Engl 3040 Literary Nonfiction, Fall 2026

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Online Readings  
last update: August 23, 2026

 

These links are compiled here for reference. Some but not all of these texts will be assigned reading this semester. For week-by-week reading assignments, see the course calendar.

 

I. Reviews and Interviews: Books and Authors We're Reading in This Course

Truman Capote

- "Capote’s Masterpiece ‘In Cold Blood’ Still Vivid at 50." By Jessica Ferri. The Daily Beast, December 28, 2016. www.thedailybeast.com/capotes-masterpiece-in-cold-blood-still-vivid-at-50

- "The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel" [interview with Truman Capote]. By George Plimpton. The New York Times, Jan 16, 1966. www.nytimes.com/books/97/12/28/home/capote-interview.html

 

Joan Didion

- "Places, People and Personalities" [review of Didion's "Slouching..."]. Dan Wakefield. New York Times. June 21, 1968. http://www.nytimes.com/1968/06/21/books/didion-bethlehem.html 

- "The Essential Joan Didion," by Alissa Wilkinson. The New York Times, April 26, 2024. www.nytimes.com/article/joan-didion-best-books.html. Click here for a cached version.

 

Robin Wall Kimmerer

- "Timing, Patience and Wisdom Are the Secrets to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Success." By Elisabeth Egan. The New York Times, November 5, 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/books/review/robin-wall-kimmerer-braiding-sweetgrass.html. Click here for a cached version.

- "Book World: 'Braiding Sweetgrass' has gone from surprise hit to juggernaut bestseller." By Karen Heller. The Washington Post, October 13, 2022. faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/readings/sweetgrass_wapo.pdf 

- "'Braiding Sweetgrass': Parul Sehgal visits Robin Wall Kimmerer, who set out to bridge the gap between Western science and Indigenous teaching."  The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, August 25, 2023. Runtime -- 49:41. www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/braiding-sweetgrass-and-a-lesson-in-extreme-heat 

 

Frederick Douglass

- "Review of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass." New York Tribune, 10 June 1845. At U of North Carolina's "Documenting the American South" website:  docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/support3.html, accessed July 2024.

- "A Big New Biography Treats Frederick Douglass as Man, Not Myth." [Review of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight.]  By Jennifer Szalai. The New York Times, October 17, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/books/review-frederick-douglass-prophet-of-freedom-david-blight.html. (Click here for a cached version.)

 

John Green

- "John Green Is Not Writing in Code," by Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times, June 10, 2021. www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/books/review/john-green-the-anthropocene-reviewed.html. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "Author John Green Explores How to Live in Uncertainty in 'The Anthropocene Reviewed'." By Adam Frank. National Public Radio, May 18, 2021. www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997793426/author-john-green-explores-how-to-live-in-uncertainty-in-the-anthropocene-review

- The Anthropocene Reviewed. Index of Podcast Episodes (most recent episode dated August 26, 2021). By John Green. NYC Studios. National Public Radio. www.npr.org/podcasts/735466018/the-anthropocene-reviewed 

 

Art Spiegelman

- "Art Spiegelman’s Genre-Defying Holocaust Work, Revisited." By Ruth Franklin. The New Republic, October 5, 2011. newrepublic.com/article/95758/art-spiegelman-metamaus-holocaust-memoir-graphic-novel

 

Cheryl Strayed

- "The Tracks of an Author’s, and a Reader’s, Tears: ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed, a Walkabout of Reinvention." By Dwight Garner. New York Times Book Review, March 27, 2012. 

www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/books/wild-by-cheryl-strayed-a-walkabout-of-reinvention.html 

- "The Outsiders: 'Wild' and 'Mr. Turner' [The Current Cinema]." By David Denby. The New Yorker, December 8, 2014. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/08/outsiders-5 

 

D. F. Wallace

- "An Appreciation: Exuberant Riffs on a Land Run Amok" [upon the death of David Foster Wallace]. Michiko Kakutani. New York Times. September 14, 2008. www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15kaku.html. Click here for a cached version.

- "'A Supposedly Fun Thing': Musings on Life's Absurdities" [review of D. F. Wallace essay collection]. By Michiko Kakutani. New York Times, Feb 4, 1997. Posted at a D. F. Wallace fan site: www.badgerinternet.com/~bobkat/kakutani.html 

- "The Rewriting of David Foster Wallace."  By Christian Lorentzen. Culture Vulture website (hosted by New York Magazine), June 30, 2015. www.vulture.com/2015/06/rewriting-of-david-foster-wallace.html 

- "Farther Away: 'Robinson Crusoe,' David Foster Wallace, and the island of solitude." By Jonathan Franzen. The New Yorker, April 18, 2011. www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/18/farther-away-jonathan-franzen 

- "Consider the Lobster," by David Foster Wallace. Gourmet Magazine, August 2004. www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html. (Click here for a cached version.)

 

II. On New Journalism

- "How Tom Wolfe Became … Tom Wolfe." By Michael Lewis. Vanity Fair, November 2015. www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/how-tom-wolfe-became-tom-wolfe 

 

IV. Digital Reading and Print

- Katherine Rundell. "‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom." The Guardian, Saturday, August 8, 2026. www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

- Nataliya Kosmyna, et al. "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task." MIT Media Lab, June 10, 2025. www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

- Bret Stephens. "I'm Begging You: Never Write with AI." New York Times, August 4, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.51A.Z226.w3TQJfNavEN2&smid=url-share

"Are We Really Willing to Become Dumber? (How AI Makes Us Dumb)." By David Brooks. New York Times, July 3, 2025. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/opinion/aritificial-intelligence-education.html. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good." By Mary Harrington. New York Times, July 28, 2025.  www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/opinion/smartphones-literacy

inequality-democracy.html. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "The Case for Paper: Books vs. E-Readers -- Why a good old-fashioned book is better for your mental health." By Heather Rose Artushin. Psychology Today, February 2, 2024.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/well-read/202402/the-case-for-paper-books-vs-e-readers

-  "I Tested the Read Aloud Feature on Word." By Ari Meghlen. February 18, 2022. arimeghlen.co.uk/2022/02/18/i-tested-the-read-aloud-feature-on-word/ 

- "My A.I. Writing Robot." By Kyle Chayka. The New Yorker, July 11, 2023. www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/my-ai-writing-robot. (Click here for a cached version.)

- "Do Students Lose Depth in Digital Reading?" By Naomi Baron. The Conversation July 20, 2016. theconversation.com/do-students-lose-depth-in-digital-reading-61897 

- "The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens--E-readers and tablets are becoming more popular as such technologies improve, but reading on paper still has its advantages." By Ferris Jabr. Scientific American, vol 309, issue 5, November 2013. www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-reading-brain-in-the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens/

- "Your Paper Brain and Your Kindle Brain Aren't the Same Thing." PRI (Public Radio International). Aired Sept 18, 2014. Radio news story with accompanying text. Running time: 5:37. www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-18/your-paper-brain-and-your-kindle-brain-arent-same-thing 

 

V. Two Canonical Essays

- "On Smells," Book I, Chapter 55 of The Essays by Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, 1580. Translated by Charles Cotton in 1685. Posted at HyperEssays.net. hyperessays.net/essays/on-smells/

- "Circles." By Ralph Waldo Emerson. From Essays: First Series (1841). Click here for an 8-page pdf version, text copied from Bartleby.com. 

 

VI. Some of the Assigned Course Readings Which Are Available Online

- "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." By David Foster Wallace. Under the title "Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise," as it originally appeared in Harper's Magazine, January 1996. harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazine-1996-01-0007859.pdf

- "Consider the Lobster." By David Foster Wallace. Gourmet Magazine, August 2004. www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster. (Click here for a cached version.)