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"  I generally like everything that One Story publishes, and I&amp;#039;m particularly fond the most recent issue. I&amp;#039;ve never read Robin Black before, but I definitely want to read more of her work. Here&amp;#039;s the first graph of her story, &amp;quot;Harriet Elliot&amp;quot;:  &amp;quot;She was the new girl in our fifth grade. Harriet Elliot. And when she told us that, she told it to us whole, the necessary pause between first and last name, that hard, repeated stop at the end of each, adding to the strangely adult air she carried with her, and signaling her separateness from us.&amp;quot;  Nice rhythm, girl! Chris Adrian,who we love here at Esquire, has an essay in the Summer Reading issue of Tin House\u2014&amp;quot;A Good Creature.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s about a break up, mostly, and it&amp;#039;s impressive in it&amp;#039;s honesty. Ron Carlson and William T. Vollman, who Esquire also loves, had great pieces in Tin House&amp;#039;s last issue, &amp;quot;Off the Grid.&amp;quot; (Should still be available at the bookstore.) Carlson had a short story, &amp;quot;At the Broken Ridge&amp;quot;, which I found surprising and satisfying, and William T. Vollman was interviewed by Mandy Aftel. William T. Vollman lives about as off the grid as a writer who has won the National Book Award can (no cell phone, no email). He talked a lot about his visual art\u2014paintings and wood block prints\u2014and explained why marginalized people are so often the subjects of his work and whether or not he&amp;#039;s one of them.Here are some good parts to chew on: MA:What is it about these people who are living on the edge, on the margins of society? What makes them particularly attractive to you? WTV:Well, I like people who are free. Everyone tries to be free or not. Some people are happy with the way their lives are and others put a high value on personal freedom. And we&amp;#039;re in a kind of safety culture now...Everyone wants to makes sure that people are safe, that the children are safe...People are relatively comfortable with the idea that our president tortures people and that the government listens in on their phone conversations, because they believe it possibly makes them a little safe. All that would have been anathema in my father&amp;#039;s generation. And everyone today thinks it&amp;#039;s just fine.&amp;quot; MA:When you look at yourself, do you think of yourself as an insider, or an outsider, in terms of the worlds that you go into? WTV:I don&amp;#039;t really think of it that way. I think we&amp;#039;re all...alone. And all we can do is sometimes we can be alone with others and be slightly closer, and other times we can&amp;#039;t. And sometimes people give themselves a very convincing illusion that they&amp;#039;re not alone. And that&amp;#039;s wonderful too\u2014if you believe it. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a4748/robin-black-blog/>