Every Friday, the Kenyon Review sends an email to its subscribers highlighting one piece from its archives. This past Friday, Alice Fulton’s poem “A Lightenment On New Year’s Eve” from 2011 was featured. Last week, Amy Boesky’s 2013 essay about ghostwriting for the Sweet Valley High series, in which she states a truth that all memoirists—all creative nonfiction writers? all writers? all artists?—will grasp: “The books are packed away in my attic now—dozens of them, with their lilac and dusty-pink paperback covers—but the experience is harder to sort out and put away.” A few weeks back, a sharp, strange 1966 story by Don DeLillo.
Why do I love this literary thing?
The obvious answer: I love to read.
The more refined answer: I love to read but with a young child at home, the time + energy formula rarely yields enough opportunities for book-length works and even essays these days.
The lazy answer: I love having a weekly piece picked for me.
The adventurous answer: I love being exposed to authors I might not otherwise find.
The proud answer: When I recognize someone, or even know someone who knows someone who knows the featured writer, I feel fully satisfied with myself and my writing life and the world in general.
The realistic answer: It’s called “Weekend Reads,” so I have the whole weekend to read it, and that helps me feel productive and on top of things and even somewhat relaxed, as if I am a person who has loads of time to read, because hey, I’m just here doing my weekend reading, everyone, don’t mind me.
The straight answer: Like A Word A Day, the Kenyon Review‘s Weekend Reads gently reminds me I remain, happily, a card-carrying literary citizen, even if all the Other Things in Life like to grab that card and chew on it and push it under the couch.
Suzanne Farrell Smith 