Your first assignment is to buy The Best American Essays 2003 and read Donald Antrim’s “I Bought a Bed,” one of the inspirations for this blog, and an essential one. In fact, I dedicate this blog to Antrim. My admiration for this essay, plus his next recollection (also published in the magazine), is gigantic. Read Katha Pollitt’s “Learning to Drive” in the same collection—it’s very moving and funny, and she’s my friend, so all the more reason if you unthinkably missed it the first time.

Reviews of current issue to come. Copy editors (do you prefer one word or two? I go back and forth)—I’m going to need you. Serial comma or no? Feelings about full sentences in parentheses? Newspaper copy editors who can’t stand one-sentence grafs, or dig them? You’re among friends here.