As 2024 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our most-read essays of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you enjoy these essays and dialogues, consider subscribing for 2025.
10. “Is Sex Fun?” by Lillian Fishman
After we’d been seeing each other for a few months, I mused to her that I’d noticed she usually only wanted sex spontaneously: desire came over her suddenly, at moments I couldn’t predict. “Of course it’s spontaneous,” she replied. “Sometimes I just suddenly feel like it, the same way I suddenly feel hungry or tired.” I was surprised; I had never conceived of the sex I was having in this way. Personally, I thought of sex as a form of consistent communication, a way I expected us to relate almost every time we saw each other. I knew in theory that arousal can be private and spontaneous, unprovoked by a direct desire or even a fantasy, but I suppose, because I seldom felt it that way, I forgot about this possibility.
9. “Commit Lit” by Joseph M. Keegin
In circumstances such as these, the kind of learning that allows for serious investigation into fundamental things might be better conducted not at highly competitive elite institutions, but in more humble environs where conversation is possible but hardly anything happens. One such place, I’d offer, is the imperfect but nonetheless quiet and nourishing environment of the hinterlands humanities department.
8. “Everything Is Out of Water” by Nandi Theunissen
Before I came to America for graduate school, I had a love affair with Iris Murdoch. I was attracted to her irreverence. In her early work (and she never really got off the subject) she was all about the difficulty of seeing things well. How can we act in a world we cannot see? With the correct perception, the rest takes care of itself. If I’d been asked for a saying at the time, I might have passed this off as my own.
7. “On the Crisis of Men” by Jon Baskin
To fully inhabit the role that had been laid out for us there was not, it seemed, to be a good father; it was to be a good little boy, whereas the only reason we were there was because we had become fathers, and thus were no longer little boys. Or so we wanted to believe. But were we really fathers?
6. “The Bookmaker” by Leif Weatherby and Ben Recht
Silver’s readers thought his numbers were telling them what would happen and informing what politicians, particularly Democrats, should do. According to Silver, that’s not at all what he intended, and, he told Kang, he was writing a book to clear up the confusion. At stake was something much larger: not just a question of facts and probabilities, but an entire way of seeing the world, and acting upon it. And the key was not in election forecasting, but another field that was Silver’s true passion: gambling.
5. “Is Philosophy Self-Help?” by Kieran Setiya
Asking a professor of moral philosophy for life advice can seem quixotic, like asking an expert on the mind-body problem to perform brain surgery. Philosophy is an abstract field of argument and theory: this is true as much of ethics as it is of metaphysics. Why should reflection in this vein—ruthless, complex, conceptual—make us happier, more well-adjusted people? (If you’ve spent time with philosophers, you may doubt that it has such salutary effects.) And why should philosophers want to join the self-help movement, anyway?
4. “How the Story Turns Out” by Scott Sherman and Edwin Frank
To speak like a Marxist, books take a lot of work to write and put together, and at the same time have next to no exchange value and whatever use value they have—this is especially true of literature—is in the eye of the beholder, unlike a towel or a shoe. The only way to publish them is to hedge your bet and hedge it again.
3. “The Paradox of Apology” by Agnes Callard
If I could tell him what it is that he should do or say to erase my irritation, I’m sure he’d do it. But I myself don’t know. It’s possible that a simple “I’m sorry” would do the trick, but one way to definitively disable the power of those words is by instructing someone to say them. And I have to admit that whenever I imagine him apologizing, I imagine him doing so grudgingly, formulaically, in a “let’s get this over with” spirit that only increases my resentment. Apparently, I want the kind of apology I can’t even conceive of.
2. “Over Man” by Mat Messerschmidt
I had grown up, I was repeatedly told, in a culture dominated by men, by male voices, by male interests, by male points of view. Raised in a progressive family in the college town of East Lansing, Michigan, I accepted this description of the world. Yet, paradoxically, it was precisely the assertive maleness of the voice I encountered in the Nietzsche text that felt so profoundly radical. At home, my father would never have talked about being a man, and my mother seemed only ever to tell me about how men were in order to tell me how I should not be.
1. “Very Ordinary Men” by Sam Kriss
When, occasionally, genuinely significant things happen to Musk, Isaacson largely ignores them. In May 2002, Elon’s first wife Justine gave birth to their first child, a son. They named him Nevada, because he’d been conceived at Burning Man. When Nevada was ten weeks old, he suddenly stopped breathing in his sleep. Paramedics managed to resuscitate him, but his brain had been starved of oxygen. Three days later, his parents decided to turn off his life support and let him die. You could write an entire novel about this one incident. This brash, thoughtless millionaire, with all his abstract ambitions, suddenly encountering the frailty of human life. And that was only the beginning. Elon had invited his father to visit from South Africa and meet his grandson; Errol only found out that the grandson was dead once he landed. Elon, in deep anguish, decided he wanted his violent, abusive father to stick around. He bought a house in Malibu for Errol and his new family. But things swiftly got weird. Errol’s second wife, nineteen years his junior, started to develop some sort of untoward relationship with her stepson. (Errol commented: “She saw Elon now as the provider in her life and not me.”) Meanwhile, Errol was beginning to develop some sort of untoward relationship with his own fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, Jana. (They currently have two children together.) This seedy drama, guilt and money and sex, all swirling around the death of a child. It’s a Harold Pinter play. It’s a Greek tragedy. Walter Isaacson dispenses with the whole thing in less than three pages. He ends the chapter with his grand conclusion, his final word on this intense human experience. It’s this: “Personal networks are more complex than digital ones.” The next chapter is about building rockets. So is the next one. So is the one after that.
As 2024 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our most-read essays of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you enjoy these essays and dialogues, consider subscribing for 2025.
10. “Is Sex Fun?” by Lillian Fishman
After we’d been seeing each other for a few months, I mused to her that I’d noticed she usually only wanted sex spontaneously: desire came over her suddenly, at moments I couldn’t predict. “Of course it’s spontaneous,” she replied. “Sometimes I just suddenly feel like it, the same way I suddenly feel hungry or tired.” I was surprised; I had never conceived of the sex I was having in this way. Personally, I thought of sex as a form of consistent communication, a way I expected us to relate almost every time we saw each other. I knew in theory that arousal can be private and spontaneous, unprovoked by a direct desire or even a fantasy, but I suppose, because I seldom felt it that way, I forgot about this possibility.
9. “Commit Lit” by Joseph M. Keegin
In circumstances such as these, the kind of learning that allows for serious investigation into fundamental things might be better conducted not at highly competitive elite institutions, but in more humble environs where conversation is possible but hardly anything happens. One such place, I’d offer, is the imperfect but nonetheless quiet and nourishing environment of the hinterlands humanities department.
8. “Everything Is Out of Water” by Nandi Theunissen
Before I came to America for graduate school, I had a love affair with Iris Murdoch. I was attracted to her irreverence. In her early work (and she never really got off the subject) she was all about the difficulty of seeing things well. How can we act in a world we cannot see? With the correct perception, the rest takes care of itself. If I’d been asked for a saying at the time, I might have passed this off as my own.
7. “On the Crisis of Men” by Jon Baskin
To fully inhabit the role that had been laid out for us there was not, it seemed, to be a good father; it was to be a good little boy, whereas the only reason we were there was because we had become fathers, and thus were no longer little boys. Or so we wanted to believe. But were we really fathers?
6. “The Bookmaker” by Leif Weatherby and Ben Recht
Silver’s readers thought his numbers were telling them what would happen and informing what politicians, particularly Democrats, should do. According to Silver, that’s not at all what he intended, and, he told Kang, he was writing a book to clear up the confusion. At stake was something much larger: not just a question of facts and probabilities, but an entire way of seeing the world, and acting upon it. And the key was not in election forecasting, but another field that was Silver’s true passion: gambling.
5. “Is Philosophy Self-Help?” by Kieran Setiya
Asking a professor of moral philosophy for life advice can seem quixotic, like asking an expert on the mind-body problem to perform brain surgery. Philosophy is an abstract field of argument and theory: this is true as much of ethics as it is of metaphysics. Why should reflection in this vein—ruthless, complex, conceptual—make us happier, more well-adjusted people? (If you’ve spent time with philosophers, you may doubt that it has such salutary effects.) And why should philosophers want to join the self-help movement, anyway?
4. “How the Story Turns Out” by Scott Sherman and Edwin Frank
To speak like a Marxist, books take a lot of work to write and put together, and at the same time have next to no exchange value and whatever use value they have—this is especially true of literature—is in the eye of the beholder, unlike a towel or a shoe. The only way to publish them is to hedge your bet and hedge it again.
3. “The Paradox of Apology” by Agnes Callard
If I could tell him what it is that he should do or say to erase my irritation, I’m sure he’d do it. But I myself don’t know. It’s possible that a simple “I’m sorry” would do the trick, but one way to definitively disable the power of those words is by instructing someone to say them. And I have to admit that whenever I imagine him apologizing, I imagine him doing so grudgingly, formulaically, in a “let’s get this over with” spirit that only increases my resentment. Apparently, I want the kind of apology I can’t even conceive of.
2. “Over Man” by Mat Messerschmidt
I had grown up, I was repeatedly told, in a culture dominated by men, by male voices, by male interests, by male points of view. Raised in a progressive family in the college town of East Lansing, Michigan, I accepted this description of the world. Yet, paradoxically, it was precisely the assertive maleness of the voice I encountered in the Nietzsche text that felt so profoundly radical. At home, my father would never have talked about being a man, and my mother seemed only ever to tell me about how men were in order to tell me how I should not be.
1. “Very Ordinary Men” by Sam Kriss
When, occasionally, genuinely significant things happen to Musk, Isaacson largely ignores them. In May 2002, Elon’s first wife Justine gave birth to their first child, a son. They named him Nevada, because he’d been conceived at Burning Man. When Nevada was ten weeks old, he suddenly stopped breathing in his sleep. Paramedics managed to resuscitate him, but his brain had been starved of oxygen. Three days later, his parents decided to turn off his life support and let him die. You could write an entire novel about this one incident. This brash, thoughtless millionaire, with all his abstract ambitions, suddenly encountering the frailty of human life. And that was only the beginning. Elon had invited his father to visit from South Africa and meet his grandson; Errol only found out that the grandson was dead once he landed. Elon, in deep anguish, decided he wanted his violent, abusive father to stick around. He bought a house in Malibu for Errol and his new family. But things swiftly got weird. Errol’s second wife, nineteen years his junior, started to develop some sort of untoward relationship with her stepson. (Errol commented: “She saw Elon now as the provider in her life and not me.”) Meanwhile, Errol was beginning to develop some sort of untoward relationship with his own fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, Jana. (They currently have two children together.) This seedy drama, guilt and money and sex, all swirling around the death of a child. It’s a Harold Pinter play. It’s a Greek tragedy. Walter Isaacson dispenses with the whole thing in less than three pages. He ends the chapter with his grand conclusion, his final word on this intense human experience. It’s this: “Personal networks are more complex than digital ones.” The next chapter is about building rockets. So is the next one. So is the one after that.
If you liked this essay, you’ll love reading The Point in print.