16 Comments
Mar 6, 2021Liked by Connor Wroe Southard

Connor, I have loved reading your newsletter and I look forward to it coming back. I hope your time away is fruitful. Good luck!! PS: I second the Saunders recommendation.

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Mar 4, 2021Liked by Connor Wroe Southard

Good luck on the thesis; hopefully you find the time away fruitful. The mule deer have returned to graze on the few sun-stripped spots of grass amidst the snow and ice, and approach the kitchen door, hesitantly, to beg for salty crackers; it's time to step away from the internet.

I appreciate this post, in particular its abrupt end; there's no need to expand beyond outlining your enjoyment, sometimes. One small quibble: Wittgenstein (late Wittgenstein, at least) would agree that the best writing is that through which the inexpressible 'shows itself;' his great paradox is that the inexpressible, by our 'running up against the limits of language,' nevertheless finds itself expressed. I think that puts him close to the theory of good writing you're sketching out here.

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Mar 4, 2021Liked by Connor Wroe Southard

Have you read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders? If you like ghosts and stories about them you might enjoy it, though it's a pretty strange book (personally I like it a lot, though I probably could have done without the pieces taken from contemporary sources). Given your apparent interests I think you're probably familiar with Saunders, but if not you should definitely check out his short stories as well, they are phenomenal (he's my favorite writer of short fiction by a pretty wide margin).

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Good luck with the thesis, Connor! Yours is the newsletter I open most consistently out of all my miscellaneous subscriptions, so I'm already eagerly awaiting your return.

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Mar 4, 2021Liked by Connor Wroe Southard

A) You’ll be missed, good luck on the thesis King. B) Love the poetry focus. The Stanford team me reminds me a little of the notion that the only real afterlife is how you are remembered and spoken of and thought of after you die. But also, just the lyricism and profundity that evades easy meaning and the emotional surprise of great art, yes, I feel that. C) Any particular Yeats collection you’d recommend?

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Alex Pareene sent out a newsletter that mentioned the Discontents and saw your name on it and thought “he’s been secretly posting behind my back, that mother fucker”, but no you’re still hopefully working on that thesis. Otherwise you were in trouble. Good luck out there.

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