Best Online Essays of 2016

Ted Gioia

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The Best Online Essays of 2016

"Sound Check: The Quietest Place in the US" by Samantha Larson
Crosscut, March 24, 2016

"MFA vs. CIA: A Writer Considers An Alternate Life As An Undercover Agent" by Jennifer duBois
Lapham’s Quarterly, February 23, 2016

"The Passing of a Sixties Showman" by Peter Collier
The New Criterion, October 2016

“Dirty Hands: A Cheating Scandal in the World of Professional Bridge” by David Owen
The New Yorker, March 7, 2016

"What are the Odds of Landing a Pop Hit?" by Sheldon Pearce
The Fader, April 12, 2016

"We Should Celebrate Greats Like Sly Stone While They're Still With Us" by Noah Berlatsky
The Guardian, May 3, 2016

"New York Is Killing Me: Albert Ayler’s Life and Death in the Jazz Capital" by Mark Richardson
Pitchfork, April 28, 2016

"The Novelist of Human Unknowability" by Leo Robson
The New Yorker, October 17, 2016

"The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Franco Moretti" by Melissa Dinsman
Los Angeles Review of Books, March 2, 2016

"I Used to be a Human Being" by Andrew Sullivan
New York, September 19, 2016

"Teaching 1984 in 2016" by Andrew Simmons
The Atlantic, November 20, 2016

"The New Old Masters" by James Panero
City Journal, March 13, 2016

"Boomin! A Day in the Life of a 16-Year-Old Rare Sneaker Dealer" by Lauren Schwartzberg
New York, August 11, 2016

"Behind the Music" by John Lingan
Buzzfeed, January 28, 2016

"Life at One of England’s Last Tolstoyan Communes" by Kelsey Osgood
The New Yorker, January 6, 2016

"An Open Letter to the Next Generation of Artists" by Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock
NestHQ, March 7, 2016

“How Ralph Ellison Changed My Life” by Don Katz
The Daily Beast, November 2, 2016

"What Killed the Jingle?" by Tiffany Stanley
The Atlantic, August 29, 2016

"Natural Selection: How a New Age Hustler Sold the Sound of the World" by Mike Powell
Pitchfork, November 2, 2016

"Let Everybody Sing" by Chuck Reese
The Bitter Southerner, March 9, 2016

"The Rebirth of the City-State" by Corin Faife
How We Get to Next, April 12, 2016

"My Son, the Prince of Fashion" by Michael Chabon
GQ, September 27, 2016

"Sounds of Justice" by Matt Petronzio
Mashable, October 4, 2016

"The Surprising History of the 'Song of the Summer'" by Phil Edwards
Vox, June 15, 2016

"Should Colleges Really Eliminate the College Lecture?" by Christine Gross-Loh
The Atlantic, July 14, 2016

"Searching for Bilbo Walker" by Eric Benson
Mashable, March 25, 2016

"The S ound of Silence: Jean Sibelius and the Symphony That Never Was" by Sudip Bose
The American Scholar, February 29, 2016

"Tunisia’s Dying Jazz" by Fadil Aliriza
Foreign Policy, August 7, 2016

"How Intellectuals Create a Public" by Corey Robin
The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 22, 2016

"How Staying Small Helps New Directions Publish Great Books" by Maria Bustillos
The New Yorker, February 16, 2016

"Why Most Academics Will Always Be Bad Writers" by Noah Berlatsky
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2016

"Inside the World of Concert Sign Language Interpreters" by Andrea Marks
Noisey, August 24, 2016

"Dancing to the Music of Time" by Tara Isabella Burton
The Economist, January 29, 2016

"The Scariest Death Metal Band of All Time" by Shaun Prescott
Literary Hub, march 8, 2016

"Black Intellectuals and White Audiences" by Matthew Clair
Public Books, May 1, 2016

"T Bone Burnett’s AmericanaFest Keynote Address" by T B one Burnett
American Songwriter, September 23, 2016

"The Novel as a Tool for Survival" by Arthur Krystal
The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2016

"Tributaries of Afrobeat (s)" by Sanya Osha
3:AM Magazine, November 20, 106

"Intellectual Maintenance: The Case for Philosophy Requirements" by Gary Gutting
Commonweal, January 27, 2016

"The World According to Stanislaw Lem" by Ezra Glinter
Los Angeles Review of Books, December 10, 2016

"When Norman Podhoretz Spent the Night With Allen Ginsberg" by Daniel Oppenheimer
Tablet, February 2, 2016

"How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Empty My Shelves" by Alana Massey
Literary Hub, June 13, 2016

"The Big Exit" by Kristin Henderson
The Washington Post, October 27, 2016

"Who was David Hume?" by Anthony Gottlieb
New York Review of Books, May 26, 2016

"Free Speech and the Modern Campus" by Camille Paglia
The Smart Set, May 9, 2016

"Steph Curry and the End of the Warrior’s Underdog Era" by David Dennis, Jr.
The Undefeated, June 28, 2016

"Scandi Crush Saga: How Scandinavian Design Took Over the World" by Sarah Hucal
Curbed, March 23, 2016

"The D isease of T heory: Crime & Punishment at 150" by Gary Saul Morson
The New Criterion, May, 2016

"The Secret to Faking Your Own D eath" by Elizabeth Greenwood
Literary Hub, September 26, 2016

"When Music is Violence" by Alex Ross
The New Yorker, July 4, 2016

"Neurothriller" by Patricia Pisters
Aeon, February 8, 2016

"Pee Wee’s Big Comeback" by Jonah Weiner
The New York Times Magazine, February 10, 2016

"Esperanto: The Language that Never Was" by Edward Docx
Prospect, May 19, 2016

"Why People Collect Art" by Erin Thompson
Aeon, August 23, 2016

"The Lost Art of Letter Writing" by Jon McGregor
The Guardian, November 26, 2016

"Why I Hate Star Wars" by Stephen Galloway
The Hollywood Reporter, November 28, 2016

"The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time" by Pitchfork Staff
Pitchfork, September 26, 2016

"Why We Need a Music Media Revolution" by James Shotwell
Medium, October 14, 2016

"The Factory of Fakes" by Daniel Zalewski
The New Yorker, November 28, 2016

Here is a list, in no particular
order, of articles I enjoyed
during 2016. They are mostly
longform essays, with a focus
on arts, culture and humanities,
but with a few interviews, listicles
and articles on sociopolitical
subjects, etc. included as well.
T.G.

For a list of my favorite
recordings of the year, click here.

Selected articles by Ted Gioia
available on the web

Ted Gioia can be contacted at
tedgioia@hotmail.com

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