For the New Yorker, Parul Sehgal writes about the trauma plot: “Unlike the marriage plot, the trauma plot does not direct our curiosity toward the future (Will they or won’t they?) but back into the past (What happened to her?).” Twitter is weighing in.
For his year-end newsletter, Sasha Frere-Jones has collected seventy-one reflections on the past year with contributions by Lucy Sante, Rachel Kushner, Hannah Black, Merve Emre, Pete L’Official, and more.
4Columns recaps its ten most read reviews of 2021, including Blair McClendon on The Underground Railroad Amazon series, Hermione Hoby on Sally Rooney’s novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, Hannah Black on the “Grief and Grievance” exhibition at the New Museum, Melissa Anderson on the movie Spencer, Tiana Reid on the artist Tourmaline, and others.
The Atlantic rounds up the fifty best podcasts of the year.
Jewish Currents looks back at 2021. In their introduction, the editors write,” If 2020 brought a sea change in discourse about race in the US, 2021 marked a watershed in how Americans understood Palestine.”