Some writers are brimming with original ideas. I’m not, which is why I started a newsletter.
The Happy Few covers many things, but mostly arts and culture. Among other pieces, I’ve written a note to myself at 35, an essay on a very curious math problem, and a brief appreciation of drinking a Coke in summer.
Several years ago, as a bad joke, I wrote a recap of Home Alone in the style of Cormac McCarthy for The Awl (now defunct) that was widely celebrated online, including by editors at The Atlantic, ESPN, Vice (now defunct), and the New York Times news aggregator (formerly known as NYT Now, also defunct).
According to Twitter (now X, essentially defunct) — and conversations with a few real humans — this is read as an annual holiday tradition in some households. It is also probably just an LLM prompt.
The Neu Jorker is a full-length parody of the New Yorker, and has been featured in a variety of top-tier publications, excluding the New Yorker, but including A/V Club, which went on record to say that it “deserves a Pulitzer.” To date, it has not received one.
Having said that, I'm told that my piece in particular (“Knotty by Nature,” pg. 38) was inquired after by actual New Yorker staff writer Kelefa Sanneh, who “wished he had thought of that idea” —a 6,000-word essay on knots — “and had also traveled to Scotland to report.” I was not told if he liked my piece.
Paul Ryan is a 192-page magazine dedicated to Paul Ryan, featuring articles in the style of Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, People, and other popular publications.
My piece was conceived as a play on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “Fall of the House of Usher” — not sure what I was going for other than a sort of fall of the House of House Representatives. It wasn’t that clever, but also no one read it.
The magazine is available for purchase!
