Essays by

Aaron Robertson

Attack the Block

The monsters were due in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho two weeks ago, but they never showed. There was rumor of a scout. Someone heard from somebody […]

It Was More Than a Notion

Despite the worry that sometimes flares in my body, I have felt that survival, too, needs a cure. That is the work of heaven and of the Promised Land, which lift the eyes of the lowly and sow ambition in the dead. Albert Cleage spent his life juggling the endless search for an earthly heaven with Lorde’s directive to always take care of ourselves together. He never stopped asking two questions: What is the point of black survival if not to aim for the highest good? Why aim high if you can barely survive?

Close to Nothing

Fleur Jaeggy is an insomniac. She nods off at dawn after lying immobile on a bed. She has thought of nothing the night before.

Crater of Illusions

When it was discovered last fall that one of Rome’s beloved sculptures, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk, had been vandalized, the tip of the marble elephant’s left tusk snapped off, Igiaba Scego used the opportunity to diagnose what she understood as a peculiarly Roman sickness.