@thebaffler.com
Political and cultural criticism. Since 1988. Online and in print. https://thebaffler.com/
@thebaffler.com“Today, writing in the spirit of geological time—to observe nature, but also for any kind of long-form journalism, really—is a vanished privilege.”
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@thebaffler.comReligion and addiction are seductive, twinned experiences—each a form of obliteration of self. Meghan O’Gieblyn’s new book “Will and Attention” takes on both.
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@thebaffler.com“Epidemics are not, as the cliché goes, ‘great equalizers’—they tend to exacerbate social inequality.”
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@thebaffler.com“Addiction itself isn’t logical; why this need to blot oneself out, to destroy oneself from within?”
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@thebaffler.comBy attending to the small details, John McPhee’s nature writing created a picture of something almost too big to see. Reading his work, it’s hard to imagine pieces at such scale breaking into public consciousness these days.
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@thebaffler.com“‘Primetime’ doesn’t just capture the textures of the period—the camera stocks, the xeroxed suburban McMansions that look like they’re decorated by Carmela Soprano—it captures the feeling of watching ‘Predator’ in the 2000s.”
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@thebaffler.com“A glass of water and heartburn. Not finishing something knowing he’ll feel bad for not doing it. This is it. And it’s that time of year. He opens all the windows and smells chlorine in the intruding northeasterly pine-blue light.”
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@thebaffler.comOn the Colorado River, scientists are trying to outwit a collapsing ecosystem. It’s an onerous task, accomplished by increasingly surreal methods: thermal curtains, fake floods, fish security guards. There’s no guarantee it will succeed.
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@thebaffler.comSara Nović’s memoir, “Mother Tongue,” is a finalist for the 2026 National Book Award! She wrote about the hearing world’s misapprehension and exploitation of deaf communication back in Baffler no. 74:
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@longreads.comReposted by @thebaffler.com"I’m not aware of anyone who gets to write a sixty-thousand-word magazine piece these days." @justjokes247.bsky.social for @thebaffler.com on John McPhee, journalism, nature, and attention thebaffler.com/latest/up-a-...
@thebaffler.comSince the 1970s, hospital care has been packaged into billable units and commodified. Some patients bring in big money. Others do not. Back in 2020, @awgaffney.bsky.social described the brokenness baked into our medical system.
@thebaffler.comMeghan O’Gieblyn’s “Will and Attention” isn’t your standard addiction memoir. It refuses to consider alcoholism merely through the lens of disease or choice, focusing instead on the strangeness and illogic of the condition.
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@thebaffler.comJohn McPhee is considered one of the founders of long-form journalism. What does his work mean—and what purpose might it serve—in an age of distraction and inattention? @justjokes247.bsky.social reads a new Library of America collection of the author’s work.
@thebaffler.com“Primetime” sets its sights on the hopped-up media bloodlust of the early aughts: the perverse logic of the War on Terror, Bush-era legerdemain, and obsession with moral cleanliness. @johnsemley3000.bsky.social wipes down the spotty looking-glass mirror:
@thebaffler.comHow to measure the right amount of spaghetti? To choose the right scent of soap? To discern the best day, and time of day, to spend on a bench in the park? New fiction from Nathan Dragon considers luck and stuck-ness.
@thebaffler.com“I peered into the water. Once, humpback chub congregated here so thickly that you could practically walk across the water on their backs. But when the dam went up in 1963, the whole ecosystem changed.”
@thebaffler.comIn “Will and Attention,” Meghan O’Gieblyn relapses after years of sobriety. @rhiansasseen.bsky.social reviews a new addiction memoir that transcends the form, offering a salient exploration of what we owe ourselves and others.
@thebaffler.comOur nation’s hospitals have been kneecapped by market logic. What is to be done?
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@thebaffler.comJohn McPhee’s nature writing is defined by the act of sustained attention, on the part of the writer and reader both. But in an age when the public’s patience for long text—or any kind of text, really—has worn thin, what purpose might his work serve?
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@thebaffler.comEven as America’s self-appointed pedo-hunters cry for blood, Epstein’s pals sit pretty in the top echelons of government and a Michael Jackson biopic breaks box-office records. The lurid “Primetime” is thus a sign of the times.
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