Inside the September 2024 Issue
Jasper Craven on the dubious rise of the private-security industry, Tanya Gold’s Auschwitz vacation, Sheila Heti on the origins of A Course in Miracles, fiction by Diane Williams, and more.
September 2024
[ R E P O R T ]
The Thin Purple Line
The dubious rise of the private-security industry
By Jasper Craven
“The security guard is embodied proof of the power of optics: someone who looks vaguely like a cop, stands vaguely like a cop, has a badge that shines vaguely like a cop’s, and can wield power like a cop. This is especially true if they’re armed like a cop, as these days more and more of them are.”
[ L E T T E R • F R O M • P O L A N D ]
My Auschwitz Vacation
On Holocaust tourism
By Tanya Gold
“There were 3.3 million Jews in Poland in 1939 and as few as 4,500 today; the chief rabbi of Poland is an American, which is a kind of surrender. To muster prewar numbers, you’d have to count the toy Jews as the Jews of Poland. To be a toy is a kind of destiny. Nothing is more pliant, more willing to accept its fate, than a toy.”
[ M I S C E L L AN Y ]
The New Age Bible
On the origins of A Course in Miracles
By Sheila Heti
“Were the qualities that let me write fiction the same ones that allowed me to fall for this book? Was it possible that I had been drawn to the Course because it gave me the same feelings of spiritual connection and flow that, in my diminished state, I was not experiencing in my usual way—through writing?”
[ R E V I S I O N ]
What Are You Going to Do With That?
The future of college in the asset economy
By Erik Baker
“Something fundamental has changed about the function of college in the reproduction of social hierarchy—it may no longer be essential to modern capitalist societies. American economic and political elites did not always rely on colleges to produce their successors. Perhaps there is no reason to think that they will do so in the future.”
[ F I C T I O N ]
Four Stories
By Diane Williams
“True, we are prone to sea storms and landslides, but this village also provides a panoramic view, amusements, and benefits, as well as a horrid gorge. But don’t let’s look at that. Let’s be happy.”
[ R E V I E W S ]
Glimmers of Totality
Fredric Jameson at ninety
By Mark Greif
“It is characteristic of literature departments to see waves come and go. Fredric Jameson represents something like the lapping at the shoreline, which doesn’t go away and never ceases to turn up interesting things: shells, coins, and specimens of marine life heretofore unseen.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
By Hari Kunzru
[ T H E • H A R P E R ' S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
The Instant Monet Enters the Studio
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
By Elizabeth Rubin
By Dan Piepenbring
[ P U Z Z L E ]
By Richard E. Maltby Jr.
See the full table of contents
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