Inside the August 2024 Issue
William T. Vollmann reports from Korea's DMZ, Sam Kestenbaum on American exorcisms, Ellyn Gaydos on granite carving, Matthew Karp on the decline of the American left, and more.
August 2024
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • T E N N E S S E E ]
The Demon Slayers
The new age of American exorcisms
By Sam Kestenbaum
“Who would deny that this cursed land is in need of a deep cleanse with a power washer? This, our country of suburban satanic panics, active-shooter drills, and jump-scare franchises, of mob riots, hollowed-out downtowns, and tech paranoias. The vibes are foul. And lo, a cavalry of screen-ready revivalists has arrived to wage the End Times war against the satanic infantry. Theirs is spiritual warfare with the algorithm in mind, exorcisms that come with online subscription plans and TikTok and Facebook schematics.”
[ F O L I O ]
Korean Hearts
At the DMZ
By William T. Vollmann
“It now began raining and snowing. Amid the brownish-yellow rock and russet leaves of that atrocity, I took photographs and notes with my cold hands, wondering whether documenting this would do you or me any good. Of course I was sorry for the Koreans, both North and South. I was pretty good at feeling sorry for people I could do nothing for.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • V E R M O N T ]
On Stones
Carving in the granite capital of the world
By Ellyn Gaydos
“The granite industry may not be enough to hold Barre together, even if the earth is still rich in rock and people keep digging graves. How much can granite do? Some people are in crisis, others cosseted by jobs that pay, and all are folded into a diminished town where more rock is ferried out of the quarries and onto highways, sent away, leaving a bigger hole in the ground.”
[ M E M O I R ]
My Mother's Oysters
Recollections of Breton summers
By Rosanna Warren
“Even as a young child, I felt bewitched by these Breton stories, the way they took on a life of their own. We saw them all around us, in the stone carvings in the village church; in the bits and pieces of local lore that came our way.”
[ S T O R Y ]
Lovefool
By Andrew Martin
“She charmed him, I learned later, by knowing some things about punk rock and having caustic but not overemotional analyses of the failings of the American left.”
[ R E V I E W S ]
Music and Mystery
Seamus Heaney and the end of the poetic career
By Christian Wiman
“The pain has to do with coming to consciousness, that huge first heave a young poet must make from sensation to representation, and the further and even harder heave to solder a seam between them with a singular sound.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
By Matthew Karp
[ T H E • H A R P E R ‘ S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
By Sarah Comstock
By Dan Piepenbring
[ P U Z Z L E ]
Sixes and Sevens (and Twelves)
By Richard E. Maltby Jr.
See the full table of contents