, Nicole Walker, TikTok Manifestations by Non-Boomer,...
TikTok Manifestations by Non-Boomer, Non-Gen Z specimens: A Gen-X approach.Maxwell Sather (Gen Z), Zoe Sather (Gen Z), Nicole Walker (Gen X)*Abstract: TikTok is a media platform devoted primarily to...
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Advent 2022, Dec 20, Lawrence Lenhart, Toward an Unregulated Confessionalism:...
Toward an Unregulated Confessionalism: Prolegomenon to The Calling PartyLawrence Lenhart*With this sentence, I start a new essay. Its concept is twelve years in the making. Starting January 1,...
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Advent 2022, Dec 21, Susan Briante, Our Midwinter Days
Our Midwinter DaysSusan Briante*As I write this, the Christmas lights hung from our eaves strum a flickering tune against a sky the gray of water at the bottom of an old pan. The sun rose into clouds...
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Advent 2022, Dec 22, Ander Monson on the Pleasures of a Book all about Road...
Pain Might Actually Hurt?:on Sean T. Collins's Pain Don't HurtAnder Monson*1. On the spectrum of bad ideas for books, watching the Patrick Swayze movie Road House repeatedly and writing an essay a day...
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Advent 2022, Dec 23, Jenny Spinner, Um Aidan
Um AidanJenny Spinner*—Amman, Jordan, December 2022I remember that iris, a dome of florets now more gray than blue, not solid but patterned, with bits of white breaking through the way light spills...
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