Inside the January 2025 Issue
Liz Pelly on Spotify’s plot against musicians, Jordan Michael Smith on civil commitment, Youmna Melhem Chamieh on her family’s hotel in Lebanon, Cynthia Ozick on the epistolary life, and more.
January 2025
[ R E P O R T ]
The Ghosts in the Machine
Spotify's plot against musicians
By Liz Pelly
“A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibetagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • K A N S A S ]
The Forever Cure
Is civil commitment rehabilitating sex offenders—or punishing them?
By Jordan Michael Smith
“Out of sight, out of mind: this is the attitude most people seemed to have about those in civil commitment, no matter the human cost. But Mick cannot forget what she saw at Larned. She believes that people like her former patients deserve an honest chance at rehabilitation, and she will keep fighting for their rights and dignity, no matter how unpopular this cause may be.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • L E B A N O N ]
Heliopolis
Searching for home in the city of the sun
By Youmna Melhem Chamieh
“I dwelled in my imaginary Lebanon—a country of ancient temples and vibrant hotels. In some recess of my mind, I suppose, I really did expect to return one day to this version of the country, like a song coming home to its tonic after a protracted modulation.”
[ E S S A Y ]
Voices from the Dead Letter Office
On the epistolary life
“Letters, fragile shafts of paper and ink, can have the operatic force of stirring things up, making mischief, leaking lava, compelling notice, all while hiding under an imposture. The writer of letters, these silent arias, can be present though simultaneously fully absent.”
[ S T O R Y ]
Mother-Daughter Story
By Sigrid Nunez
“How to explain to her daughter. Back when she was in college, she had taken a literary seminar for which she’d had to read Kafka’s 'Letter to His Father.' After the class had discussed it, the teacher gave them an assignment: write a letter to one of your own parents.”
[ R E V I E W ]
A Man Out of Time
Dino Buzzati’s accidental realism
By Christopher Tayler
“His stories rarely have the mind-bending qualities of those of [Jorge Louis Borges] or [Italo Calvino] … Consumed in bulk, they start to read like reliably polished filler, designed to give Corriere della Sera’s bourgeois readers—the stories were nearly all written for the paper—a tiny jolt of disquiet over coffee or on the tram.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ L E T T E R S ]
John Yoo, Wai Wah Chin
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
An Ornament of Our Dingy Office
By Christopher Carroll
[ 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 E. L. Doctorow
[ P U Z Z L E ]
See the full table of contents
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