Harper’s Magazine
@harpers.bsky.social
Since 1850. “America’s most interesting magazine” —New York Times Subscribe: harpers.org/save
“‘I am here to help this person,’ he told me of his approach as a mortician. ‘It may just be their vessel. But there are people that love this person.’” John Semley (@johnsemley3000.bsky.social) on the dying art of the open casket. buff.ly/NOl45CD
A Dying Art, by John Semley
The last of the morticians
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“As a child, Alice Coltrane would stand on her mother’s dresser and imagine she was in the pulpit, leading the congregation. Sunday for worship, Saturday for something else again: ‘I had visions every Saturday, for some reason,’ she later said.” buff.ly/ik8TDzV
All She Dreamed, by Ian Penman
Alice Coltrane’s dark night of the soul
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“How do we keep things straight? How do we think about one thing without tripping over another?” Cynthia Zarin on The Golden Notebook. harpers.org/archive/2026...
Blue Bowls, by Cynthia Zarin
On misreading Doris Lessing
harpers.org
“It’s for the greater good, an evidence-based culling of the herd to protect native flora and fauna. Or it’s sublimated xenophobia, a state-sanctioned holocaust in aid of an impossible purity.” Dan Piepenbring reviews Undesirable, by Amy Crawford. buff.ly/mUB2k7F
New Books, by Dan Piepenbring
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“Monsieur Lindon and I see each other several times; we even have lunch. I can’t believe that I’m having lunch with this guy.” From Jérôme Lindon, by Jean Echenoz, which will be published in September by Archipelago Books.
The Publisher Always Rings Twice, by Jean Echenoz
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“The ground is shifting beneath the feet of Europeans, and their horizons are being transformed. Yet they seem to be suffering from the paralysis of the will that is usually caused by a prolonged state of material and spiritual subjection.” —Pankaj Mishra
The European Question, by Pankaj Mishra
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“Kikuko didn’t believe that poverty left no room for the imagination. She felt a certain pleasure in imagining herself as a drowned corpse floating among the jetsam that her father picked up.” A brother and sister plot to kill their father in a new story by Yukio Mishima.
The Sound of Water, by Yukio Mishima, Translated by Andrew Clare
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“OHH SNAP (HR 8246): Overcoming Higher Education Hunger Through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Act” From the titles of bills given backronymic names that have been introduced in the U.S. Congress this year.
Capitol Letters,
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“In the new dispensation, there was little room for physical existence. Non, the Frenchmen said, language is all there is.” From The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory, by Emily Eakin.
Textual Deviants, by Emily Eakin
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John Semley, who reported on the dying art of the open-casket ceremony, spoke with Jess Bergman about the history of undertakers, the corporatization of funeral parlors, and communal grieving. buff.ly/woZYM9N
“Pope Leo’s thinking about war, inequality, and especially technology is grounded in this consistent ethic that, in our bewildering present moment, has crystallized almost into a political theory.” —Jack Hanson
Radical Reformation, by Jack Hanson
The Catholic Church’s progressive revival
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“Sacking Constantinople Mistreating Galileo Preventing women from being themselves” From things for which Roman Catholic popes have apologized. (May 2022)
The Sins of the Fathers,
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“As consumer tastes shift toward closed caskets and cremations, reflecting a general American ambivalence toward the traditions of ritualized bereavement, demand for posthumous primping has fallen dramatically.” —John Semley (@johnsemley3000.bsky.social)
A Dying Art, by John Semley
The last of the morticians
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“While restoration may be a moribund art, the atmosphere at the NFDA showcase was anything but sepulchral.” —John Semley (@johnsemley3000.bsky.social) harpers.org/archive/2026...
A Dying Art, by John Semley
The last of the morticians
harpers.org
Longreads@longreads.com · 5d agoThis week's #longreads Top 5 includes: • In a pickle / @nymag.com • Gut feeling / Taste • King of pain / @newyorker.com • Life (or something like it) / @harpers.bsky.social • For those about to rock / @theatlantic.com longreads.com/2026/07/31/l...
“Observations of supernovas suggest that the cosmic expansion is not slowing down.” From the Big Mysteries Survey, conducted by American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine.
Cosmo Not,
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“It’s for the greater good, an evidence-based culling of the herd to protect native flora and fauna. Or it’s sublimated xenophobia, a state-sanctioned holocaust in aid of an impossible purity.” Dan Piepenbring reviews Undesirable, by Amy Crawford.
New Books, by Dan Piepenbring
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“You cannot tell the truth about others, Woolf said, if you do not tell it about yourself. Lessing was impatient about drawn lines between the contiguous counties of fiction and non-fiction.” Cynthia Zarin on The Golden Notebook.
Blue Bowls, by Cynthia Zarin
On misreading Doris Lessing
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Tracing French theory from postwar France to its unexpected rise in US universities, this piece explains how Derrida and other theorists shifted attention from the autonomous individual to language as a force shaping knowledge and identity. By Emily Eakin in @harpers.bsky.social buff.ly/BRmFg9a
Textual Deviants, by Emily Eakin
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“Everyone had a notion of what deconstruction was and all the wonderful or terrible things it could do. Everyone, that is, except Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher who coined the term.” From The Frenchmen, or My Life in Theory, by Emily Eakin.
Textual Deviants, by Emily Eakin
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“It seems to me that what Alice Coltrane made from her gurus’ teachings was often more distinctive and convincing than the teachings themselves. The version she beheld in reverie would shine brighter than the original jewel.” —Ian Penman
All She Dreamed, by Ian Penman
Alice Coltrane’s dark night of the soul
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“To be successful now is to achieve the satisfaction of one’s greed, which of course is enlarged by every additional prospect of satisfaction.” from the foreword to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. harpers.org/archive/2026...
Less Is Enough, by Wendell Berry
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“In various combinations, we had been talking for decades about love and work, about how some things do not turn out but other things do, about enormous changes and smaller ones.” Cynthia Zarin on misreading Doris Lessing.
Blue Bowls, by Cynthia Zarin
On misreading Doris Lessing
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“In the twentieth century, people died all the time and laid themselves to rest without the high-caliber event planning I will demand of my immediate survivors at the end of my own life. No time.” —Claire Carusillo
Fanny and Sarah Go Boating, by Claire Carusillo
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“The houses standing on both sides of the estate were on fire. I presumed that the bomb had hit somewhere nearby. Everyone in Hiroshima thought that it was his own neighborhood that had been hit.” —Kiyoshi Tanimoto
Black Rain, by Kiyoshi Tanimoto
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“These days, the American way of death seems less like denial than desensitization. We may still fear the reaper, but we are also bored by him.” John Semley (@johnsemley3000.bsky.social) on the dying art of the open casket.
A Dying Art, by John Semley
The last of the morticians
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“God created, Linnaeus organized, Hoser defecated in the middle of the room.” Dan Piepenbring reviews Snake Men, by Zach St. George.
New Books, by Dan Piepenbring
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“There was something flylike about people with healthy, oily skin. Flies had such healthy appetites that they thrived on decay.” From a new story by Yukio Mishima.
The Sound of Water, by Yukio Mishima, Translated by Andrew Clare
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“He makes almost no comments about my book, other than to point out a few grammatical errors—a common mistake in the use of the subjunctive, a word I’ve systematically misspelled, other minor blunders of that nature.” —Jean Echenoz
The Publisher Always Rings Twice, by Jean Echenoz
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“As the Trump Administration threatens to withdraw from the defense of Ukraine, mocks NATO, and inflicts on weak European economies the exorbitant costs of its war on Iran, anti-Americanism is once again surging in Europe.” —Pankaj Mishra
The European Question, by Pankaj Mishra
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